“That’s very mature of you.”
“I’m a mature person.”
He scoffs and props his chin up with a fist. “You ate cereal for dinner three nights in a row last week.”
“Maturity and nutrition are unrelated concepts.”
Carter grins, the joy reaching his eyes and crinkling the corners. That’s a smile you have to earn, so I feel proud of myself. I turn back to the clay so he won’t see the way it affects me, the small, stupid relief of making someone I care about genuinely smile.
A class with Aeron this semester, huh? At least I don’t have one with June. That’s the important thing. Aeron I can manage because I’ll nod at him across a studio, admire his talent, and that will be the end of it.
June is something else, a girl I can sculpt with my eyes closed, tracing every contour from a memory so deep it predates language. Sharing a classroom with her would mean sharing air. It would mean the inevitable gravitational pull that happens every time we exist in the same room, that slow drift toward each other we both pretend isn’t happening, until we’re too close to stop.
If we ever let that happen, God help the ones we love.
Me plus June only equals destruction.
Carter hops off the stool. “I’ve got a kinesiology lecture at Hargrove in forty-five. You good?”
“Always.”
He gives me a look. The one that says he knows that word is a wall and he’s choosing not to climb it today. “Text me later. We’ll grab food.”
“Sure.”
He leaves the way he came in: easily, warmly, filling the doorway for a moment and then he’s gone. I don’t like how things feel with him gone. It’s too frail.
I look down at the cheesecloth and pull it off the clay. I have about twenty minutes before I really need to leave for my next class.
I pick up my tools and start again.
CHAPTER THREE
JUNE
The Belrose kitchen is golden, especially this early in the morning. Warm amber light pours through the window above the sink, pooling on the butcher-block countertops and catching the mismatched ceramic mugs hanging from hooks along the wall. Each one tells a story: the chipped “World’s Best Mom” mug I made at a pottery class when I was six, the faded Alaria University logo mug Mom stole from a faculty meeting (she works as a counselor on campus), the oversized one with a cat wearing sunglasses that Carter ironically bought and now uses every single day. The whole room glows with raw sienna undertones.
I’m sitting on my usual stool at the kitchen island, a half-eaten piece of toast in front of me. The wooden floors creak beneath Mom’s feet as she moves to the stove in her terrycloth robe, spatula in hand, humming something from the eighties that she’ll deny knowing the words to if I ask. On the counter beside her, a candle flickers in its glass jar, filling the air with spice and making me crave cinnamon rolls. She loves burning candles, in every room, part of her endless quest to make this oldVictorian house feel cozy. It already does, but I’ve learned not to argue with the candle obsession.
“Okay, but here’s what I don’t understand,” she says, not looking up from the pan. “If the email said the faculty meeting was moved to Thursday, and then the follow-up email said it was back to Wednesday, and thenKaren—” she says the name like it tastes horrible, “—sends a third email saying to disregard the second email but please confirm availability for Thursday…”
“Mom. Mom.” I hold up my hand. “Are you asking me to give you advice about the bureaucratic hellscape of Alaria University’s administrative staff?”
“I’m asking you to tell me what day my meeting is.”
“Wednesday.”
She points the spatula at me. “You don’t know that.”
“I know Karen. She always circles back to the first wrong answer. It’s like her idiotic superpower.”
Mom laughs and the sound fills the kitchen, brightening any dark corners. “You’re terrible,” she says, but she’s still smiling. “Karen’s been working at that university longer than you’ve been alive.”
“Which is exactly why she’s developed her own internal calendar system that isn’t like actual human time.” I take a sip of my water. “I’m telling you. Wednesday.”
I glance through the archway and notice Carter walking through the living room. He steps over a stack of books that’s been serving as an end table for the past three months. The whole house is like that, books breeding on every surface, colonizing corners, windowsills, and the arms of the mismatched furniture Mom’s collected over the years. He’s already dressed in joggers and a faded HargroveU hoodie. He enters the kitchen and grabs his favorite cat-sunglasses mug off the hook.
I watch lazily as he fills it with cereal, then milk, then starts to chug it without a spoon. “Wednesday,” he confirms, sliding onto the stool next to me. The old wood groans under him.
