Page 29 of The Homewrecker's Fate

“God, you are refreshing.” His words were like a balm to my soul.

“Let me guess, not a lot of dates go well when you try to surprise someone?”

“Can’t say that they do,” he agreed.

“Yeah, that’s happened to me before as well.” The last time had been when Rich left me on his birthday after bitching about going out in public with me to celebrate. That surprise had been on me instead and not in a good way. “For the record, you’ll never hear a complaint from me if you want to surprise me, so long as you return the favor.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I nodded in agreement to emphasize my point.

“Deal.” Brax reached over and squeezed my hand again and then left his resting right on top before lacing our fingers together. “Hopefully, the rest of the night makes up for the crappy start.”

“It already is.”

“Are you serious, right now?” I asked. The brick building Brax brought me to was not what I had been expecting at all. There was nothing spectacular about the outside, no advertisements indicating what might be inside. Instead, he walked me straight to the door and opened it for me, allowing me to go into the unknown first. There were various stations all around the cavernous space. Some were pottery wheels; others were tables where people were sculpting or painting their creations. It looked far too messy for the silk blouse and slacks I’d worn on our date, but I would gladly sacrifice my clothes for the fun we were about to have.

“What do you think?” Brax looked nervous as his brown eyes flitted from the various stations and back to meet mine. “Shit,” he huffed as he scanned my body. “I should have told you to dress down, huh?”

My head swiveled back and forth. “Nope. That would have ruined the amazingness of this surprise. I love it. Let’s go make a mess!” I demanded after pulling his hand into my own and leading us both back to one of the pottery wheels. “I’ve always wanted to try this.”

“We could reenact that movie,” Brax suggested.

I cocked an eyebrow up at him. “You do know the guy dies in that movie, right?”

“So… Making a mess…” He chuckled as he spoke which only endeared me to him more as the fine lines fanning out from the corner of his eyes deepened.

“I’m not sure where to start.”

“Aprons.” A slender woman with an all-natural, afro-style hair that made her head seem cartoonishly three times its normal size and somehow out-of-this-world beautiful all at once made her way over to us and handed two utilitarian brown aprons to Brax. “Honey, did you not warn your woman she would be getting messy?”

“This was a surprise. It would have been ruined if he had.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but that shirt and this clay,” she pointed to what looked like a lump of semi-dried mud that was meant to be ours for the night, “are not going to mix well.”

“That’s okay. It’ll be worth the loss of the shirt,” I reiterated after Brax looked nervous all over again.

“If you say so, honey.” The woman, who introduced herself as Latoya, gave us a rundown of how to use the equipment, and even showed us on the wheel next to ours how everything worked and the way to use our hands to shape the lump into… Something. “Give a holler if you need me, honey. I’ll be wandering all night.”

“Thank you,” I called to her before she could drift too far.

When Brax pulled a stool up next to mine, I tipped my head to the side. “You’re not doing one?” He shook his head. “I wanted to see what you could come up with. I came here a couple weeks ago when I needed some stress relief and threw a teapot. We won’t be able to finish yours tonight because it has to go into the kiln, but we can paint mine if you’re not too tired when we’re done here. We could also wait until next time and paint them together.”

“Oh my God!” I squealed. “This is the best date ever!”

“We’re only just starting.”

I grinned so wide it almost hurt. “I see only good things in our future.”

Two hours later, I changed my mind about that. “Okay, well when I said, ‘I see only good things,’ clearly that was about our relationship, not the…” I cocked my head to the side and then flipped it the other way, thinking maybe perspective would change the outcome. It didn’t. I was absolute shit at pottery. “Well, I had fun getting dirty, anyway.”

“That’s all that matters,” Latoya called out from four stations away as she threw me a wink.

“See, that’s all that matters,” I said as I slapped a hand playfully at Brax’s abdomen. His deep chuckle turned into full-blown laughter as he eyed my creation.

“I think those pregnancy hormones got to you, sweetheart.”

“What? Why?” I glanced at my creation again. It was meant to be a pipe – like for smoking tobacco. It was my take on our joke about not being able to do drugs because I was pregnant. Braxton gently grabbed hold of my upper arms and forced me to move three steps to the side to shift my perspective.

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