Page 44 of Kiln Me Softly
Juniper didn’t have time to be heartbroken, or at least so she told herself. She ignored the hollowness that followed her around campus that day, desperate to get her contest piece done. She had two weeks left, not nearly enough, but she would do it. She would have to.
That was why she stayed in the workshop after class that afternoon, throwing like her life depended on it. Blisters were beginning to form on her fingertips, but she refused to stop.
‘Juniper?’ Tilly seemed to appear out of nowhere, standing uncertainly on the other side of Juniper’s desk.
Juniper looked up just long enough to acknowledge her. She didn’t want to talk about it. If she talked about it, she would have to feel it properly, and she was sick of feeling things. Especially for Aiden.
‘Babe, you’re crying. Stop.’ Tilly nudged her gently away from the wheel, bending down so that Juniper was forced to look at her.
She hadn’t known she was crying, and wiped her cheeks with her clay-covered sleeve quickly.
‘What the hell’s going on? You weren’t in class this morning, and now you’re lining up a table of wonky vases. ’
She glanced behind Juniper at the creations she’d made so far.
Not one of them had turned out as intended.
Some of them curved in because Juniper had tried to smash the clay in anger, others had almost been thrown across the classroom.
Nothing she did was right, too much focus going into the memory of Aiden’s hands on hers, guiding her, the first time she’d made something she was truly proud of.
‘I just need to get things ready for the contest,’ Juniper said. ‘I need six pieces and I have none.’
‘You need to tell me what’s wrong. Has something happened?
Is it your funding?’ Tilly took Juniper’s sore hands, urging her onto the floor so they were on the same level.
Juniper let her only because she didn’t feel the least bit in control of herself, the cold linoleum a welcome reprieve after hours hunched over the wheel.
She brought her knees to her chest, nails digging into her thighs in an effort to hold herself together. ‘Aiden,’ was about all she could choke out.
‘Oh, shite,’ Tilly whispered. ‘What’s the plonker done now?’
Juniper told her, the story pouring out in fragments: him getting her an interview, visiting his dad, how it all linked back to Elmington. How, just when she’d fallen for him completely, he’d reminded her of all the reasons why she hated him.
‘Except you don’t hate him, do you?’
Juniper glowered at her. ‘I do now.’
She hated how clueless he was, how ignorant.
She hated how he said her name like it was the only one that mattered.
She hated how he touched her in places she’d never even paid attention to before, places where she couldn’t scrub the ghost of him away, and how his light snores had sent her into a soundless sleep last night.
She hated that he just didn’t get it. That he never would.
She hated that she’d let him in knowing all of this, and now it had blown up in her face – just as she’d always predicted.
‘I shouldn’t even care.’ She sniffled. ‘I should be focusing on the competition, but I can’t even do that right!’
‘Heartbreak can be inconvenient that way.’ Tilly wrapped an arm around Juniper’s shoulder and tugged her close, resting her cheek against Juniper’s head. ‘I completely understand why you’re upset. He went behind your back, took your problems into his hands, and that was really fecking shitty.’
‘If you say but , there will be consequences.’
‘ But ,’ Tilly continued, ‘he thought he was doing the best thing for you, and you deserve someone who cares for you that way. It’s okay to be supported, Juni, financially and otherwise.
Judging how sour he was on the train home yesterday, it wasn’t easy for him, either.
He didn’t just call Daddy and ask him to fix everything, did he?
He probably had to put a lot of pride and self-preservation aside to ask for his help. ’
Juniper bit down on her wobbling lower lip, thinking of how upset Aiden had been yesterday. He’d subjected himself to his dad for her, faced his own pain to heal hers.
And he hadn’t known about Elmington. She’d suspected it before, when it had never come up in conversation even after he’d spilled his struggles with his health, but today had confirmed it.
The shock on his face, the way his voice had broken, the way he’d reacted to all of her insults like they’d been physical blows.
