And just like the last time, Flynn was sat at a table, his hands moving deftly through a mound of clay. His fingers molded and shaped without hesitation. I had always enjoyed watching him like this. Creating. He became someone else. Someone confident and almost ballsy. It was awesome.
I stood in the hallway a little while longer, debating whether I should go inside. I didn’t know if I would be crossing into territory I needed to stay away from.
But then I acted without thinking. I pressed down on the door handle and faltered only a second before taking the plunge. The door hit the wall as I pushed it open with more force than was necessary. The bang bounced around the quiet room.
Flynn looked up, his hands still deep in the clay and he appeared startled to see me.
“Ellie,” he said flatly.
“Flynn,” I replied just as emotionless.
I stared at him long after he had dropped his eyes and continued to work on his project. I was already second-guessing my brash impulsivity.
“I’m glad you came,” Flynn’s words carried across the room and hit me directly in the chest.
Not able to stand there any longer, I shuffled toward him, my flip-flops slapping against the tiled floor. My bag hung off my shoulder and my terrified reluctance echoed in every step.
I still hadn’t said a word. I didn’t know what to say. So I watched him and it was easy to fall back into an old pattern. I sat down on the bench beside him, careful to allow a certain amount of space between us. I dropped my bag to the floor and leaned forward, my hair brushing the backs of my arms as they braced the wood in front of me.
I followed the movements of his hands with eager eyes, wishing, not for the first time, that I contained an ounce of his talent. What I wouldn’t give to be able to express myself like that.
The clock on the wall ticked its way through the hour. Each second punctuated by a growing sense of familiar ease. His art was therapy. Not just for him but for me as well.
After almost thirty minutes, Flynn blew a lock of hair out of his eyes and rolled his shoulders. “My fingers are starting to ache,” he explained, pulling his hands out of the clay and flexing them in front of him.
I leaned my head on my hand and stared down at the tiny structure he had sculpted. It looked like a gingerbread house with a latticed roof and decorative trim. It was tiny and perfect.
“What is it?” I asked him, as he stretched out his back in exaggerated movements.
“It’s a house,” Flynn replied blandly.
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I see that, but what’s it for?” I asked.
“I’m making a model of the Candy Land board game village. This is going to be the Peanut Brittle House. I’ve already made the Gumdrop Mountains and the Lollipop Forest,” he explained, rubbing out the edges of the small roof with his finger.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because someone paid me to,” Flynn replied, already returning to his sculpture.
“Who would want a replica of Candy Land?” I asked, genuinely curious.
Flynn shrugged. “It’s for a shop window in New York for Christmas. It’s going to light up and have animatronic stuff around it.”
I blinked in shock. “New York as in New York City?” I gaped.
“Yep,” he responded, seeming a lot less impressed than I was.
“And is that what you do? You make sculptures and people buy them?” I don’t know why I was asking. I shouldn’t care what he did for a living but I could admit that I was sort of interested. Though I was working hard to convince myself that it didn’t mean anything.
“Yeah. I make it and people seem to like it. They pay me a lot of money for it too,” he said with zero modesty and absolutely no tact.
“So you’re loaded then,” I inquired, sounding more than a little bitter.
“I make more money than a lot of people. Probably more than you,” he said and I tried not to be insulted. Who was I kidding? I was really insulted.
I had the urge to smash his stupid little house with my fist. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t let him get to me. I wouldn’t be hurt by his thoughtless comments that I knew he didn’t really mean.
It sucked how he was able to reaffirm every crappy thing I had thought about myself and my life with only a few words.
Flynn didn’t realize the massive blunder he had made with his insensitive observation. I picked up the tiny detailing knife he had been using and carved a line through the smooshy clay.
“Don’t touch that,” Flynn said, grabbing the implement from my fingers, though I was aware of how he made sure not to touch me. So many things had changed for him, but some were fundamentally the same.
“Sorry. That was probably rude huh?” he asked and I blinked up at him in surprise. Was this Flynn being self-aware?
“Yeah it was,” I agreed.
“Sorry,” he said again and I found myself smiling again.
“You said that already.”
Flynn gave me a shy grin. “I always liked it when you smiled. You have really pretty teeth.”
I snorted and it came out as a cough.
“Uh thanks,” I stuttered, finding myself without a witty comeback. What could I say to something like that?
“They’re really straight and white. They fit your mouth really well,” Flynn went on as he peered at my teeth. I wondered if I should open my mouth and let him have a look inside.
“I don’t even know what to say to that, Flynn,” I told him honestly. Flynn laughed. It was stilted and strained but it was a laugh. And it made me smile with a rusty stretching of lips.
“Do you still want to learn how to do this?” Flynn asked and I frowned. What was he talking about? When had I told him I wanted to sculpt?
Flynn turned back to the table and started rolling the extra clay into a ball and then flattened it with his palm. He repeated the movement over and over again. He was methodical. Every pat, every roll, done in perfectly timed increments.
“You told me that day in school when you were wearing the blue shirt with the torn collar that you wished you could draw. You said you didn’t think you were talented enough. I offered to teach you,” Flynn said, surprising me with another accurate recollection of a conversation that had occurred almost seven years ago.
“You did offer. I never took you up on that,” I said, forcing my brain to think back to a time I had worked hard to forget. My mind stretched and strained as it sought to extract the event Flynn was talking about. I had worked hard to suppress so much of my past that trying to remember things I actually wanted to was difficult. One of the many therapists I had been forced to see over the years had told me that it was my defense mechanism. My mind shut down and shoved away the things that hurt.