Chapter 24
MAX
For a week after turning Lacey away, the only thing I do is woodworking.
First, I finish the pieces I’ve been working on for her. A side table for the bedroom and a shoe rack for the area by the front door. Simple constructions that I’ve put too much love into for them to be anything platonic. I cover them with a shop sheet, so I don’t have to look at them.
Then, I try to work on more seamless construction, like the chairs I made for Warren before, but things go wrong.
My dowels split down the center, my glue has gone bad, and at one point, a fuse blows to the woodshop, so I’m plunged into darkness and, for the first time, realize that I’ve been working late into the night.
Dona meows constantly, weaving herself around my legs and moving toward the front door, like she’s waiting for Lacey and wanting me to do something to bring her back.
But I know better than that.
In the days following our — what? Breakup? — I’ve thought about going to her place a lot. To take her the furniture. To tell her one last thing about the wood-burning stove.
In my lowest moments, I think that I might apologize to her and let myself go on living like this, even though it would mean being with a woman — and giving my heart to a woman — who I could never be sure was really going to stay around.
A woman I could never be sure wasn’t dreaming about her life in the city and wishing she hadn’t given it all up for a man. For me.
So, I don’t go to Lacey’s. I do my best not to think about her.
I bury myself in the woodworking.
And when, for some reason, the wood stops responding to me, and I can’t get my pieces to look the way I want them to look, I pace the shop, then cross to the far cabinet and pull out the supplies I’ve been hiding away for years.
Supplies I shouldn’t have brought with me.
And, for the first time since I was in college, I fire up the torch.
“Hello?”
At the sound of Warren’s voice, I startle and jerk my hand, which is not a great thing to do when holding molten glass two inches away from a torch spewing propane and oxygen.
The flame licks away from me, heating my face and hands, and when I flick it off, turning to look at the man in the doorway, everything is cast in a purplish hue.
“Max-avier,” Warren says, his mouth dropping open as he takes in the sculptures around me. “Holy shit, what are these?”
It took me a while to get back into the rhythm of glass blowing; my first few tubes cracked on me. Rookie mistakes, like not turning it fast enough or letting it take too much heat. At first, it was frustrating to realize how far my skills had fallen.
But then, after a few hours of trying and trying again, I got my first solid bubble.
And from there, I kept working, turning and twisting, adding the extra glass I had.
Letting everything inside me — the frustration and anger and violent loneliness — out into the molten, volcanic material.
To hold something so virulent and so pretty at once was intoxicating.
So intoxicating that I’ve stopped for nothing but food, sleep, and bathroom breaks over the past couple of days. Intoxicating enough that I managed to reduce my thoughts of Lacey to only once per hour.
“That’s not my name,” I say, and there must be a harder edge to my voice than normal, because Warren tears his gaze from the glass sculptures around me and meets my eyes.
“All right,” he says. “So, what’s going on?”
“What’s going on is that you never call.”
Warren’s brows draw together, and he crosses his arms. “I did call. Didn’t want to walk in on anything…
” He trails off, as though realizing for the first time that Lacey isn’t here.
The thought makes me angry, and I hate him for reminding me.
“Max, dude, what’s happening here? Is this some sort of artistic ascension? ”
“No.” I bristle at the word artistic. Everything inside me feels raw and frustrated, like a scared and abused animal, hiding in the back of its cage and swiping at anything that gets close.
As though she can see the metaphor in my head, Dona curls around my ankles, meowing, and I reach down to pick her up.
She doesn’t come near me when the torch is going — good instincts on her part — or I’d have to lock her out of the shop.
“Oh-kay,” Warren says, running a hand through his hair and looking around. “Where’s Lacey? Did something happen?”
“It’s none of your business,” I practically growl. I can hear myself and know that I’m being unfair to him, but I can’t help it.
“Fine.” He sighs, kicking at the ground. “I don’t know what happened between the two of you, and it’s obvious you’re not going to tell me. But, for the record, I think you’d be an idiot not to fight for that woman, Max. It’s clear she’s helping you come out of your whole… thing.”
Energy bolts through me, and I stand up from my spot, nearly knocking over two of the stupid sculptures. I reach out and catch one, hand lingering, mind filling with images of how good it would feel to throw the damn thing to the ground, letting it shatter in a million colored shards.
“I never fucking asked for this!” Dona squirms away and out of my arms, not liking the yelling, and I lower my voice, staring at Warren, wanting nothing more than for him to go away. To leave me alone.
For a time, I started to let myself believe that I was better off having him in my life. I started to let myself believe that I could have something the universe has been denying me for a long time.
I used to think the worst thing that could happen was losing someone you loved.
But, with Lacey, I’ve realized there is something worse than that: choosing someone, and them not choosing you back.
Some sort of sick fucking purgatory where I don’t know if she’s staying or going.
I can’t stand the indecision, and I’d rather be alone than have to deal with the fact that, this time, someone I love might choose to leave me on their own, no car accident necessary.
“Never asked for what, Max?” Warren asks, sounding half-angry and half-confused.
I waver on the edge of decision. I could back down from this. I could sit down and drop the confrontation. I could let him in, rely on him the way I know I’m supposed to rely on friends.
But it’s never worked that way for me before. Maybe I’m an old dog, and it’s way too late for me to learn new tricks.
“I never asked for you, coming up here, poking and prodding at what I’m doing just because you can’t make your own shit.
And I’m tired of everyone acting like there’s something wrong with the way I want to live my life.
I want to be alone, and no matter how many times I tell you that, you can’t get it through your thick skull!
I’m tired of being your little sweatshop in the mountains. Find someone else’s stuff to sell.”
With that, I plop back into my seat, firing up the torch again, willing the numbing sound of it to fill my head so I don’t have to think about this anymore. My hands shake as I pick the glass up, but I ignore the feeling.
I ignore how my body already thrums with regret about the things I’ve said to him, and I ignore the urge to take it all back.
“You know,” Warren says, his voice soft but loud enough to be heard over the torch. I’m not looking at him, but I see through my peripheral vision that he pauses at the doorway, that he might be shaking his head. “Wanting to be alone is one thing. But being an asshole is another.”
He must have left at that point, because the next time I look up from the botched glass job in my hand, the doorway is empty.
Something inside me releases, flooding out, and I turn, grabbing the nearest sculpture and pushing it just hard enough that it wobbles, teeters, pauses for a moment on the threshold, then tips over and explodes into the exact tiny, glittering shards I knew it would.