She’d been so angry that the rest was a blur, but she couldn’t scrub the image of him in that moment. The pain she’d caused.
‘I told you there would be consequences,’ she said, and then sobbed until her stomach ached.
Tilly soothed her with a gentle hand through her hair, the two of them crumpled in an empty workshop, surrounded by things that used to make Juniper feel alive but now only seemed to hurt her.
A longing to go home hit her, but it wasn’t an image of Manchester that accompanied it.
It was Aiden’s house, with Cerberus in his cage nearby and paints scattered over the coffee table.
And him, settling on a part of her, any part of her, to trace shapes in her skin with his feather-light fingers, a hint of pencil shadow or acrylic under his nails.
‘I don’t even know how I’m going to get my hamster back!’ she realised. ‘I have nowhere to put him!’
‘Now, hear me out, Juniper,’ Tilly said. ‘What if, right now, we just focus on you, and not the happy wee hamster napping obliviously in his cage in a flat where he’s clearly cared for?’
She had a point. Juniper might not have trusted Aiden with her heart, but she trusted him with Cerberus. Still, she couldn’t just let him live there forever.
‘What am I going to do, Tilly?’ she asked.
Tilly wiped Juniper’s tears with soft hands and straightened up assertively. ‘You’re going to get this contest out of the way. You’re going to win it. And then, you’re going to talk to Aiden like an adult because you clearly love him, and he clearly loves you.’
‘If he did, he won’t anymore.’ Not after all the things she’d said. And besides, how could they come back from this? How could she ? They just weren’t compatible. It had barely been a few months, and they’d exploded.
They weren’t right for each other. They never had been and never would be. The best thing Juniper could do was accept it and move on.
‘I highly doubt it,’ Tilly said. ‘I’ve seen you two all swoony and mad for each other.’
‘Well, maybe swoony and mad isn’t enough.’ She used the table to climb back to her feet, hoping she didn’t look as terrible as she felt. On the throwing wheel, her lump of clay sat, waiting, and it was time to prove to herself she could be a decent potter without him.
Through tears and exhaustion and some more uplifting words from Tilly, she tried again to make something worth submitting. Something that would help her forget all of this.
In the end, she managed to do just that.
Aiden barely made it to Manchester in one piece, but he couldn’t spend another day sitting inside, wondering how he hadn’t known that his father had bought his place at Elmington.
As he reached Whittaker North offices, he realised that he hadn’t planned at all what he might say, even after a four-hour train ride spent staring out the window.
Everything about him felt empty, his mind included.
And yet the sight of his surname on the white sign outside summoned enough anger that he strutted inside without care, waltzing straight past the receptionist and into the lift.
He’d spent many days here as a kid, told to paint quietly in the corner while Jonathan tended to his business, and then later, made to file his paperwork or assist him on gallery ventures.
Jonathan had taught him everything about art, and yet hadn’t believed him capable of earning his college place alone.
How did that work? How little did he think of him, truly?
The long corridor he stepped out on made him feel small and young again, but it was overshadowed by the turmoil inside of him, so he marched to Jonathan’s office the way his father would: like he owned it.
He pushed through the oak door without knocking, finding his father behind his desk and his bewildered Aiden lookalike apprentice seated opposite.
Annoyance blazed over Jonathan’s features at the sight of his son. ‘Excuse me. We’re in the middle of something here, Aiden—’
‘It’s going to have to wait. Did you buy my place at Elmington?’
The apprentice hopped out of his seat to excuse himself, leaving just the two of them to stare each other down. For once, Aiden wasn’t the first to break away.
‘Did you,’ he repeated through his teeth, ‘buy my place at Elmington?’
‘I don’t know what on earth has prompted this, Aiden, but storming in here without invitation when I’m in the middle of something is completely unacceptable.’
‘For god’s sake, just tell me!’ Aiden shouted. ‘Did you bribe the dean for my acceptance?’
