Page 45 of The Love of My Next Life
Claire is taking chemistry this semester, and she’s struggling. I took chem sophomore year, so I gave her all my old notes. She used to make fun of me for hoarding my binders from every semester of high school, but she’s not laughing now that she’s benefiting.
“You want a study buddy tonight?” she asks, just before we part ways in the hallway, and I freeze. My mouth drops open, but nothing comes out.
Tonight.
I’m supposed to be “studying at the library,” which is code for volunteering at the rec center. With her brother.
If it were just my secret, I probably would tell her the truth. But knowing that it could somehow rat out Macon... I just...
“I can’t...” I hedge, “I, um, promised Dad I’d do dinner with him.”
Claire groans. “You just did dinner with him last night with Eric.”
“Exactly.” I laugh and hope I don’t sound as slimy as I feel. “It was with Eric. Dad wants to debrief, just him and me.”
“Fine, bitch.” She sighs dramatically. “See you at lunch.”
I just lied to my best friend twice in the span of five minutes. Both times it had to do with the brother she despises, and those lies don’t even come close to the rest of the crap about him I’m keeping from her.
I sink into my desk and drop my head into my hands.
What the hell am I doing?
I stopin my tracks when I walk into the art room.
Instead of the pottery wheel sitting in front of the storage room, it’s been moved to the corner where my station sits. No Macon yet. Just the pottery wheel. I keep one eye on the door to my right as a I slowly make my way to my work space.
I know he’s in there. I can feel it.
I sit down slowly and start arranging my materials, the basket of paints already sitting on the table for me. It could have been Hank, but I have a feeling it was Macon.
Two jars of water, too.
I pull my sleeve of brushes from my bag, and Macon emerges from the doorway of the storage room. He’s carrying clay and he’s changed from his regular black shirt into a ratty old band tee with the sleeves ripped off.
I recognize that band tee. He used to wear it all the time when we were freshmen.
The Doors.
That shirt is why I know every song on their 1996 Greatest Hits album.
I don’t take my eyes off him as he walks toward me, but his eyes stay down. He walks slow, his face blank. Like he’s bored. He’s probably high. When he takes the seat next to me, though, he doesn’t smell strongly of weed.
It actually troubles me more. Pills don’t have a smell.
I focus on the spicy scent of his bodywash instead, the faint hints of lavender giving me pause and calming me at the same time. I watch as he straddles the pottery wheel, then takes something off the hem of his shirt and uses it to hold back the front of his shaggy curls.
The butterfly clip.
Then he wets the throwing surface before unwrapping his clay and setting it on the surface of the wheel. He rolls the clay around a few times, kneads it in a way that makes the veins in his hands and forearms pop, then glances at me over his shoulder. Our eyes connect and he smirks, then he winks at me, causing my lips to part and my breath to hitch.
He looks back at the wheel, picks up the clay and slams it on the surface, then starts spinning the wheel with a pedal by his foot. He scoops water from the basin and wets the clay, using his hands to smooth the sides.
More veins and muscles. Slick, gray clay coats his skin, covering his deft, strong fingers, and I’m brought back to the night in the rec center hallway and the gray handprint he left on my arm. The coolness of it. The way it tightened as it dried on my drive home. The inexplicable desire I had to leave it there and not wash it off.
Then Macon uses the middle and pointer fingers on both hands to press slowly into the top of the spinning clay, creating a hole.
I have to look away, then.
