Aiden snorts beside me. “How can it already be going wrong?” His clay flops sideways like a collapsed pastry.
“Your speed’s too fast,” the instructor offers, amused but not patronizing. “And you’re not leaning in.”
When my clay finally starts to resemble somethingbowl-like, Aiden chuckles. He glances around at the others in the room, most of whom are also struggling.
“How come you’re handling this so well?” he asks.
“I know a thing or two about controlling chaos,” I say loftily. “I teach kindergarten, after all.”
Right then, as if summoned by my pride, the clay gives a dramatic plop and collapses in on itself.
“You were saying?” Aiden grins.
We try again. Hands wet, elbows anchored to our thighs, bodies leaning in, we coax the clay to settle, to obey.
Mine starts to steady—again, better—and I feel a strange thrill.
Aiden’s still wrestling with his, swearing quietly as it goes lopsided again.
“You’re fighting it, Aiden,” the instructor calls out gently. “Let the wheel do some of the work.”
Eventually, I begin shaping.
The first pull upward is delicate, fingers inside and outside the spinning lump, easing it taller in slow, patient strokes. The clay responds—sometimes beautifully, other times by crumpling into nothing.
When Aiden’s first bowl collapses into a sad, squashed hat, I laugh—really laugh—for the first time in what feels like weeks.
I glance over, his hands and forearms are streaked with clay, his hair mussed. “You’re actually enjoying this.”
“I really am,” he admits.
I look at him for a beat too long, then return to myown misshapen cylinder. “I thought you’d rather revise a hundred-page financial disclosure than try this.”
“Me too,” he admits.
As I look at him, my cylinder gets out of control. He’s surprising me so much and in the best possible way.
“I wonder how many things I’ve missed out on thinking I won’t like them. Like that dude who didn’t want to eat green eggs and ham.”
I burst out laughing. “Did you just quote Dr. Seuss?”
“You betcha.”
We’re a mess by the end of it.
Clay under our nails, up to our elbows, splattered on our overalls.
“You look like a Wall Street executive being held hostage by a preschool art project,” I joke.
“And you, Mia, you look beautiful.”
I blush and then, to change the subject and reducemytemperature, I hold up myclay creation. “Behold: the saddest coffee mug in Vermont.”
He makes a show of studying it. “I wouldn’t drink out of that unless I had a tetanus shot.”
“You wound me,” I say dramatically.
As we wash our hands in the deep sinks at the back of the studio, I can’t help but glance at him, at the clay on his cheekbone and the damp curl of hair on his forehead.
