“Didn’t you just trip up the porch on the way in?” Ryan asked.
“Are you trying to embarrass me as well as admit that you were peeping out the upstairs windows?” I countered.
Laughing, Ryan shrugged as he opened the first aid kit. It wasn’t much, filled with gauze and Band-Aids, but it would do.
“This should be good enough,” said Ryan after assessing the cut, peeling off the back of the bandage.
“You’re a teacher and doctor now?”
He smiled some more. “Not my first time patching up kitchen injuries. College guys are stupid.”
All of us chuckled.
“Call me Nurse Ryan.”
I smiled at him and Lu, still on the counter behind him, shaking her head as she tried and failed to conceal just how amusing she found her guy. Nurse Ryan. I focused on trying not to laugh as he cleaned up my hand and sealed it shut with a flat bandage.
“Awful spot, but you should be good.”
“Thank you.”
“Anytime. I feel special, finally being a part of one of the mysterious coven meetings.” Ryan grinned, closing the first aid kit back up.
“You were upstairs,” I reminded him. He was hardly kicked out of town each week.
“Still nice to be included,” he said with a shrug. He stepped between Lu’s legs until they were tucked around his waist to keep him there.
Celeste drizzle the stripes of icing on top of the bread. The sugary deliciousness cascaded down over the loaf. I nearly moaned at the sight of it.
Faith giggled. “Ana should probably get her slice first.”
“I agree with that.” I nodded at Faith’s brilliant idea. Along with my coffee fiascos the past few days, breakfast hadn’t been going well either. This morning, the breakfast granola bar I’d brought with me to work either went missing or was forgotten to be put in my bag altogether. “I am wounded.”
Faith nodded. “She did give blood to the recipe.”
Lu winced with me.
My lip curled, even as the first large slice with the crispy end was placed in front of me. Looked like I’d won for all my bad luck today. “Can we not talk about the blood?”
“Oh.” Faith’s eyes widened. “Right. Okay then, you know how you said you needed to start getting back out more?”
“Yeah?” I sort of remembered that.
“Well, I signed two of us up for this super-cool pottery class! I thought it would be perfect. Sort of like a girls’ night to ease you back into the townie waters. You in?”
I blinked. Maybe I hadn’t heard her right over the big lump of bread that tasted more like cake. The one good thing of my entire day, but yet again, it was taking a turn, fast and in a hurry. “What was that?”
“Pottery class this week. You and me. Like old times.”
“Pottery. Like, on the wheel?”
I might have been decent with my hands, but my artistic side only went so far. My craftiness was a boundary Faith consistently liked to poke and prod at along with her own. Which, in all fairness, was even more minimal than mine despite her continuing to go to classes and seminars for the fun of it. She, at least, for some unknown reason, liked the possibility of complete and utter public failure.
“Hmm,” Faith pondered. “Not sure. Maybe we’ll make a little vase. Or a mug! You could always use another mug, right?”
Any other day, I would say no. I had no space for another spoon in my apartment, let alone another mug. That was, until I had managed to break a good three in the past five days.
“I guess so.”
