Chapter 6
SIX
Box Hill was a turning point. Or so Jake told himself. He’d confessed his problems to Rafe, and instead of sending him on his way, Rafe had kissed him.
A week later, Jake still felt that kiss. He felt it every time he looked at Rafe and thought about how much better a person Rafe was than him. He felt it when they worked together in the hot shop, experimenting with some of the ideas they’d batted around on the way back from Box Hill. It was awesome to have someone to work with, blending colors and testing techniques for making glass look like the English countryside.
They’d managed to come up with an idea for folding glass when it was at a certain temperature so that the dozens of tiny rods of glass that had been rolled into it looked like blades of grass and the contours of hills. It wasn’t really a new technique, but working together, the two of them were already devising ways to give the whole thing a sense of dimension and movement. They’d made a few pieces, but more work was definitely needed.
All that work meant he and Rafe were together in close quarters a lot. It was perfect and eased Jake’s mind in more ways than he could say. It would work. His plan to start over would work. All he had to do next was keep on the straight and narrow with Rafe so that the man would lose the tense, puzzled look in his eyes that Jake sometimes caught when Rafe didn’t know he was looking.
Rafe was suspicious of him, but he was intrigued, too. It was the best Jake could have hoped for under the circumstances.
The Hawthorne family wasn’t so bad either. They were definitely weird, as Jake learned when he was invited to the family’s celebration of Lughnasadh.
“We all converted to Paganism back in the spring for Baxter’s sake,” Nally explained to Jake as he helped build a bonfire that Robert Hawthorne had had to get special permission for, despite the fact it would be located deep in the Hawthorne estate.
“Paganism,” Jake said, pulling a few shipping pallets off the bed of a small truck that the two of them had driven to a cleared space in the middle of a field. “Like, as a religion? This bonfire isn’t just for fun?”
“For real,” Nally said, laughing. “You’ll have to ask Bax for more details. I’m just along for the ride, because revering the seasons and cycles of nature sounds a hell of a lot better than sitting in a cold, stone building while some tosser dressed in black tells me I’m going to Hell because I like to suck dick.”
Jake blinked, frozen for a second in the act of tossing a pallet on the pile. “Well okay then,” he said, then laughed.
If his parents knew he was building a bonfire for some heathen ritual, they would probably race down to the nearest church to get their pastor to pray for him. If they hadn’t already struck his name from the family Bible, which he was pretty sure they had.
The Lughnasadh celebration turned out to be a lot of fun, even though he couldn’t pronounce “Lughnasadh” correctly, no matter how many times he tried. It was basically a family picnic with a tiny bit of chanting, candles, and incense. The only weird part was when Bax and Nick snuck off together at one point, and how Jake and Rafe heard them going at it in the bushes when they headed up to the house with a load of dirty plates and cutlery from the feast.
“Your family has made me completely rethink the entire concept of family,” Jake told Rafe the week after the bonfire, early in the morning as the two of them set up the glassblowing booth for the day’s Renaissance Faire.
Rafe laughed as he checked the settings on the furnace, which had been turned on and lit the day before yesterday to make sure it would be hot enough for demonstrations once the faire gates opened. “The Hawthornes redefine family every day.”
“I hope you realize how lucky you are to have been raised with these crazy people,” Jake said as he unpacked the equipment they’d brought down from the hot shop and lined up punties so they would be ready when needed.
“I definitely do,” Rafe said. He smiled at Jake as he shifted to sort the bins of frit they’d bought down. “You’re pretty lucky, too, you know.”
Jake barked a laugh. “I am not. I was raised by typical Fox News-loving, church-going, ‘there’s no way a son of mine could possibly be gay’ parents.”
Rafe grinned at him. “No, I mean you’re lucky that you landed smack in the middle of all this Hawthorne madness. You’ve found your people.”
Jake laughed, but in reality, he was deeply touched. He had lucked out and landed with his people. That was the whole point of wanting to marry Rafe so he could stay in England. It wasn’t just the Hawthornes, it was the entire culture. And no, the UK wasn’t perfect by far, but no place was. It was all a matter of where he felt he was supposed to be, and for the moment that was exactly where he was.
“What are all these pegs for?” he asked as he moved one of the empty bins under the counter at the edge of the makeshift hot shop. He straightened and touched one of the pegs protruding from the support beam that held the roof of the pretend Renaissance building up.
Rafe huffed a humorless laugh. “Those are for merchandise,” he said.
“Merchandise?” Jake turned back to him with a smirk, thinking he must be joking.
Instead of telling Jake the punchline, Rafe fetched one of the larger bins they’d bought down earlier. He opened it, revealing a dozen exquisite blown goblets. Once he took those out and set the tray on the counter where Jake stood, he fetched another tray from the bin that contained beautiful blown glass balls with loops of string or ribbon attached.
“Are they Christmas ornaments?” Jake asked, taking a particularly pretty one with swirls and ridges from the tray.
“Some of them,” Rafe said with a sigh. “Some are larger, like garden ornaments or suncatchers.”
Jake glanced from the ornament in his hand to Rafe. “A Pagan family selling Christmas ornaments. What is the world coming to?”
