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‘Sorry for not telling you in advance I was going to be cancelled on,’ I say drily, finishing tying my apron.
He stops rummaging through the paints to look at me. ‘Are you really okay about that?’
‘Thought you could read me like a fucking book,’ I reply, one eyebrow quirked.
‘That wasn’t an answer,’ he counters.
I go to grab the black paint from his hand while he’s distracted but he swats me away. I take my hair out of its ponytail and relax as the tension leaves my scalp. ‘I’m fine. I knew him for, like, two weeks; he didn’t exactly change my life. But I’m just annoyed, I guess. That I lied to myself. That I pretended it could ever become something more than it was.’
He seems to turn his words over in his head before answering. ‘Why were you so adamant he shouldn’t see who you really are? Don’t get me wrong, I think you dodged a bullet, but what makes you so sure that he, or someone else in the future, could never be interested in the real you?’
He squeezes black paint onto our palette and slides it towards me.
‘Because,’ I dip into the paint and start brushing it onto my coaster, ‘how many people have you ever met who’ve said “oh yeah, my dream woman is cold, emotionless and incapable of love”?’
He doesn’t respond for a while. I’m not sure if he even heard me.
‘I don’t think you’re any of those things,’ he says quietly. It’s not until he’s painted his entire coaster yellow that he speaks again, cautiously advancing through the words like he’s walking anunfamiliar path; testing out each step before putting his full weight on it. ‘I think you know most of that is a front, and it’s easier for you to pretend you don’t care, to believe you can’t love anyone and they can’t love you, because you’re so scared of putting your heart into something and it going wrong.’
Well, what do you know? Maybe he can read me like a book.
Something fundamental shifts in slow motion inside me, my heart decelerating to a heavy thud.
‘Why the long faces?’ Rosetta’s smooth voice comes from behind us. ‘Pondering life’s big questions?’
‘Exactly that,’ Finn says easily, and when I finally look up from my painting I catch him shooting Rosetta a smile.
‘I’m here to find out whether you’d prefer a plant pot or a trinket dish.’
Finn opts for a plant pot but I have too many thoughts buffeting around my head to decide anything. ‘Finn, you choose for me.’
‘Nope.’ He leans back in his chair and locks his eyes on mine, and the jolt it sends through me is enough to jumpstart my heart. ‘You know what you want.’
Do I?
‘Fine,’ I mutter. I remember Rosetta’s waiting for an answer and add, ‘The trinket dish, please.’
With unparalleled glee, I learn that Finn is bad at painting. Like, really bad. Worse than he was at latte art.
He squints at the rim of his plant pot like he might find some answers there. ‘I’ll give it to my mum for Christmas.’
‘I’m so sorry to tell you this, but I don’t think even a mother’slove could save that.’
‘You’re supposed to be encouraging,’ he says, attempting to cover up a mistake with more paint and just making it worse.
‘I am encouraging. Encouraging you to never try this again.’
Meanwhile, I’m pleased with my coaster, and while the trinket dish isn’t perfect, it’s not bad. I’ve painted it with blues and silvers like the night sky, and I tried to add a moon shape in the middle with thick enough paint for Josie to be able to feel it.
‘That smug expression is unbecoming, Ava Monroe.’
I look at his coaster and snort, and I’m adding another flower to my own when a thought comes to me. ‘Imagine Jacob in this class. Why did I think he should come?’
‘He’d probably have scaled a wall by now.’ He gestures with a paintbrush. ‘He’d be up there in the rafters lurking like a little bat.’
The image forces a spluttering laugh out of me. ‘He missed out.’
‘He really did,’ Finn says with a hum. ‘Specifically, he missed out on seeing you with paint on your face.’
