Mei's studio smelled like wet earth and wine when they arrived.
She'd already set up three pottery wheels—one for her, two for victims, as she called them—and had opened what looked like a very expensive bottle of red.
"You both look like death," she announced, pouring three generous glasses. "Good. This is going to be therapeutic whether you like it or not."
Steven stood in the doorway looking deeply uncomfortable. "I don't know how to make pottery."
"Nobody does at first. That's the point." Mei shoved a glass of wine into his hand. "Sit. Drink. Then we're getting messy."
Gene had already collapsed onto the couch, exhaustion hitting him now that he'd stopped moving. The past six weeks had been a blur of work and pretending and carefully not talking about anything real. Coming here felt like letting out a breath he'd been holding too long.
"So," Mei said, settling into her own wheel. "Who wants to go first in the emotional unpacking portion of this evening?"
"Can we skip that part?" Steven asked.
"Absolutely not. That's the whole point." Mei started wedging clay, her hands moving with practiced ease. "Gene already told me you're both disasters. I want details."
Gene and Steven exchanged glances.
"I'm not good at this," Steven said finally.
"At what? Pottery or feelings?"
"Both."
"Well, you're going to practice both tonight." Mei gestured to the empty wheel next to her. "Sit. I'll show you the basics."
Steven looked like he wanted to run. But he sat down, awkwardly positioning himself in front of the wheel while Mei explained centering and pressure and water.
Gene watched them from the couch—Mei patient and gentle, Steven tense and trying too hard, his first attempts at shaping clay collapsing immediately.
"You're fighting it," Mei said. "Stop trying to control it. Just feel what it's doing."
"I don't know what that means."
"Then stop thinking and just touch it. No plans, no strategies. Just hands and clay."
Steven tried again. This time the clay stayed centered a little longer before wobbling off-axis.
"Better," Mei said. "See? You don't have to be perfect. You just have to stay with it."
Something about watching Steven struggle with something he couldn't think his way through felt important. Gene couldn't explain why, but there it was.
"Your turn," Mei said, pointing at Gene. "Other wheel. Let's see if you're better at this than spreadsheets."
Gene moved to the wheel, his hands already shaking slightly from exhaustion and wine. Mei gave him a lump of clay and he started trying to center it.
It felt impossible. The clay kept sliding, refusing to stay where he wanted it. His hands were too tense, his movements too jerky.
"Relax," Mei said. "You're strangling it. Be gentle."
"I don't know how to be gentle with this."
"Then maybe this is practice for other things too." Mei's eyes were knowing. "You're both so used to forcing things. Results, success, control. Sometimes you just have to let something unfold and see what happens."
The clay finally centered under Gene's hands. It felt almost alive, spinning and responsive. He tried shaping it into a bowl, but his walls were uneven, one side collapsing.
"Perfect," Mei said.
"It's garbage."
"It's yours. That makes it perfect."
They worked in silence for a while—the sound of the wheels spinning, hands on wet clay, breathing. Wine got poured and drunk. Someone put on music, something instrumental and melancholic.
Gene glanced at Steven. His face had lost some of that terrible tension. He was focused on the clay, his movements less controlled, more exploratory. There was something unguarded about him like this—covered in clay slip, hair falling into his eyes, actually present instead of thinking twelve steps ahead.
"I haven't made anything with my hands in years," Steven said quietly. "Everything's just… numbers and words and screens."
"How does it feel?" Mei asked.
"Weird. Good weird." He shaped his clay into something that might've been a cup or might've been a disaster—Gene couldn't tell. "When Diana died, I kept thinking I should feel more. Like there should be this big breakdown or something. But I just felt… numb. And then guilty about feeling numb."
Mei nodded but didn't interrupt.
"But working with this—" Steven gestured at his clay "—I don't know. My hands are doing something while my brain shuts up. And that space feels… necessary."
"That's why I do this," Mei said. "After I left the business world, I needed something that wasn't about outcomes or efficiency. Something where failure was part of the process." She smiled. "Every collapsed pot teaches you something. Every wonky bowl is just practice for the next one."
Gene's own bowl was taking shape now—uneven and amateur, but recognizably a bowl. He ran his finger around the rim, smoothing it, and thought about Diana's face at that lunch. The way she'd talked about trying to figure out if she and Steven could work. How she'd never gotten the chance to know.
