Chapter Seventeen #2
Gabe was, by every measure, too hot for her.
His face was a marvel of natural symmetry, she could have studied his bone structure in architecture school.
His body was long, lean, and broad-shouldered, with a surfer’s laid-back athleticism and easy masculinity that could carry chin-length hair and a saffron-yellow shirt.
That he had marked his tan, sinewy arms with haphazard tattoos like stickers on a locker door seemed to underscore his genuine modesty. He had beauty to burn.
And yet Gabe was looking at her with intensity and delight, listening to her, laughing easily, raking his hand through his hair more than necessary.
Iris rubbed her nose to discreetly sniff her wrist; the perfume was still strong.
It emboldened her to flirt as if she talked to male models all the time.
She noticed his hands were a mess, calloused palms and skin crisscrossed with pale scars. Iris took his hand in hers—any excuse to touch him—and teased, “What do you do for a living, shuck oysters? Repair garbage disposals? Are you the piranha keeper at the zoo?”
He laughed. “Worse, I blow glass.” He saw her puzzled look and elaborated. “I made the chandelier. Cuts and burns are an occupational hazard.”
“You made it ?” Iris was shocked. “I thought you just sold it to him and installed it, badly.”
“That too.” He chuckled. “I’m full service.”
Their conversation flowed as easily as breathing.
He seemed genuinely curious about her, asking lots of questions, and when he heard she had a dog, had to see pictures.
And she learned Gabe grew up in Brooklyn, got a scholarship to RISD to study graphic design but fell in love with glassblowing and stayed on for his MFA.
He’d been honing his craft ever since. He was a little younger than she at thirty-one, which Iris secretly hated.
“Why glass? Of all the mediums, it seems the most punishing.”
“It keeps you honest. There’s no bluffing or pretense in front of a two-thousand-degree furnace. Your mind can’t wander for a second. You’re totally present.”
“Sounds intense.”
“It is, but for me, it’s a relief, like meditating. I get in a zone when I do it, everything else ceases to exist.”
“Do you ever get close to the end of a big, elaborate piece and then it breaks?”
“All the time.”
“And that doesn’t make you want to tear your hair out?”
“Oh, it’s the worst! I swear like a sailor, I feel sorry for myself. And then I let it go, start over. That’s life, right?” He sipped his drink. “What about you? Why lighting?”
“When I started grad school, I was all about structural engineering and building safety, but the farther I got into my program, the more drawn I was to lighting design for the creativity and, I don’t know, the…”
“Emotion?”
A smile spread on her face. “Yes, light is emotional.” She surprised herself by opening up more than usual: “I survived a house fire as a kid, and after it happened, I got really afraid of the dark. My grandparents got me a little night-light that I used every night until I went to college, it was embarrassing. But it made me feel safe, when I really needed to feel that. I realized I wanted to make spaces that feel inviting, or dramatic, or emotional, and above all, safe for people.”
He nodded. “You make me want to do more lighting pieces.”
“You should. That chandelier is incredible.”
“Thanks. I told Rob my inspiration was his fragile masculinity.”
Iris gave a laugh that extinguished the votive candle between them. “Shoot, I blew out our candle.” The wick had burned way down to the bottom.
“Watch.” Gabe produced a lighter from his pocket and sheltered the smoke with his hand so that its tendrils corded together, snaking up from the votive like a cobra from a basket.
Well above the candle’s lip, he cracked the lighter beside the writhing smoke, and in an instant, the wick deep within lit itself.
Iris’s jaw dropped. “How did you do that?”
“I like to play with fire.” He popped his brows.
“Oh please.” She gave him a playful shove. His shoulder felt rock solid, and she wanted to touch him again as soon as she’d let go.
“It’s just chemistry. I’ll show you. First, blow the candle out.”
She reached to pull the votive toward her, but the hot glass seared her fingers. “Ouch!” She shook out the sting.
“Here, I’ll hold it for you, the nerves in my fingertips are dead or used to it.
” He lifted the votive and held it in front of her chin like a birthday cupcake.
The candlelight’s reflection made his brown eyes sparkle as the flame flickered with their breath.
He looked from her lips to her eyes. “Make a wish.”
She smiled and leaned in. It was the closest their faces had been all night. She puckered her lips and extinguished the flame with a gentle puff.
He set the votive on the bar and handed her the lighter. “Now, light the smoke.”
Iris chased the twirling smoke trail high above the candle, took a few tries to start the lighter, and— gasp!— it worked! The flame leaped into the bottom of the candle.
“I did it! Did you see?” She turned to him, elated.
Gabe was already gazing at her like she was the magic. “I missed it. Show me again.”
And they went back and forth, creating fire, feeling like tiny gods.
—
It wasn’t until the servers turned up the house lights and began to stack chairs on tables that Iris and Gabe realized they’d been talking for hours.
She would barely remember the conversation the next day, she would remember only the feeling.
And the feeling was that she had been meaning to catch up with this stranger for her entire life.
After tipping the bartender generously, Gabe walked Iris out into the warm summer night to get her a taxi home. As they approached the corner, she got increasingly in her head. Iris always botched goodbyes with men. She got nervous and rushed them. And Gabe made her very nervous.
Luckily, he seemed like the type who had never been nervous in his life.
He hooked her hand with one finger. “So, can I get your number? You know, in case another lighting emergency occurs?”
“Did you make enough faulty chandeliers for that?”
“I can break the ones that work.” He pulled his phone from his pocket.
She tapped in her number. When she handed it back to him, instead of taking the phone, he slid his fingers down her own, over her wrist and arm, until his thumb grazed her elbow crease.
They locked eyes for one suspended moment, asking, knowing, before their mouths met in a kiss as instant as the flame jumping into the candle.
It felt easy, natural, unthinking, but the thrill— there was the proof it was a first kiss, the first kiss, as if she had never kissed or been kissed properly by anyone before.
Every sense was heightened in a swirl of pleasure; the woodsy smell of his skin, the bittersweet Campari on his tongue, the warm envelopment of his presence even as he touched only her lips and her elbow, the sight of fireworks behind closed eyes, and the sound of the world falling silent.
A cyclone of sensation overloading her system, and the two of them, alone together in the eye of a beautiful storm.
It was a good thing he’d left his hand on her arm, because by the end of the kiss, he was keeping her on earth.
When they broke, it was like two magnets pulling apart, first hard to separate and then all at once. They rocked back on their heels and locked eyes in shared wonder.
“Take me home,” Iris whispered.
Gabe glanced over her head and whistled loudly to a passing cab. The cab braked and pulled over ten yards ahead of them. He grabbed her hand and they ran, giddy as kids, toward the taxi’s blazing taillights.