Page 65 of Over the Edge

“It fell apart one time. Try again.” His voice is so tender. I want to tell him not to feel bad for me, but I don’t think it’s that. I think he wants to be soft with me. He looks up and across the room to catch Poppy’s attention. They make eye contact and he gestures toward me.

“I might be a bit of a lost cause,” I explain as she eyes my piece.

“Garrett, don’t be lazy. Help your girl out.” I watch as Garrett opens his mouth but Poppy stops him. “And don’t say you’re out of practice.” She points at the bowl on his wheel.

“You okay with that?” Garrett asks. He swallows hard and I track the bob of his Adam’s apple. His eyes leap to mine. He’ll have to touch me to help and the fact that it is a completely normal thing Poppy is doing with everyone else doesn’t detract from how it makes me feel like a blushing teenager.

“I don’t want to monopolize her time if others need help.”

He grabs his stool and sets it next to mine. When he sits our thighs press together and I nearly pull away to make room but my legs have nowhere to go with the pottery wheel between them.

“You were putting too much pressure on the walls, that's why they collapsed,” he explains. “I’m going to put my hands on yours. We’ll do it together.”

“Do you always talk people through it?” I tease, hoping it will offset the molten feeling in my stomach.

“Is your mind always in the gutter?” He leans in and lowers his voice to a whisper that breezes across my ear. “But for the sake of our charade, maybe you should know. Yes, Eve, I like to talk through it, all the way. I like it when I can help make sure people get exactly what they want.”

I suck in a breath right as his hands land on mine, and I wonder if he can feel the fire burning right under the surface of my skin. It takes me a full thirty seconds to regain the ability to speak. “Well, if it casually comes up in conversation, then I’ll be prepared to share that interesting fact. Couldn’t help yourself, could you?”

“You seem to have a lot of fun flirting with me, so I thought I’d try it out.” His words are a current tugging inviting me to play with him even more. “Look at the clay, Evelyn. Don’t look at me; you’ll have plenty of time for that later.”

He drags a thumb over my knuckles, as if to direct my focus but it only make me more scattered. I force myself to take in a full breath, and once my attention is firmly on the wheel, he presses his fore and middle fingers down against mine. Controlled and firm, working with the clay, not against it.

“Good. Now we’re going to pull up the walls,” he guides. We wet our hands again and I let him reposition them, one on the inside and the other on the outside. Even with his assistance I wait for the clay to fold in on itself and become useless. “Steady,” Garrett mutters. I release a breath as I match the pressure he’s applying. “There it is. Atta girl.”

The praise thrums through me. I consider failing on purpose to do this all over again and see if he’ll say it one more time.

Our hands leave the bowl, and I gasp at the product. “You did it!”

“I was just the training wheels. You deserve the credit for trusting the process.” He nudges my knee with his.

“Because you’re preternaturally gifted at everything,” I say. “Even before I came here I knew you as an excellent musician and someone who graduated from a top law school. Now I know you fix houses for old ladies and casually can help at a mechanic’s garage.”

“Not to shatter your reality, but I wasn’t good at any of those things naturally.”

“Bullshit,” I call out loud enough a few people look up from their stations.

“I never had much going for me, so I changed that.”

“By being the human equivalent of a Swiss army knife?” I ask, like,come on, seriously?

“I’d rather be the most useful person in a room than be asked to leave,” he explains.

The more I see the full picture of who Garrett is, the more I hate it. I want him to see how extraordinary he is, how he’s like no man I’ve ever met. I want to paint over his self-portrait, show him the way I see him, capturing the details of the resilient, caring, talented man who I’m growing to know.

“Well, I like being in the same room as you. Swiss army knife capabilities or not,” I say, and I hope he believes me. I really want him to see he's worth caring about because of who he is and not because of what he can do for others.

“All right, everyone! If you have a piece you’re happy with, make sure to put it on the wood board next to your contact information,” Poppy calls out, reminding me we’re not the only people in the room.

I look up and there’s a brief moment of shock when I also remember Oliver and Quinn are here. Garrett just draws me in so completely the rest of the world becomes irrelevant. I guess there was something to those mindfulness articles.

The Lost and Found wine bar is far more suited for tourists than The Gas Station. The warm lighting is romantic but it’s so dim that it’s a challenge to properly read the chalkboard menu above the counter. Oliver was the one to suggest a drink because we weren’t able to catch up during the class.

It’s true, but I was half hoping that we’d be able to ignore that. Mostly, there is the fact that there’s only a handful of things that are safe to share with them.

There’s only one table with four seats available and this leads to an uncomfortable moment of deciding who should go get drinks, leaving the others to guard the table. The weirdness stems mostly from the fact that it seems like we’re all doing mental calculations to determine which two of us should stay and which two should go.

In the end, I stay at the table with Oliver.

---