Rafe cracked a smile, which was better than the sour look he’d worn while taking the glasswork out of the bin. “We live in interesting times,” he said before going back to bring the rest of the bin over to Jake. “Just hang them up on the pegs and line the goblets on the counter. There are price tags around here somewhere, but the small balls are ten pounds, the larger ones are twenty or thirty, and the goblets are twenty-five.”
Jake watched him with a frown. “You don’t seem happy about that. And frankly, I think you should be charging more. Much more.”
Rafe huffed. “I’m supposed to be an artist, but instead, I’m blowing Christmas ornaments for my family’s Renaissance Faire.”
Jake nodded slowly as the crux of the problem hit him. Rafe was working below his skill-level and clearly it annoyed him.
“Well, I’m here to help today,” he said, putting his focus into hanging the ornaments and other balls from the pegs. “You can work on the fancy stuff and I’ll blow bubbles for the tourists.”
He heard Rafe laugh quietly behind him. It sent a wave of warmth through him. He might be a total screw-up, but at least he could make Rafe laugh. It was the least he could do for the amazing thing Rafe was doing for him.
It didn’t take long to set up the booth. Rafe had clearly done the whole pretending to be a sixteenth-century glassblower before. He had the costume and everything, although really, his costume was just leather trousers and a linen shirt with lace closures that he rolled up to his impressive biceps. He’d found a spare costume for Jake as well in an incredible room on the third floor of the family part of the house that everyone referred to as the clothes room. That was one part of Hawthorne House that Jake definitely wanted to explore more.
By the time people started meandering through the fake village that formed the center of the Renaissance Faire, Jake and Rafe were working together to craft baubles while the tourists wandered over to take a look.
“The art of blowing glass was invented in Syria in the first century B.C.E.,” Rafe explained to a group that had gathered around the booth while Jake was busy crafting a goblet using the template Rafe had explained to him. “Glass was a luxury commodity at the time, something only the wealthiest people would have in their homes. Prior to the invention of blown glass, glassware was made by pouring molten glass into molds. Once the Syrians revolutionized the process, glass began to spread throughout the ancient world.”
Jake stopped what he was doing as much as he could to listen to Rafe as he went on.
“The biggest boom in blown glass came when it reached Italy, specifically, Venice. I’m sure you’ve all heard of Venetian glass.”
Several of the people watching nodded, riveted by what Rafe was saying. Rafe really was an excellent teacher.
“In the Middle Ages, the rulers of Venice declared that all glassblowers should move to the island of Murano just off the coast of Venice in order to keep the secrets of the trade just that, a secret. If any of the craftsmen left the island, they would be put to death.”
A few of the people listening to Rafe gasped.
“I don’t think I’d mind living on an island where men were trained in the art of blowing,” Jake said, giving up on the piece he was working on so he could join Rafe in talking to the growing crowd.
Rafe pivoted and frowned at him. “Keep it clean,” he murmured.
Jake returned the order with his winning smile, then grinned at the people watching. “I can personally vouch for the fact that Rafe here is one of the best blowers I’ve ever known.”
Their audience laughed. Rafe glowered at Jake.
“What, you’re not?” Jake asked him, blinking innocently.
“I’m better than you,” Rafe said.
Jake wasn’t sure if it was posturing, Rafe’s attempt to play along, or plain old snappishness. Whatever the case, he took that ball and ran with it, saying, “How would you know until you give me a try?” He winked for good measure.
The crowd laughed even more, but Rafe didn’t look amused.
“I challenge you to a blowing duel,” Jake said, stepping back and reaching for the blowpipes. “First one to complete a Christmas ornament wins.”
Rafe looked downright mutinous…until their audience clapped and cheered and egged them on. “Alright,” he said, swaggering his way back toward the furnace. “You’re on.”
The thrill of competition zipped through Jake like electricity as he raced to grab a blowpipe and gather glass from the furnace before Rafe. Rafe held back, making a show of choosing his equipment more carefully than Jake had and grinning at him like he had a secret weapon that would guarantee him victory. Their audience loved it.
“Looks like I’ve got the jump on you,” Jake told Rafe with a wink as he took his glass over to the marvering table and smoothed it out, ready to blow. When that was done, he moved to one of the workbenches facing the growing crowd. He blew into the pipe, turned it, and blew some more before glancing at Rafe back by the furnace and saying, “I usually like it the other way around.”
A few of the people watching who caught the innuendo laughed.
“Funny that you seem to think finishing quickly is a good thing,” Rafe zinged back from the marvering table before shifting to the other workbench and blowing into his pipe.
More people laughed, and one mom steered her kid away from the booth.
“Someone has to finish first,” Jake said, sitting on the bench and picking up the jacks to start shaping the ornament. “That whole thing about finishing at the same time is a myth.”
Rafe had his mouth to the blowpipe and couldn’t fire off a comeback quick enough.
“Oh, sorry,” Jake said. “I’ll wait to finish until you don’t have your mouth around a pipe. Unless you like that sort of thing.”
