Page 4 of Kiln Me Softly

Of course Aiden chose the desk in front of her. Juniper took out her fraying patience on her apron tie, yanking the knot until it cut into her stomach. Even his voice annoyed her, all dry and husky as he drawled out little quips he probably thought were hilarious.

Well, they weren’t. They were obnoxious, just like everything else about him.

‘So, you two clearly know each other,’ Tilly commented from the desk adjacent to her.

Unlike Juniper’s second-hand grey apron, already stained with paint from its previous owner, Tilly donned a gorgeous canvas covering that resembled Monet’s water lilies, shades of swirling light and dark blues broken up by vivid sap greens.

Most of the others had clearly invested in something fun, too, the university’s spares hung at the back of the workshop untouched. In a sea of colour, Juniper was a drab rock.

In front of her, Aiden dipped his head into the loops of a pristine indigo apron embroidered with a crown logo on the front pocket. Likely bought by Daddy or one of his artist friends , she presumed sourly.

His grey T-shirt rode up against his tie and her eyes snagged on a strip of tanned flesh.

Something tingly and unwanted flared through her, especially when his shoulders bunched to make the knot.

As charming as his broad, muscular shoulders were, she preferred the hair-dusted, fleshy curve of his waist, proof that he hadn’t been perfectly chiselled out of stone after all, but rather—

Nope . Nope, she preferred none of it, because it was Aiden, and besides, she was far too busy answering her new friend’s question to pay attention to those things.

If she could remember what the question had been.

‘Sorry, what did you say?’ she said, breaking away from her ogling-slash-glowering. Mostly glowering.

Tilly’s smirk was dry, suspicious, which did nothing to slow Juniper’s pulse. ‘I said you two clearly know each other.’

‘Unfortunately. From high school. And sixth form.’ The glowering recommenced.

‘What a coincidence you both ended up here!’ Tilly was already unearthing her heap of clay from the plastic wrap, though Christopher hadn’t instructed them to yet.

He sat at the desk positioned at the front of the classroom, looking bored as a gangly dark-haired boy who also lived in Chaplin House grilled him about which famous potters he’d met, spurred on by an overly expressive friend on the desk adjacent.

Even so, the lass was more diverse than she’d expected: the lads were outnumbered, and a few mature students were dotted around, too.

It made Juniper feel better about her delayed entry into undergraduate studies.

‘Coincidence. Curse. Same difference.’ Juniper shrugged, trying to loosen the knot around the waist as she perched on her stool. Maybe she’d been a little too aggressive with her apron tie, and now she was struggling to breathe.

‘I can hear you,’ Aiden muttered without turning around.

‘Well, that’s a shame. I certainly wasn’t trying to make my dislike for you abundantly clear.’ She directed the sarcastic retort at his fumbling fingers, which still hadn’t tied a knot properly.

See, not so good at everything after all. Ha!

Tilly snorted. Juniper enjoyed watching him struggle for a few more moments, until Christopher finally decided to teach them something.

‘Right, I’m bored now, gang, so we’re going to do what we actually came here to do.

Pottery.’ He began tearing the wrap from his clay and then threw it down on his desk with a thud.

‘Here we have some stoneware clay: the easiest to work with, since you are clearly inexperienced beginners and, despite what you may think, I’m not trying to break your spirits just yet.

That will happen later, when we start using porcelain.

Can anybody enlighten me on where we start with this? ’

Aiden’s hand shot straight up, because of course it did.

Much to Juniper’s enjoyment, Christopher folded his arms impatiently. ‘Not in high school anymore, Alex. No need for the raised hand business.’

Aiden’s arm lowered slowly, and the tips of his ears turned red. Finally, her luck was turning.

He still answered the question right, leading to a display of wedging from Christopher. His palms dug into the clay in a way that made it look easy, though Juniper knew it wasn’t. ‘Why are we doing this?’

‘To get out the bubbles!’ Juniper was quick to shout out her own knowledge, gained from the few classes she’d taken over the last year and also perhaps The Great Pottery Throw Down , which she was binge-watching for research purposes.

Since she hadn’t been able to afford many classes in throwing rooms, she’d learned a lot from TV shows and online tutorials, and most of her experience was in hand-built sculptures and accessories.

Now that she was here, it was all beginning to feel real, and she itched to get started like her favourite contestants… although she also felt slightly daunted. After all, she didn’t have a supportive mentor to aid her, and she was sure Aiden was just waiting for her to screw up.

‘And to smooth out the clay,’ added Aiden, stealing her limelight and proving her right.

‘Right again, Alex,’ Christopher said.

She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from insulting Aiden – or Christopher – again. Was she bloody invisible?

Didn’t matter, because she was finally allowed to touch the clay as Christopher guided them through a few different wedging techniques.

Determination gripped her muscles as she kneaded.

She’d show them that she had more talent in her pinkie finger than Aiden Whittaker had in his whole sickeningly athletic body.

She’d missed the feeling of something smooth and strong in her hands and took to the exercises quickly, having already mastered a few before. In fact, as she pounded the clay into submission, arms already aching, she imagined it was Aiden’s face and found it even more effective.

Christopher raised a brow as he sauntered past Juniper’s desk. ‘Interestingly aggressive approach, Jupiter. Have you considered taking up boxing?’

Juniper suppressed a grin. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think it was a compliment, or at least a roundabout way of one.

‘Okay, gang, let’s move on. Cut your clay, give it a weigh, and then it’s time to… thray.’

Some of the students chuckled at his attempt at a rhyme, though Christopher’s face remained as indifferent as ever.

‘I think boxing would be a good idea, Hodge,’ Aiden commented once their tutor had returned to the front, turning to her only as he moved his clay onto the wheel. ‘Seems like you need a release for all that pent-up anger.’