"I keep thinking about what she said," Gene admitted. "About wondering if she and Steven were just two workaholics who found each other. Whether that was enough."
"Was it?" Mei asked Steven.
"I don't know. Maybe it could've been, if we'd had time to find out." Steven's hands stilled on his clay. "She understood the work in a way most people don't. Didn't judge me for caring about it. But she also wanted more than I knew how to give."
"Do you think you could've learned?"
"Maybe. If she'd pushed harder. If I'd tried harder. If we'd had more time." His voice cracked slightly. "But we didn't. And now I'll never know what we could've been."
The words hung in the air, heavy with grief that Steven had been carrying alone for six weeks.
Gene wanted to say something comforting, but all the words felt too small.
"She liked you," he said instead. "Diana. She told me that day at lunch. Said Steven spoke highly of you, that you were good for him."
Steven looked up, his eyes red-rimmed. "She said that?"
"Yeah. She wanted to make sure people around you weren't just using you. She cared about you a lot."
Something broke in Steven's expression—not dramatically, just a small crack in the walls he'd built. He bent over his pottery wheel, shoulders shaking slightly, and Gene realized he was crying. Quietly, trying to hide it, but crying.
Mei caught Gene's eye, nodded toward Steven. Gene stood up, moved to crouch beside him, put a hand on his back.
"It's okay," Gene said quietly.
"It's not okay. Nothing about this is okay."
"I know. But you're allowed to feel it anyway."
Steven's clay had collapsed on the wheel, misshapen and ruined. He stared at it like it was the saddest thing he'd ever seen.
"I don't know how to do this," he said. "The grief thing. I don't know how to carry it and still function."
"You don't have to know," Mei said gently. "You just have to let it exist. Some days you'll function fine. Some days you'll collapse like that clay. Both are okay."
They sat there for a while—Steven crying quietly, Gene's hand on his back, Mei watching over both of them like a particularly protective older sister. The pottery wheels had stopped spinning. The wine was almost gone. Outside, Taipei was probably doing its usual chaotic evening dance, but in here everything was still.
Eventually Steven wiped his eyes, laughed shakily. "This is humiliating."
"This is human," Mei corrected. "There's a difference."
"I got clay on Gene's shirt."
"I'll survive."
Steven looked at him—really looked at him—and Gene felt something shift between them. Some wall coming down, some distance closing.
"Thank you," Steven said. "For not letting me run away from this."
"That's what friends do."
"Is that what we are? Friends?"
Gene thought about all the ways he could answer that. All the complicated feelings he'd been trying not to examine. But this moment felt too raw for complicated.
"Yeah," he said. "We're friends."
Steven held his gaze for a beat longer than necessary, something unreadable in his expression. Then he turned back to his ruined clay.
"Show me how to start over," he said to Mei.
"Same way you start anything. Fresh clay, clean slate, try again."
They stayed at the studio until past midnight, making terrible pottery and drinking wine and talking about everything and nothing. Gene told stories about growing up in Queens—the real stories, not the fake Irvine ones. Mei told them about her mother's ongoing disappointment with her life choices. Steven admitted he'd been seeing a therapist since Diana died, which shocked both of them.
"Since when?" Gene asked.
"Since two weeks ago. My father insisted. Said I was becoming a liability." Steven smiled wryly. "Turns out even he has limits on emotional repression."
"And?"
"And it's terrible and uncomfortable and I hate it. But also… maybe helpful. I don't know yet."
By the time they left, all three of them were covered in clay dust and wine stains. Gene's terrible bowl sat on Mei's drying shelf next to Steven's collapsed cup and about six other disasters.
"Same time next week?" Mei asked.
"You're going to make this a regular thing?" Steven said.
"Absolutely. You two need adult supervision."
They said their goodbyes and Gene and Steven walked to find a taxi together. The street was quiet now, most shops closed, just a few night market vendors still packing up.
"Today was good," Steven said. "Awful, but good."
"Yeah."
"I'm glad you forced me to come."
"I'm glad you didn't fire me for forcing you."
Steven laughed. "I'm not going to fire you, Gene. Even when you're annoying. Which is often."
"Right back at you."
They found a taxi, climbed in, gave the driver two different addresses. As they drove through nighttime Taipei, Gene felt something he hadn't felt in weeks.
Not happiness exactly. Not peace.
But something like hope that maybe they'd all survive this after all.