He got another rowdy laugh from the crowd and loved it. Getting attention, making people laugh, was his kryptonite. It made everything better for him, but it wasn’t great at helping him keep friends.
“Mind your drip there, boy,” Rafe said when he finished blowing, nodding to Jake’s work.
Their audience laughed again, and Jake dragged his eyes away from Rafe to find his ornament had slipped to one side when he stopped paying attention to it. He had to get up and take the whole thing to the furnace to heat it up again. Once that was done, he focused on his work to form it back into something close to symmetrical again, although the damage had already been done.
Rafe returned to the furnace for a moment, too, then took his seat on his bench with his back to Jake’s, since that had been the only way to fit both benches into the small space. The two of them went to work forming their ornaments while the audience looked on, murmuring and pointing at everything they were doing.
Try as he might, after his first slip with the glass, Jake knew he wasn’t going to make a perfect piece. As usual when his back was against the wall, he looked for ways to get more attention.
“I can feel you’re close,” he said, loud enough for their audience to hear. He snuck a peek over his shoulder at Rafe. “Sure you’re not ready to blow some more?”
“It’s all about pacing,” Rafe replied, his body tight with concentration. “There’s a fine art to handling baubles and without causing the whole thing to burst before you’re done.”
Jake snorted and tried to focus on his own work again. He was glad there weren’t any kids watching them at the moment. “You know I love a big, round bauble,” he told Rafe over his shoulder as he concentrated on rolling and shaping his work again. “Something that fills up your hands when you hold them.”
The crowd loved their banter, and Jake loved the implied praise.
“It’s not about the size of the baubles,” Rafe said, shifting slightly, which told Jake he was making quick progress on his piece. “It’s about the quality of the shape. Same goes for making cups and goblets. Some of the best I’ve ever had were no bigger than a cordial glass.”
“I’m sure your goblet is amazing, whether it’s a champagne flute or a flagon,” Jake bantered in return.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Rafe said.
He leaned back slightly and their backs touched. It was simple, almost silly, but Jake couldn’t remember the last time flirting had been so much fun. He and Rafe worked so well together. It wasn’t just their matching skills with glass. Rafe was as kind and compassionate as he was smooth and sexy. He made Jake feel like something more than the failure he constantly feared he was.
“Oh boy,” Jake said as he finished forming his glass as much as he could without heating it again. “I’m almost there. I’m so close.”
“I can feel it,” Rafe replied as their audience laughed and nudged each other, loving the show. “Ooh, this is going to be a big one. I’m not sure you’re ready for it.”
“I can’t stop,” Jake called out, picking up the tool he needed to score the base of his ornament so he could knock it off the pipe. “It’s coming! It’s coming!”
He quickly slipped on the large glove he needed to catch his bauble as he tapped it free from the pipe. The audience laughed and applauded as he set the pipe aside and stood to show them his work.
Rafe stood a second before him, though, holding up the ornament he’d made. Jake nearly dropped his work when he saw what Rafe had created in the relatively short time they’d been working. Jake’s ornament was slightly misshapen and warped in places. Rafe had produced an absolutely exquisite bauble with a ridged pattern and perfect, ornamental loop on top to hang it from.
“Wow,” Jake said, turning to admire Rafe’s work. “That’s really incredible.”
Rafe shrugged and walked his ornament over to the portable annealer on one side of the shop. Jake skipped forward to open it for him with one hand, then they both set their baubles carefully inside as the crowd applauded.
“If you enjoyed watching us make those ornaments, then you’ll really enjoy owning some of Rafe’s work for yourself,” Jake said, turning back to the crowd and walking over to the counter with the display of merchandise. “Rafe handcrafted all of these amazing pieces himself. Goblets start at twenty-five, and these lovely Christmas ornaments are a steal at ten pounds.”
It was meant to be icing on the cake of praise meant for Rafe, but several people opened their wallets and pulled out cash or cards to buy things. Jake didn’t know what to do, but Rafe stepped forward to take over.
“We’re going to need to get a lot more work done if people are going to buy like that all day,” Jake said when the initial group of people had moved on.
“We would be able to get more than enough done if we concentrated on work instead of putting on a bawdy show,” Rafe said, heading back to the furnace and selecting another blowpipe.
“Aw, come on, you loved it,” Jake said, joining him. “It was the banter that sold the glass.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Jake wanted to take them back. “Strike that. It was your amazing talent that sold those things. That ornament was incredible, Rafe. And it took you, what, less than ten minutes to make it?”
Rafe humphed and started blowing into his pipe to make the next one. “It’s just production glass,” he said as he shifted over to the workbench.
“It’s more than just that,” Jake insisted, preparing to make something he actually planned to concentrate on. “You’re exceptionally talented, Rafe.”
“Maybe,” Rafe said, then threw himself into his work in a way Jake saw as a clear indication he was done talking.
It didn’t make any sense. Rafe had skill and ability that most artists would have killed to have, but he seemed to think the opposite was true. There was no shame in being amazing at making tableware and functional glass either. That was the stuff that sold. And God only knew how important money was. Jake was happy to be able to sit beside Rafe and work with him. And if he had anything to say about it, he would convince Rafe that his work had value just the way it was.