Chapter Six
Samantha
Six days. Six damn days of almost nothing except a few awkward, polite text messages. Hey-how-are-yas with frustratingly little to show for it. And with another knitting class the next day, I wasn’t sure if I would go wobbly with relief or bite his head off when I saw him again.
Maybe both.
“I don’t get it, Marge. Really, I don’t.” I sighed and stabbed the thick tapestry needle into the heavy fabric, flexing my aching fingers as I turned to look down at my dog. She lifted her head from the fluffy surface of her dog bed, blinking gently at me as she opened her graying snout wide and yawned.
I took a long sip of my iced coffee and stared out the window, where a steady rain fell on a gray Seattle day. The soft patter on the ancient roof of my poky Victorian house might ordinarily soothe my jangled nerves, but not today.
It was just lunch,I told myself. Lunch and some good conversation and a hug. Except I couldn’t forget the way his hands had gently stroked at my back, and how he pulled my body flush against his—the lean length of him against my softer curves. And the soft nuzzle of his face against my shoulder and mine against his—it was no platonic gesture, but the tentative exploration of two people taking their first steps into something new and unknown.
If it meant nothing to him—and it seemed that was the case—then I hoped I wouldn’t see him at knitting class tomorrow. I clearly didn’t have any defenses against tall, charming guys with tons of tattoos who patiently let nosy old ladies pepper them with questions, whose smiles lit up the room. Guys who were confident enough to go against type and sign up for a knitting class at a senior center, just because they had a hankering to learn.
On a wide frame in front of my chair, a wild piece of embroidery was taking shape. Red, blue and yellow threads crisscrossed in a wild pattern. I hadn’t liked this piece at first, but after lunch with Ian last week, I arrived at home and attacked it again, fingers flying until something new started to take shape. Something…surprising.
Life was like that sometimes, I supposed. Surprising. Like when gorgeous men showed up to learn to knit with old folks.
And surprising when you thought you connected, and then heard almost nothing for days. I was usually so guarded with everyone but Annie, and to open the door with Ian like that, only for him to cool off immediately—it hurt. A hurt that I kept prodding and poking when I searched for his tattoo studio on social media and let myself marvel over what he could do—with a tattoo machine, with a paintbrush, all of it. He had a gift, one that blazed out of him like sunshine. And I just wanted to bask in it, staring at all the photos of the art, the beauty that he spread through the world.
I stood up, twisting this way and that as I stretched my back, aching from two hours hunched over the tapestry frame. I picked through the scattered boxes and supplies in the spare room that served as my art studio, until I reached my desk. I plucked my phone off the scarred wooden surface and tapped the screen, scanning for messages. A couple of long, rambling messages from Annie about something that happened at the veterinary clinic, and a brief one-sentence text from my mother.
Nothing new from Ian. Nothing since yesterday, when I’d texted him to ask if he would be at tomorrow’s class.
Maybe,he answered. The three dots wiggled on the screen for a minute or two after that, and then—nothing.
And I didn’t say anything else, either.
* * *
Anxiety curdled in my gut as I walked toward the classroom door the next day, as ready as I was going to be in case Mr. Mixed Messages did indeed show up for another knitting class. Although I supposed ready was a subjective standard—my thinking brain told me not to worry about him one way or another, that sometimes guys could be weirdos, too, but the anxious part of me, which had a habit of overriding everything else sometimes—well, that part didn’t have any concrete suggestions, except to be nervous. Very nervous.
Please be there.
Please don’t be there.
Please be there.
I gripped the cold metal door handle in my fist and pulled, flinging the door wide open.
“Hi everybody,” I said as I strode in, my customary greeting.
I set my tote bag down on a table and straightened, looking around at the assembled crowd. And there he was, sitting across from Anita and Fumiko, beaming at me with that million-dollar smile. He wore a short-sleeved shirt this time, exposing more of those long, tattooed arms, looking for all the world like a hero from the steamy novels that filled my e-reader.
Hi,he mouthed at me.
I smiled back at him—a wobbly smile, but genuine, and the tension in my belly eased. I was glad to see him, I decided.
“Hi everybody,” I repeated as I looked around the classroom, smiling broadly. “It’s so good to see you. Let’s get started.”
I did my usual rotations around to all the tables, patiently correcting slipped stitches and snarled fibers, letting myself fall into the rhythm of teaching, of sharing, of community. Every so often, I looked up to find Ian’s eyes on me, a lopsided smile on his face that set my belly quivering and ignited a soft blush that must have been obvious to everyone.
“What do you have for me?” I asked as I finally reached their table. I pulled out a chair and settled in at the end, Fumiko on one side and Ian on the other. “How are your projects going?”
He shifted in his seat and held up a long knitted rectangle dangling from his two needles, a perfect knit-two-purl-one pattern in the fire engine red yarn that I helped him select at the craft store. “I watched some videos and I’ve been working on this.” He held it up in front of him and grinned hopefully. “Once I get started on something, I—ah, I can’t stop.”
“I’ll say,” Fumiko muttered. Anita snorted and nudged her gently with an elbow. But even Anita, I noticed, didn’t seem especially inclined to take her eyes off the show.