Trinity giggled.“Aw don’t worry about it, I’d be nervous, too.He’s a cutie.”
Blake let his eyes fall upon Marin, who was wadding up a ball of tinfoil with a determined expression.A small smile tugged onto the corners of Blake’s mouth.“He is.”
“I mean, if it’s your first time working with clay, you could always ask him for a hand,” she suggested.“We have a whole row of pottery wheels perfect for playingGhost.”Trinity grinned, waving her hand in dismissal.“I’ll leave you fellas to it.Let me know if you need anything.”
Blake thanked her and she returned to her spot at a table, resuming her work on carving filigree into a half-finished vase.He crossed the room to where Marin was perfecting the shape of his tinfoil with a rounded carving instrument, the tip of his tongue poking between his lips in concentration.
“You look like you know what you’re up to,” Blake said, gesturing towards his pile of supplies.Marin nodded, setting aside his tool and taking up a pinch of gray clay, which he began to roll flat.
“It’s so weird,” he admitted, a small crease forming between his brows.“It’s like I don’t even need to think about it, my body justknows.Like talking or breathing.”
“That’s great!”Blake smiled.Unsure of what to do next and not wanting to disturb Marin’s artistic process, he asked: “Did you need me to grab you anything else, or did you have everything you needed?”
“I think I’ve got everything I need for now,” Marin returned Blake’s grin with an easy smile of his own.“Thank you.What were you going to get up to—did you want to try to sculpt something?”
“I—” Blake suddenly felt out of his depth, staring down at the foreign instruments laid out in front of him.
Before he could properly respond, the studio was suddenly filled with the mechanical voice of an Alexa announcing: “Now playing ‘Unchained Melody’ by the Righteous Brothers.”
Gentle crooning was piped in through a Bluetooth speaker hidden amongst the chaos on a nearby shelf.Blake glanced over his shoulder at Trinity, who threw him a thumbs-up with one hand, slipping her phone into her pocket with the other.Blake returned her gesture with a thumbs-up of his own, trying to obscure his blush behind his fist.
“Here,” Marin said, standing and reaching across the counter for a plastic bag and scooping out two lumps of clay the size of Blake’s fist.“I’ll teach you how to make a pinch pot.”
“Won’t we need a wheel for the pot?”Blake asked, gesturing over to the other side of the classroom at the potter’s wheels.Marin shook his head.
“Nah, the pinching will shape it for us,” he explained, handing Blake one of the balls.“Here you go.First thing you’ll need to do is roll it into a ball, then you push your thumb right in the middle.”
“Okay.”Blake nodded, watching as Marin demonstrated, pressing into the clay.
“Make sure you don’t go all the way through,” Marin continued.He leaned into Blake, gently bumping him with his shoulder.“Give it a try.”
Blake nodded again, picking up his clay and attempting to mold it into a ball the best he could, squeezing it between his palms.Due to the cool air conditioning, it was much harder than he had anticipated.Marin made a small noise in the back of his throat that sounded almost like an aborted laugh.
“It’s a bit easier if you roll it on the countertop,” he explained, making a motion with a flat palm above the surface.“Like this.”
“Oh.”Blake’s ears burned with chagrin and he did his best to keep his embarrassment off of his face as he followed Marin’s instructions.“Like this?”
“You got it.”Marin smiled.“Now you need to—”
“Make a hole with my thumb, right?”Blake recalled, working his thumb into the lopsided ball.
“Oh—uh.Maybe… a little less off-center?”Marin suggested.It looked to Blake like he was trying not to break down into laughter, doing his best to be polite even as the corners of his mouth fought from curling up.“The clay around the hole is going to become the walls of the pot, so you’ll want to make them even.”
“Ah.That.Makes sense.”Blake stared down at where he’d pressed into the clay.He glanced up at Marin, more than a little helpless.“Should I get more clay and start over?”
“No, that’s the great thing about clay: if you mess up you can reshape what you have,” Marin explained.“Just squish it back into a ball.”
Unfortunately, no matter how well Marin instructed him, Blake was completely incapable of creating anything remotely resembling art.While Marin ended up with a handsome little teacup in a matter of minutes, Blake’s pinch pot had somehow been morphed into a malformed saucer, its uneven and wavering walls looking about ready to collapse in on themselves.
Blake hung his head in shame, about ready to set the overworked piece aside.“Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” Marin told him, tone patient and kind.“Here, would you mind if I helped you out?”
“By all means—” Blake began, ready to turn his disaster over to the professional.But to his surprise, Marin laid his hands over the back of Blake’s and began to help reshape the sides of the pot.
“The clay on the sides is too thin and the bottom is too thick,” Marin explained.“It’ll probably shatter if we try to fire it as is.”
Blake tried to pay attention to Marin’s tutelage, the proper pressure that he demonstrated with his hands—but his touch was warm and distracting.Even slick with clay, Blake could tell that Marin’s palms were soft, a relief on the back of his perpetually chapped hands.His fingertips were a little cool, but not in an unpleasant way.With the way Marin was leaning over to instruct him, their forearms were crossed and Marin’s stray hair tickled Blake’s ear.He smelled like Blake’s bodywash, sweet and peppery, and Blake noted that it smelled much better on him.Without thinking, Blake leaned in a little closer.
