Page 63 of Delay of Game
A small trickle of doubt fluttered at the back of my mind. That even if Rob felt the same way I felt about him, maybe he wouldn’t admit it. And whatever tenuous connection kept us together would fall apart when I sold the house or as the football season progressed. But despite those fears, tonight he called me. He asked me over. And I had nothing but time.
I shut off the car, turning off my headlights and grabbing his attention. He slowed the wheel to a stop as I slipped out of the car and through the open door of the studio.
“Hey.” I hung up my purse and grabbed an apron. I put it right back up again when I spotted a smear of paint on my shirt. I was officially past the point of salvaging my clothes.
“Hey.” Rob greeted me, his eyes flitting back to the pile of clay balls on the worktable. “I wedged that clay. Grab what you need.”
“That’s very generous of you,” I said, helping myself to three balls and setting them at the wheel opposite him. “What are you working on?”
“Mugs. You broke a lot of mugs,” he said unapologetically, straightforward enough to make me blush.
“I’d offer to replace them, but I still haven’t figured out how to pull straight up. I’m on more of a bowl journey right now.” I filled a basin with water and collected a few tools before sitting down at my wheel across from Rob.
His eyes stayed on me as I slammed a ball of clay onto the wheel and a ran a wet finger along the edge to glue it to the bat.
“You need some mug pointers?” he asked.
A vision of a veryGhost-like moment where I could channel my inner Demi Moore ran through my mind before I shook it away. “Sure, give me a pointer.”
“Put your nose directly over the middle of the clay.”
I raised an eyebrow, and he shrugged.
“I don’t know why it works, but it does.”
I nodded and started the wheel while he restarted his. For a while, we sat in near silence, fixated on our respective projects. Rob’s tip was solid. Putting my nose directly over the center of the clay weirdly helped me pull the walls straight up rather than bowed out to the sides, but my finger caught on the side, collapsing my cylinder.
In the time it took me to destroy one almost-mug, Rob made three in quick succession. I stopped my wheel to watch his mechanical execution of the task. He’d throw down the clay, pulling it up and pushing it back down three times before forming a well in the center and raising the walls. Then, he smoothed the sides and cut out the base. Finally, he slippeda wire along the bat and pulled his freshly created mug onto a waiting tray with the half dozen other identical, handleless mugs.
“That’s amazing,” I breathed. “I haven’t even worked up the nerve to pull something wet off the bat. I just let it dry on there and take it off later.”
“It’s not that hard,” Rob said off-handedly, smacking another ball of clay down. My eyes drew away from his hands this time and to his face. He clenched his jaw, and his shoulders stayed bunched around his ears. Not the natural, easy posture I had grown used to in the studio.
“Are you doing okay? How was practice?” I asked. He stiffened at the mention of practice. “Not great?”
“I’m not sure I want to talk about it.”
“That’s not a ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’” I pointed out. “I was wondering why you invited me over.”
“I didn’t invite you over to bitch about work,” he said.
“You didn’t?” I teased.
His cylinder collapsed and he scooped the clay up, throwing it across the room into the reclaim pile.
“Come on. Bitch about work to me. I want to know what problems millionaire football players have. Is it a lack of coffee in the break room? That’s our current big controversy at the school.”
My needling teased a smile out of him. He glanced up from his failed mug at me, a smirk on his lips. “They don’t even give you coffee?”
“We have a coffee fund, but some moochers aren’t contributing. It’s turning into a witch-hunt. But that’s boring. I want some football gossip.”
Rob’s eyes narrowed before flitting away. “The team’s falling apart, and I’m supposed to help boost morale.”
“Oh, no.” I bit back a laugh. “Sounds like your team is in real trouble. Why’d they tap you for the job, anyway? Please don’t tell me you’re the most optimistic person on the team. That’d be legitimately shocking.”
“I’m the captain.” He rubbed his forehead, leaving a thin smudge of clay behind.
“So, why’d you sign up to be the captain if you didn’t want to motivate people?”
