back and let them into my shop, turning the sign to ‘closed’ and locking the door, pulling the chain on the neon ‘open’ sign so that it would go dark.
“You didn’t have to book a private party for that!” I protested.
“Nonsense,” Dahlia said pointedly. “You have to make a living.”
“Oh, well, um…” I was disoriented for sure but not so much I couldn’t do my job, I’d like to think. I tugged on my apron and said, “Grab your aprons and I’ll take you on a full tour before we begin. We can choose which projects you want to paint and go from there.”
I gave them the tour starting out front with the neatly lined shelves of bisqueware and finishing in back with the more fragile greenware and the raw clay.
“What are you doing with these?” Marisol asked, picking up one of the leaves out of the box I’d carried them in.
“Oh, I’m making these.” I went over to the shelf where several platters and plates were drying.
“Oooooh, those are going to be so neat!”
“Can we make our own?” Dahlia asked.
“Sure, but they won’t be ready to paint until after I’ve fired them and that takes time.”
“So.” Marisol shrugged and grinned and said, “We come back and book another time to paint them.”
Little Bird clapped excitedly and I just sort of stood there stunned and said, “I can’t possibly charge you!”
“You can,” Dahlia said, steering me to the worktable taking up the center of the room, “and you will.”
“Okay, what do we do?” Marisol asked.
“It’s really easy, actually…”
We set about making each girl a set of three serving platters, each successively smaller than the one before, using some of my wooden forms, to curl up the edges of the leaves to hold pooling liquid when they were finished.
It didn’t take terribly long to accomplish. I mean, roll the clay flat, press the leaf, roll it into the surface to get all of the delicate spines and veins into the impression, cut around it with an X-acto knife, mold it over the wooden form carefully so as not to obliterate the design and take a damp sea sponge to the bottom and around the leaf’s cut edges to round and smooth them.
“How long you been doing this?” Marisol asked, smiling as she worked. I’d given them all the plain black student aprons I kept around the shop to protect their nice clothes.
“Since I was young,” I said. “My mother taught me. She was exceptional at it.”
“So, what’s the deal?” Dahlia asked, getting right to it. “Why are you avoiding Fen?”
I startled and blushed with guilt.
“I’m not a-avoiding him,” I stammered, and it was, of course, a lie. I had been, and I knew it.
Marisol took one look at my face and snorted, laughing indelicately and Little Bird said, “As Dump Truck would say, you can’t bullshit a bullshitter.”
I felt my face drop, and I shook my head unwilling to look at any of them, “I don’t belong,” I said quietly. “I don’t want to cause Fenris any trouble with his brothers. You all are very important to him.”
“Tic,” Dahlia muttered, and put her hand on her hip. “Well, he’ll be lucky to keep all his teeth when Fen finds out, and he will find out, eventually.”
“Girl, you need to talk to him!” Marisol chided.
“I’ve never seen him so happy or at peace than when I’ve seen him with you,” Little Bird declared.
“Truth is,” I murmured, taking a seat in one of the metal folding chairs back here, “I’ve never been so happy as when I’m with him, either.”
“It’s like they see you, no pretenses, no bullshit,” Little Bird said and I looked up sharply, knowing my emotions were raw and naked on my face.
“Yeah.”
“Honey, you can’t let this fall apart just because of Tic,” Marisol said, rolling her eyes. “Tic isn’t the whole of the club. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. Honestly, Mav liked you. He wouldn’t have said anything to me or let me hare off with these two to convince you to come back and give us all another try if he didn’t.”
“So, you’re Mavericks…” I trailed off.
“Old Lady, and damn right,” Marisol said with pride.
I made a face. “You can’t be more than twenty. A little young to be calling yourself old,” I said.
The three of them laughed.
“It’s just one more terminology out of the biker vernacular you need to learn,” Dahlia declared.
“So, since you were with Tic does that make you…”
Dahlia made a face. “Oh, God no!