Golden Boys (Golden Boys, #1)(32)

“And for the rest of today, we’ll be doing some base skills on the sewing machine. We only have enough sewing machines for half of you, so you’ll have to share with the person next to you.”

Professor Watts passes out templates, some patterned fabric, and fabric scissors as we retrieve our sewing machines. One per table means my new friend Philip and I are on the same machine.

“Looks like we’re making a …” I pause in confusion. “We’re making a fabric lipstick holder?”

“Seems practical,” Philip says with a laugh. “And it’s a key chain too. What luck!”

“I do always lose my lip balm, so I guess I can’t mock this too much.”

I keep a casual conversation with Philip going as I make the cuts to my beige polka-dot fabric. I line up all the layers, and I take time to do it slowly, methodically, because I do not want to be the first one at our sewing machine.

“You want to go first?” Philip asks, and I groan in response.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I say as the embarrassment creeps in.

“It’s fine—I can show you.”

I line up two pieces of fabric and slide the key chain loop around the middle as the instructions say, and I slide the fabric under the needle.

“Okay, now here’s how I like to thread it. You take the spool here and feed it through here. There’s a little guide that’s supposed to help you thread the needle, but that never works for me.”

He sticks the end of the thread in his mouth to wet it, then runs the end through his fingers.

“Perfect,” he says, and shows me how he’s able to thread the needle a lot easier. “Now just connect this to the machine, and we’ll do a little test on this extra fabric. Just twist this slowly and it’ll start—move the fabric smoothly so it doesn’t get bunched up.” He pauses. “Yeah, like that. Hold on, I think the tension is a little too tight for this fabric, and I don’t want the thread to snap on you.”

I go through the motions, a little flustered by how little I know. But a part of me is friend-crushing hard on his sewing knowledge. As a general rule, I think anyone who has a skill that I don’t have is instantly appealing—like how I get chills every time I see Heath strike someone out.

Philip helps me work through the pattern, and I kind of start to get it on my own. Kind of. It’s not great, but it’s something, and I can’t imagine what this would look like if I didn’t have help. I see Professor Watts walking around helping others, so it does seem like she’s running a whole Sewing 101 lesson today.

As Philip starts sewing his project, I pull out my journal to start sketching the lipstick holder as a memory of what happened today.

“That dress,” Philip says when he gets a glimpse of the drawing I did this morning. “Did you design that?”

I laugh. “No, it was in a shop. It was on this mannequin, and I kept imagining what it’d look like on someone walking down the street. So I drew it.”

“You’re skilled,” he says. “My drawings are more, like, feelings or impressions. I don’t do detail very well.”

“Well, if there’s any way I can help with your sketches, I’ll gladly do it. I feel like I owe you for this crash course on sewing I just got.”

He takes his time to finish the last stitches of his project and cuts off the extra thread. He lines his next to mine, and they look nearly identical. Mine’s a little uneven, but not bad for a complete amateur.

“Here,” he says, taking the key chain I just made and offering me his in return. “It looks like we’ll be helping each other a lot this summer.”

I take it and feel my cheeks get warmer. I absentmindedly play with the charm on my bracelet. “Yeah, looks like it.”

Professor Watts gathers our attention and has us all show our key chains. There’s a variety of successes and failures around the room, but the energy is pretty high. Like everyone else, I’m hopeful, at least. I see a potential here.

As we stand to leave, Philip turns to me.

“Hey, want to grab dinner after this? I don’t have any mates here, but I hate eating alone, you know? And I’m a little overwhelmed already. If I go back to the dorms I’m just going to start working myself to death on this project, and I’d like to take a breather first.”

“Sounds great,” I say. “There’s a cute café I went to this morning that’s open for dinner—it’s about halfway between here and the dorms. I could even show you the dress I drew this morning?”

He nods. “You lead, and I’ll follow.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

SAL

It’s lunchtime, and we still haven’t gotten the training they promised. We helped with calls, though. A lot of calls. I have a stack of constituent responses, but it’s not totally clear what we’re supposed to do with them. The caterer wheeled in a sandwich platter not long ago, but no one’s really touched it. No one’s even around—Meghan left a couple of hours ago without saying anything, and the others have popped in and out all morning.

“I can’t believe that man called me a bitch,” April says. “I listened to his full conspiracy theory rant, all seven minutes of it, and then when I say I’ll pass along the message I just get called a bitch.”