19. Chapter 19 – Clay
W e stayed up way too late, Lucy teasing me with guess after guess about what my moles spelled.
Dragging her into her studio so I could watch her work felt selfish after I kept her up late the night before, but I’d been honest – I wanted to see her in her element.
Her creative drive was one of the things that drew me to her.
When someone handed me a pad and pencil, I drew nothing but blanks.
She seemed to have endless ideas for our art class students.
I longed to see what it looked like when she was creating for herself.
My hands were damp as I watched Lucy heat the end of her blowpipe and gather the molten glass, rolling it slowly until it formed a small white-orange glowing blob. She’d assured me that blowing a glass ornament was one of the easiest beginner projects and that I’d be fine, but I was still nervous.
Shattered glass littered the edges of the floor, making me achingly aware that what we were about to work with was hotter than lava, but would become as delicate as candy floss. Devastating if mishandled, but oh-so-breakable under the right conditions.
Jen would’ve laughed at the idea of me playing with molten glass. She was calm. Cautious. Lucy was fire and motion. Different—so different—but the way Lucy challenged me left me feeling alive again. And after losing Jen, I knew how rare that was. How precious.
I watched Lucy from beneath lowered lashes. Her hands were sure and strong on her pipe. She seemed utterly confident, at ease in the heat and immune to the dry, warm air that made beads of sweat drip down my back.
She walked me through the basic process and her tools.
“We’ll take things easy. I’ve got the glass collected.
I’m going to let you roll it in front of the furnace while I set up the blowing tools.
When the glass is the right consistency, and I’m ready, I’ll call you over to blow your ornament.
You won’t have to blow hard.” Her eyes flickered with humor.
“Just a slow, steady breath into the tube. Think you can handle that?”
I nodded, not caring that she was teasing me. We were in her domain. I didn’t want to fuck anything up.
Lucy set the pipe with the glob of glass on its end on the rest, facing the furnace. “Time to start rolling, Hotshot.”
Under her watchful eye, I twisted the pipe, slow and steady against the flat surface.
I could see how this could be meditative and calming once you knew what you were doing, but I was hyperaware that I was working around molten glass.
One wrong move, and I might disfigure myself or Lucy.
A fresh wash of flop sweat stung my eyes, and I swiped it away with my forearm.
“Keep rolling,” Lucy coached. She grabbed a thin tube and plugged it into the rod's end as I twirled. “Now stop.” She moved to a work surface perched over a bin of broken glass. “Okay, come here and blow. Keep it slow and gentle. No big puffs.”
I scrambled to do as she bid, easing my air into the tube, watching as a bulb took shape at the pipe's end. She used metal tools to shape the globe as it grew to a diameter suitable for an ornament.
“Good, good. Easy does it.”
Her praise made it difficult to remember that I wasn’t supposed to puff out with pride.
A few minutes later, she transferred the ornament to another rod with a gentle tap and added a tiny loop of molten glass for the hook.
Every move was deft and sure. Like she’d done it a thousand times before.
I wiped damp palms against my jeans, blowing out a long breath that left my lungs empty and my heart full.
The ornament we’d created was delicate and beautiful. A near-perfect globe of clear glass, speckled with green and swirls of red.
“It needs to go in the annealing oven for a while, then it’ll be done.” She grinned at me, brushing a strand of dark hair from her cheek. “You did good, Clay. If things don’t work out with the parks service, you’d make a handy apprentice.”
My laugh came out a little too tight.
“Is now a good time to tell you I’ve been anxious the whole damn time?” I tugged her forward by her belt loops, guiding her between my thighs. “I think I’d rather be your handsy apprentice and leave the glass to you.”
She chuckled, the sound low and long. “Robertson, you surprise me. Glass is easy. It’s people who are difficult.” She turned to one side, a delicate judder racking her body. “People and wildlife? No, thank you.”
“Aw, you’d be cute in a park uniform though.”
“The only animal I plan on keeping in line is you ,” she said, poking playfully at my chest.
I captured her finger, clutching it over my heart. She’d caught her inky dark hair back in low ponytails. Heat from the studio made the tresses cling to her damp cheeks, proving she wasn’t impervious to the high temperatures, even if she was used to them.
“Marry me? Even to my own ears, the words sounded too real.
Her eyes clouded. For the first time, I realized the real danger in the game we were playing. My heart was already involved. We’d traveled so far past the marker for risk-free fun and sharing good times that I’d lost sight of the trail altogether. Wandered utterly off the path and into the wild.
I’d been telling myself that teasing her was fun.
The marriage proposals were harmless. Sure, I was into her.
Lucy Millen was my Lucifer, the woman who tempted me back into living.
Before I came into her orbit, I’d been going through the motions, papering over my grief with a toxic positivity that had everyone fooled.
Work. Run. Lift. Eat. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
There had been no sexy woman to tease. To challenge me. To show me what I was missing by burying myself in routine. Meeting Lucy and the Fenwicks changed all that.
She’d snagged my interest with her sharp tongue and gentle touch, a contradiction I could never quite reconcile and had no desire to.
The marriage proposals started as a joke, carelessly tossed out without expectation of more than rolled eyes or snark in return.
But they were a wish for someday, when I was different.
Better. Someone deserving of her and the future I barely let myself imagine.
Lucy’s ability to challenge me, wake me up, and shake me out of that belief that I had to wait to become worthy had become the greatest gift I never asked for.
I nearly said it. I love you . The words burned in my throat. But coming on the heels of the marriage proposals she never took seriously, I couldn’t offer her my ultimate truth: that I’d fallen for her. Not when she might treat it like a punchline.
Not when I’d fallen harder than I’d thought possible.
She was grouchy and smart. Sweet and playful. Brutally honest in a way that made me want to be better. She saw through the charm, to the parts of me I tried to hide, and somehow, she stayed. She was everything I needed. Everything I wasn’t sure I could have.
Somewhere, my therapist was probably laughing.
My journal was her idea. At first, it felt like a meaningless exercise.
I wrote in it out of obligation rather than belief.
Faithfully, I’d dumped all the feelings I didn’t want to face between its pages, convinced that writing them down changed nothing.
Secure in the false belief that I was past the grief.
Immune to the past. That nothing was holding me back.
But I’d been chronicling each halting step with Lucy. Each failed proposal. Every tongue lashing. The moments that made me laugh when I thought I’d forgotten how.
If I flipped through the pages, would I find all the truths I hadn’t been ready to uncover? Would I see the shape of love forming in ink before I had the courage to admit it aloud?
Suddenly, I wanted to dive through its pages. Relive the journey. Each stumble. Each misstep. And figure out a new plan forward. One where I didn’t make Lucy’s eyes cloud with exasperation when all I wanted was to love her.