Bea giggles as we follow Denice to the plastic bags of clay at the front.
“Well, this is something new, Nora,” she whispers to Mom.
Mom smiles weakly. “Something to tell Dad about when I get home, I guess,” she says to me. “I saw a naked man tonight, and it wasn’t you, honey.”
“Mom, please.” I reach into the bag and wrestle with the clay until I’ve successfully broken off a large piece.
But once we’re all back at our desks, with the naked man perched on a table in front of us, I feel weird sculpting him. I pretend to be sculpting, but really I’m stalling. My cell phone saves me with a beep.
I drape my clay-covered hand with a paper towel in order to pull the phone out of my bag.
No moon tonight. Bring a flashlight.
Butterflies explode in my stomach at Jenson’s text, and shit…I can’t wait to see him. I exhale and pull the bottom of my shirt in and out a few times to cool off. Now I’ve got clay all over it, but I don’t mind.
I look again at the model’s pale skin and frail frame. I take my desk and turn it away from him, so he’s no longer in my line of sight. Bea looks over at me, her eyes bright with interest. I smile at her and get to work.
* * *
An hour later, Denice walks around to take a look at everyone’s progress. She stops short when she sees what I’ve done with my clay.
“Oh…my.” She pauses for breath as she sees the quite obvious male anatomy sitting on top of my desk.
That’s right. I sculpted Jenson’s package. It wouldn’t have looked so bad if there had been something else to my sculpture, but there isn’t. It’s just a penis and balls. While I was actually working the clay, I was immersed in my own lust and didn’t much care who saw what I did, but now that the entire class—not to mention my mother and Bea—are all staring at my work of art, I want to disappear into the floor. God, why did Jenson have to text me? It’s like he gets so under my skin that I can’t help myself.
“Well,” Denice says. She looks at the old man and then down at my piece of art like she can tell the two do not go together. I guess the fact that I’m facing away from the model gives me away, so I quickly turn my desk back to the correct position. But my “work” looks too…thick, I suppose, to be a match to the model looking in our direction.
Bea smiles at me. “It’s…an original, yes?”
I hope not. I hope it’s an exact replica of Jenson’s goods. As a teenager, I touched him there once, but it was brief and over jeans, so I really needed to let my imagination do the sculpting for me. I’ve certainly felt his hardness desperately pressing against my body, but we were always clothed.
Mom clears her throat and mumbles something about how the three of us are definitelynottaking that papier-mâché class she saw on the Adult Ed bulletin board earlier.
* * *
After class, I seek to put an end to my humiliation and ask Mom to drop me off around the block at Bernie’s Coffee Haus. Bernie’s is the quaint German coffee shop on Main Street where we all hang out—Sheldon and Cara, my best friend, Hayley and her boyfriend, Max, and me. Daphne used to join us too, but once she married Todd and they had kids, they stopped hanging out at Bernie’s years ago.
Tonight, only Hayley’s going to be here. Thank God, because she’s the only one in my life who knows about Jenson and me. Everyone else just thinks I have serious relationship issues.
But as soon as I reach Bernie’s, Sheldon meets me in the doorway and immediately stares down at what’s in my arms.
It’s my sculpture, surreptitiously hidden inside a cardboard box Mom anxiously found for me in her trunk. “You don’t want to parade that all around town, Olivia,” Mom said as she handed me the box and practically threw the sculpture into it. “Now, I’m all for sexual expression, but that artwork is very intimate, and it could give the people in this town the wrong idea.”
I hold the box tightly with both hands as I stare Sheldon down. “Back off,” I say to him. “I’m not talking to you tonight.”
“What’d I do?” he says as he tries to follow me inside. His light brown hair is falling in his eyes, and I resist the urge to tell him to get a haircut because I know he’s just an easy target for how vulnerable I’m feeling. Sheldon and I are there for each other in all the important ways, and sometimes that means being a punching bag.
“I need to talk to Hayley alone,” I say. “So go. I thought you and Cara had date night or something.”
“Cara and I have wedding planning night,” he corrects me. “I needed a caffeine fix first.” He holds up his to-go coffee cup and grabs his keys out of his jeans pocket. “I’m on my way out.”
I smile at him. “Well, good luck. I can’t give you a pep talk because I cancelled one wedding and then the one I didn’t cancel ended in divorce.”
Sheldon grins as he waves goodbye. “You really do need to start dating again. I’m going to find you someone.”
I brush past him. “Don’t even think about it!” I call back.
As I step further into the coffee shop, I spot Hayley waving to me from our usual couch at the far back.