‘I’m not angry.’ She threw her own clay onto the wheel, adjusting her stool to make sure she wasn’t stooping too low to reach it. ‘And stop calling me that.’

With her last name being Hodgson, and having been rather podgy – something she still was but now liked about herself – many of her high school classmates had taken to calling her Hodge Podge.

She couldn’t remember if Aiden had been one of them, or if he’d always used the shortened down version, but it still felt too much like the old taunt.

They may not have been in high school anymore, but she hated the reminder of who she’d been there. A joke. An outcast. Alone.

‘You could’ve fooled me.’ Oblivious, he kept his body angled towards her, which only enraged her more. Couldn’t he at least mind his own bloody business? ‘You need to wipe down your wheel first. Clay won’t stick if it’s too dry.’

Nope. Nope, he could not.

‘I know how to throw, thank you very much.’ She had, after all, done this a grand total of three times.

Still, he might have been just a teensy bit right, so she used a sponge to dampen the wheel before repositioning her clay. Again, the corner of his mouth tugged smugly.

When she noticed Tilly watching them, she pondered aloud, ‘How much damage do you think the wire cutters might do if one was to, say, strangle someone with them?’

Of course, it probably wasn’t wise to joke about violent acts with a friend she’d quite like to keep, so she was grateful when Tilly’s eyes sparked with amusement instead of concern. ‘I’d be interested to find out myself. I do, after all, support women’s wrongs.’

Aiden reared back. ‘I feel bullied. What did I ever do to you?’

Tilly shrugged. ‘I’m sure you did something to deserve it.’

You have no idea. Juniper didn’t want to think about it anymore, or ever again, which was difficult considering he was barely a foot away. Still, she tried to focus on centring her clay on the wheel, stomping down on the foot pedal to turn it.

‘Shit!’ she hissed when the clay began to spin a little too wildly.

‘Go easy on the pedal, Hodge,’ Aiden advised. Yes, she was definitely interested in finding an answer to her wire cutter question.

‘Ah, yes,’ Tilly murmured just loud enough for Juniper to hear. ‘Definitely deserves it.’

Well, at least Tilly didn’t think she was bonkers. She lightened her pressure on the pedal, no mean feat considering ire had locked every bone in her body.

‘I’m sure some of you obnoxiously talented folks would love to show off your throwing skills,’ said Christopher, ‘but for the sake of this being an introduction workshop, let’s start with the basics. A cylindrical vase. Follow my lead.’

He worked effortlessly, drawing the clay into a cone shape before encouraging it back down into a smooth lump.

From there, it seemed to happen by magic.

One moment, it was nothing. The next, Christopher was using the pressure of his thumbs to drag up a smooth barrel, offering a few tips and tricks as he did.

He might have been an awful tutor, but he was a great potter.

Eager to get stuck in, Juniper worked her pedal, finally getting the clay a little more centred. The classroom soon dissolved into a whirl of creation, each student engrossed in their own project. She wished she could master the same concentration, but her gaze kept falling to Aiden.

Like Christopher, he commanded the clay with effortless grace and was already well on his way to a cylinder.

His big hands looked as though they should have been heavy, incompetent, but instead, his fingers drifted nimbly over his work, biceps flexing as he leaned closer to the wheel with his thick thighs parted at either side.

Something tight coiled in Juniper’s core, unexpected and completely unwelcome.

She pressed her own thighs together, squirming on her stool to try to encourage the feeling away.

She didn’t. The clay caked his skin, spattering his veiny forearms, where more dark hair reminded her that he wasn’t that boy from school anymore. He was a man, sturdy and confident and—

Looking at her. He was looking at her, looking at him. She raked her focus quickly back to her clay, the wheel shuddering as a result of her unsteady feet.

‘Enjoying the view?’ he remarked, voice rough with knowing.

The sound sunk right through her, vibrations gathering in the same place that already throbbed. ‘You have clay in your hair. It’s gross.’

It wasn’t a lie. Those with long hair, like the woman two rows in who had introduced herself as Nomi over lunch, had tied it up to avoid mess, and while Aiden’s didn’t quite reach his shoulders, he dipped close enough to the wheel for it to splatter.

She pulled the spare lavender-coloured scrunchie from her bag and pinged it at his face like a slingshot.

He caught it with a smirk, but then raked his dirty fingers through his waves just to irk her even more, which it did. The scrunchie ended up on his wrist, and she lamented at the fact she might never get it back. He didn’t deserve her scrunchies.

‘Maybe you should focus on your own work,’ he said. ‘A little erotic, don’t you think?’

She frowned, and then realised she hadn’t made a cylinder at all, but rather something much thinner and taller. Something much, much more phallic.

‘Very mature,’ she grumbled.

Aiden cleared the laugh from his throat and went back to his perfect little vase, but, to her surprise, tied his hair up in a way that should have looked ridiculous yet didn’t. Only the back was long enough to stay put, wisps escaping to frame his jaw.

Juniper allowed herself a final moment to watch – hatefully, of course – then worked desperately to fix her phallic vase, using water to better mould the clay and trying to remember Christopher’s advice. Soft touch. Keep your hands connected.

‘I did it!’ she announced finally, perhaps a little too loudly, but was too excited to care.

Everybody looked at her as she lifted her arms up in triumph… and slumped them back down again, perfectly mirroring her vase’s untimely collapse. It was painful to watch the slow fold of her cylinder, clay becoming curved and distorted as it fell in on itself.

‘I didn’t do it,’ she whispered.

And while she tried to hold back tears, Aiden laughed. So did the rest of the class, but it was his that hurt most. Always his.