Jonathan clasped his hands over his stomach, assessing Aiden for a moment before saying, ‘Yes, I did.’ His tone held no sign of shame or regret.
A tear rolled down Aiden’s cheek. He didn’t care, didn’t wipe it away. Not this time. Fuck his pride, and fuck his manliness, and fuck everything his father had tried to mould him into. ‘Why?’
‘ Why ?’ Even when sat, Jonathan still managed to look down his nose at his son.
‘Why did I work hard to get you into one of the most prestigious art programmes in the country? Do you have any idea how lucky you are? My father worked himself into an early grave just to feed his family, and you’re angry because I got you the best opportunities – opportunities you threw away without a second thought? ’
So that was why dropping out had been so terrible for Jonathan.
It wasn’t just that he’d expected Aiden to follow in his footsteps; it was that Aiden’s struggles had led to a waste of Jonathan’s money.
God forbid. ‘You didn’t think I might have gotten in anyway?
Or did you really have so little faith in me? In the skills you taught me?’
‘Grow up, Aiden.’ Jonathan tutted. ‘There isn’t an artist on this planet who gets rewarded fairly for their talent. It’s rarely about something so simple. Maybe if you weren’t so bloody insecure, you could handle that, but you can’t. You’ve always been naive.’
Aiden tugged on his hair for lack of anything else to take his frustration out on.
‘And you’ve always been desperate to control me,’ he decided finally. ‘It isn’t just that you paid for my place at Elmington. You can’t stand that I’m at RACA because it wasn’t your decision. I chose it for myself, and I didn’t need your help to get there.’
‘Yes, you’re so independent now. That’s why you came to me to ask for my help just a few days ago.’
Juniper was right about all of it. Whittaker money was toxic, used as a means to tread over everyone else on their way to the top. Aiden wanted no part in it anymore.
‘I’ll never be enough for you, will I?’ he muttered. ‘It’s always about the money, the achievements, the success. Never about who I am.’
‘And who are you, Aiden?’ Jonathan stood from his desk, planting a fist on the wooden surface.
‘Because all I see is an insecure little boy with no direction, no sense of self. If I’m such a terrible father, see if you can succeed without me.
See how long it takes before the opportunities stop coming, how long it takes until you can no longer afford to muck around with Play-Doh like the child you are. ’
Every word wedged the dagger deeper, and Aiden could do nothing but take it. His father had always been cruel, but never like this. What had he done to deserve this much hatred, other than try to break free?
If he wanted to change, to be the man Juniper deserved, it started today. Here. And the best thing he could do was cut away all the rot, find out who he was without it.
‘I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve gotten thanks to you, Dad, I really am.
’ It took every bit of energy Aiden had to keep his voice steady, his spine straight, but he managed.
He’d already resigned himself to what would happen next, and there was something liberating in the fact that he’d never have to stand in this office and be belittled again.
‘I’m grateful that I’ve never known what it is to struggle financially.
But I’ll never live up to whatever it is you want me to be, and I’m done trying.
I do have direction, and it’s somewhere far, far away from your disapproval.
Those insecurities come from you, and they nearly broke me.
So if you don’t mind, I’ll go back to mucking around like the child I am, and I think it’s best we stay out of each other’s way. ’
‘Until the next time you need my help. You still owe me, or have you conveniently forgotten our agreement?’ Jonathan smirked, though Aiden caught a slight tremble as he perched on the edge of his desk. He wasn’t used to being stood up to.
That was what gave him the strength to say, ‘The agreement’s done. She didn’t go to the interview. I think I’ll learn how to solve my problems without you from now on.’
With that, he walked away, letting the door fall shut behind him. His hands shook, throat ached, stomach churned, mind raced. An anxiety attack. Still, every step put more distance between them, and he was prepared never to close it again.
He couldn’t figure out who he was if he was only ever told who he wasn’t. He just wished it hadn’t taken losing Juniper to finally find courage enough to realise it.