“Maya, that's brilliant,” I say, and I mean it. It’s a perfect integration of our subjects—hands-on, observational, and rich with content.
A wave of relief and pride washes over her face. “Really?”
“Absolutely. So you know how to sculpt?” I ask, intrigued.
“Oh, yeah,” she says with a small laugh. “Pottery is actually why I wanted to be an art teacher in the first place.” She settles back in her chair, a wistful look in her eyes. “My mom is an artist. She owns an art studio and when I was little, I used to go there after school. She'd give me a lump of clay and I’d just… sit there for hours. She never told me what to make, just let me play.”
She looks down at her hands on the table, flexing her fingers as if she can still feel the clay. “I loved the feeling of it. So cool and smooth. I loved how easily I could change it, how one press of my thumb could create a deep hollow, or how cupping my palms around it could turn a messy lump into a perfect sphere. It felt like magic.”
She looks up at me again. “I was all set to major in sculpture in college. I had my portfolio ready and everything. But then I took a weaving class as an elective and just fell completely in love with fiber arts. Funny how things work out.” She gives a wry little smile. “My mom still thinks knitting isn't ‘real art,’ but what can you do?”
The casual, throwaway comment lands like a punch in my gut.It isn’t ‘real art.’A ghost of my own father’s voice echoes in my head, the time I showed him the winning project from my eighth-grade science fair—a detailed model of a volcanic eruption.“That’s nice, Zachary,” he said, barely looking up from his newspaper. “But are you still keeping up with your debate club prep? That’s what gets you into a good college.”I wonder if Maya’s childhood was lined with those same kinds of subtle dismissals, a constant, low-level hum of parental disapproval that makes you second-guess the things you love most. It would explain so much.
She’s looking at me, her expression open, a little vulnerable. She looks like she’s about to say something else, something more. My heart gives a strange, hopeful little skip. This is it. This is the moment where the wall might come down, even just a little. I hold my breath, waiting.
And then, just as quickly as it appeared, the opening closes. Her gaze drops back to her notebook. The mask of the teacher slides back into place. “Anyway,” she says, her voice all business again. “Another idea, if that one is too complicated, is we could do something with local fauna. The students could research a local animal, then draw or paint its natural habitat, and we could talk about the biology of those ecosystems…”
A pang of disappointment hits me, sharp and swift. We were so close. But I push it down. This is still progress. An hour ago, she could barely meet my eyes in a crowded bar. Now she’ssharing stories about her childhood. I need to solidify this. Keep the momentum going.
“Both of those ideas are great,” I say gently. “I think we should definitely do them both at some point during the school year.” Not wanting the conversation to end, I gesture towards the dim interior of the bar. “Are you hungry? We could order some food and keep talking through ideas.”
I hold my breath again, fully expecting her to say no. I’m waiting for the inevitable excuse:It’s getting late, I have to get up early, I should really get going.
To my complete surprise, she closes her notebook and gives me a small, genuine smile. “Yeah,” she says. “I'd like that. I'm starving.”
Chapter Sixteen
Maya
My notebook lies forgotten at the far end of the table, a closed and distant thought. I pushed it there to make room for the ridiculous amount of food we ordered: a basket of buffalo wings, a plate of loaded potato skins, a tangled pile of onion rings, and crispy fried pickles. We‘ve been grazing for the last hour, the easy rhythm of talking and eating settling over us like a comfortable blanket. The cool night air feels good on my skin, a welcome antidote to the stuffy, overheated classrooms we inhabit all day.
We landed on a lesson plan for the immediate future, something simpler than my clay idea. We’re going to do a project on sound waves. The kids will pick their favorite song, and Zachary will help them map out the peaks and valleys of the sound waves on a long sheet of paper. Then, with me, they’ll paint a landscape or a scene that they feel has the same tempo, the same energy, as the music and the waves. It’s a good plan, a solid marriage of art and science.
We’re still going to do the clay lesson, though. He was too excited by the idea to let it go. But he made me promise I’d helphim make a vase, too. “It’s only fair,” he’d said with a grin. “You can’t be the only one who gets to play with mud.” I agreed, and a secret, ridiculous thrill went through me. My brain, completely against my will, immediately conjured an absurd vision of us in the empty art room after hours, the lights dim, his hands covering mine on a spinning pottery wheel. I try to banish the iconic scene fromGhost, but the fantasy clings to the edges of my mind, both mortifying and embarrassingly appealing.
The longer we sit here, the more I feel that strong, familiar pull toward him, the one I’ve been so diligently trying to suppress in the fluorescent-lit hallways of school and in our colorful shared classroom. Maybe it’s being outside the context of work. Maybe it’s being back here, at the place where our story, such as it is, began. Whatever the reason, I can’t stop watching him. My eyes keep tracing the shape of his mouth as he talks, catching on his bottom lip. I watch his hands as he gestures, punctuating a story. They’re good hands, strong and capable, with long fingers. I remember how those hands gently held me when we kissed on the sand dune not far from this place, waking up parts of me that had been dormant for a long, long time. A shiver, part memory and part longing, traces a path down my spine.
“—and then Liam just looks at me, dead serious,” Zachary is saying, pulling me from my reverie, “and says he’s naming his sedum plant ‘Sir Reginald Leafington the Third.’ The third! What happened to the first two?”
I laugh, a real, unforced sound. It feels good. “That’s first grade for you. They have entire worlds built in their heads we know nothing about.”
He smiles, and the patio light catches in his eyes. He looks happy, relaxed. He looks like the man I met in this very place over the summer, not the serious science teacher who co-plans lessons with me. I’m about to tell him about the bizarre namesmy students have given the classroom paintbrushes when my phone, lying face down on the table, buzzes violently against the metal.
When I flip it over, intending to ignore the call, the name on the screen makes my stomach clench.Mom.
Instantly, the good mood evaporates, replaced by a familiar, heavy dread. I’ve been dodging her calls for a week, sending them to voicemail, hoping she’d get the hint. Hoping my brother could handle it. The annual charity art auction for the gallery she sits on the board of is coming up, and she is absolutely insistent that I donate a piece. But last night, my brother called me, his voice weary. Mom wasn't budging. He told me he’d explained my position—that I’m a teacher, not a gallery artist, and I don't have the time or energy to produce a piece worthy of a high-end auction. He said his husband, Peter, a doctor, had even gotten on the phone to explainagainhow critical it is for me to manage my stress levels, how a lupus flare-up could be triggered by exactly this kind of pressure. None of it mattered. My mother is a force of nature, and she is determined.
The phone continues to buzz, a furious, insistent vibration. Zachary has paused his story, his brow furrowed in concern. “Everything okay?”
I’ve been having such a good night. A genuinely, surprisingly good night. And the sudden, unwelcome infiltration of my mother into this small bubble of peace leads me to a snap decision, born of pure frustration.
“Yeah, just one second,” I say, forcing a smile that feels brittle.
Zachary gets up. “I'm just going to use the restroom. Be right back.”
The moment he disappears inside, I pick up the phone and answer, my voice tight. “Hi, Mom.”
“Maya, finally! I was beginning to think something had happened to you. You don’t answer my calls, you don’t answer my texts. What am I supposed to think?” The accusation is immediate, the guilt trip already rolling downhill.
