KDBookOnline
Share Us
I twirled in myswivel chair until I felt queasy, hoping it would give me a new perspective. When I felt two rotations shy of puking, I gripped the side of the table and waited for the studio to stop spinning. The clay sat in the familiar lump, drying. Two hours of staring at it and not a flicker of an idea.
“Knock, knock,” Lauren said as she busted through my studio door.
“You’re supposed to wait for me to invite you in.”
“You’d have ignored me.”
“Because you’re interrupting my process.”
Lauren poked her finger in the mound of clay. “Is this the same one from Monday night?”
“It is.”
“Uh oh. What’s wrong?”
“When did you decide I couldn’t be left alone with my thoughts?”
“You mean sulking.” Lauren flicked the long braid she always wore over her shoulder and smirked.
“Do you want something or are you just here to annoy me?”
“Rowan said you two looked at spaces for the bakery today. See anything good?”
“She was there. Why didn’t you ask her?”
“I did. Now I’m asking you, so I can figure out how it really went.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Rowan worries too much. You don’t worry enough. I’ll blend the two accounts together and get a good idea of what you saw. I’m not leaving until you tell me.” She lifted the edge of a drop cloth that covered a failed piece from last year. “Is that a tree?”
“Stop snooping,” I said, grabbing the drop cloth from her grubby hands. It was a tree. A sculpture that hadn’t quite worked out, but I liked too much to toss. “There were a few places, none of them perfect. Aiden has some ideas about how to make one of them work. He’s drawing up a rough design with measurements he took today.”
“That’s weirdly nice of him,” Lauren said, taking a seat on the lumpy futon I kept in the studio to crash on whenever I worked late and was too tired to walk across the yard to the house. She toed off her UGGs and tucked her feet under her butt. “He’s usually such an asshole.”
“What did Aiden ever do to you?”
“Did he or did he not kidnap you last summer?”
I waved my hand. “That was nothing. He was being a good friend.”
“By kidnapping you?”
Technically, he’d handcuffed us together and took me to a field so I could be with Theo on the anniversary of the accident. Aiden’s methods were a little rough, but I’d wanted to be there, despite Theo not inviting me. “Aiden can be an ass, but he’s decent. He offered to do whatever work we needed to fit out the bakery as a wedding gift to Rowan and Cal.”
“Huh.” Lauren flopped back on the futon and stretched out like she intended to stay awhile. I wouldn’t have minded if she fell asleep and took a nap while I stared at the blob. I had no idea how the woman hadn’t worked herself to death with the hours she kept at Karma.
She closed her eyes but just when I thought she’d nodded off, she let out a huff. “I still don’t like him.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed.” I was curious about the tension between Lauren and Aiden, but I figured if she wanted to talk about it, she would. I was just relieved she had the ability to dislike someone. I worried Lauren’s whole earth mother vibe made her too forgiving sometimes.
“So,” Lauren said, opening her eyes and sitting up straight like she was about to run a board meeting. “How’s the wedding planning going, really? Rowan keeps saying everything is fine.”
I punched my fist into the clay and started stretching it into a pancake. “Rowan’s stressed. She’s afraid her divorce from dickhead won’t be finalized in time. I told her April was cutting it close, but she didn’t want to miss any business during the summer wedding season.”
Lauren narrowed her eyes. “Is Brad fighting the divorce?”
I hissed at her. “We do not speak his name.”