“Sure, but what? I’m not very good at this.” I picked up a metal coffee cylinder filled with tiny silver tools. “What are these for?”
“Leather tooling.”
“Oh! Matt needs a belt. He’s been wearing two shoelaces tied together.”
“Perfect,” she said. She walked to a long metal cabinet and pulled out a solid leather strip with four round holes punched through one end. “All you’ll need is a buckle. We can go thrift-store shopping for that.”
I was falling more and more in love with her by the second.
Taking a tiny hammer and a few tools from the coffee tin, I held them up. “So do I just tap these into the leather?”
“First, we must wet the leather a bit so it’ll be pliable enough. That way the design will set and last longer, maybe forever.” She went to the farmhouse sink and returned a moment later with a wet rag. She saturated the leather using the small towel and then took a step back. “Have at it, honey.”
“What kind of design should I do?”
“That’s up to you.”
I studied the tools with different shapes on the end. There was a circle made of three squiggly lines. I grabbed it, along with a tiny solid circle, and pressed the larger circle into the leather with ease, leaving a permanent indentation. Then I took the smaller circle and tapped it into the center of the design I had already made.
She stood over me. “Wow, that looks just like an eye, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess it does.”
“Let’s girlify it then. May I?” I nodded and she picked up a tool with a narrow teardrop shape at the end and made three divots above the eye design and three below. Then she tapped in a second eye and repeated the process. She took a half-moon-shaped tool and pressed it, striking it quickly several times in a row on the top and bottom edges, creating a border. Before I knew it, two inches of the belt was designed, abstract enough to resemble a Paisley print or women’s eyes looking out from a pattern of tribal swirls.
“That is so impressive,” I said.
“Now you have the design. ‘Eyes on Matt,’ I assume, if we had to name it.” She laughed.
“ ‘My Eyes on Matt,’ ” I corrected and she chuckled even harder.
“He’ll love it. Just repeat the design over and over until you’re at the end of the belt.” She scooted a tall wooden stool behind me, so I sat down and got to work.
14. Did You Have Doubts?
Grace
Hours later, I finished the belt just as I heard the rumbling of a motorcycle pulling into the driveway. Aletha had gone into the house to make tea. I hung the belt inside the cabinet, closed it, and went to the door of the shed just as Matt opened it. He pushed me back inside and kissed me hard. I wrapped my arms around him and let him lift my legs around his waist. He slammed the door and pushed me against it.
“Don’t say no to me,” he said near my ear.
“Matt, your mom.”
“Take this off.” He set me down and removed the smock. “Actually, take all of this off.” He reached for my T-shirt but I stopped him. “She won’t come in here,” he said breathlessly.
“What, why?”
He let his hands fall to his sides. “Because she knows we’re in here. Now, where were we?” He looked up to the ceiling and tapped his chin then pointed his index finger at me. “Oh yes, we were undressing you.”
“Wait, maybe she thinks we have a tiny bit of respect.”
“Maybe she thinks we’re young and in love,” he countered quickly.
Silence, as if the air were sucked out of the room and we were left in a vacuum, wordless, our eyes glued to each other. Matt’s expression remained impassive.
I arched my eyebrows.
He gave a quick shrug. “What?”
“Are we?”
“Young? Yes, relatively.”
“No . . . are we . . .”
“What do you think, Grace?” And then his mouth was on mine, except there was no urgency behind his kiss anymore. The kiss went on and on, like we were trying to melt into each other, romantic and sweet.
Finally, I pulled away. “You have a motorcycle?” I asked, dreamily.
He answered by nodding into my neck and kissing me right below the ear.
“Wanna take me for a ride?”
“You have no idea.”
“You know, we never really talked about the other night.”
“Do we need to talk about it?” His tone was suddenly stiff.
A sudden wave of paranoia slammed me back a couple of feet, out of Matt’s embrace. He was avoiding the topic. Why? I wondered if there was something he didn’t want to tell me. Was I not good enough? How could I be? I thought. He was like a god, dripping with an intoxicating blend of sweetness and sex. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him most of the time. On top of it all, he was kind, smart, strong, and artistic.
Really, universe? That’s plenty. That’s just fucking plenty! You cannot make one person this delicious. It’s not fair.
Matthias was the kind of guy girls dreamed about marrying. The kind of guy whose last name you would doodle after your first name in wispy cursive letters across the cover of your Trapper Keeper. Graceland Shore. Graceland and Matthias Shore. Mr. and Mrs. Shore. Images of your family photos would zip through your mind in blurry streams, like stars moving at warp speed. You, standing there, glowing and pregnant for the twelfth time, with all of your beautiful little Adonis and Aphrodite children clinging to your legs as you and your husband gaze into each other’s eyes. You’d shout it out to the world, “This. Man. Is. Mine!” And you’d always give him lots of blowjobs. I hadn’t even done that yet, but I planned to. Anyway, the point is, you’d do anything for him.