Chapter 37
Thirty-Seven
Gavin made the glass. Every last piece.
Nancy started from the beginning—he and I reading in those too-tiny chairs all those years ago—and it snowballed from there.
Gavin started blowing glass when he was nine and got serious about it in high school.
Gavin has commissioned work on display across the southeast.
Gavin got accepted for a residency at Corning but didn’t go because his brother died and he wanted to help his parents and be with Addie.
Gavin’s shop—called Hot Sand—isn’t filled with mowers; it’s filled with equipment to make art. Out of glass.
“It’s a demanding schedule,” Nancy finally said. “And Addie’s his world.” She nodded toward the shed. “But that’s what he loves.”
Then I got him. Fully.
Gavin wasn’t a young dreamer with no follow-through, he was a young dreamer with the ability to let dreams go as needed. It took my breath away.
“Since you’ve been back in town is the most he’s been out there since we lost Greg.” Nancy’s gaze went over the vines to the shop surrounded by cars, the dull buzz of music stretching to reach us.
“Why didn’t he tell me?” I asked.
“Why do men do anything?” She chuckled. “You’ll have to ask him.”
And now, I’m in the shop as he moves, directs, and of course, laughs, with confidence. He’s never unsure of himself, but he owns this place—the space—and the attention of every person in this building.
Gavin’s clearly in charge, the rest of the people—assistants as Gavin introduced them—swarm around him like ants on a hill, programmed to know exactly what to do.
Sabrina, the woman with the mic, narrates what’s happening. “Gavin’s at the furnace doing what we call a gather,” she explains.
Gavin sticks the pipe into the opening of a large oven that glows with hot, liquid glass. When he pulls it out, there’s a lava-like ball on the end.
Sabrina keeps talking, throwing out words like marver and glory hole—that one makes me laugh—but I am transfixed.
By him.
His command of the room and the ease he works the glass.
Two people have pipes connected by a single blob, walking away from each other to stretch it apart like a string. Sabrina tells us they’re pulling cane—thin pieces of glass that will be used to add detail.
Gavin’s back at the furnace, gathering more glass before holding the pipe upright so the excess drips into a bucket that hisses with steam. He puffs on the end, then he’s at the chair, calling to an assistant.
Sabrina says, “Gavin’s using jacks, a common glassblowing tool used to manipulate the glass.”
The jacks look annoyingly like the tattoo he let me believe was hedge trimmers. The tattoo that’s now flexing as he moves and making my mouth water. Bastard.
One of the assistants gathers more glass then rolls it around in what Sabrina calls frit, granules of glass used to add color. He takes it to the marver—a stainless-steel table—rolling it across the surface before pressing his blob onto the piece at the end of Gavin’s pipe.
One end has been worked into a narrow point, and now there’s a torch in the mix.
Gavin wipes his brow, and his shirt clings to his back with sweat. Two of the assistants take long drinks from water bottles and Gavin says something to make them laugh.
The whole time they work, I can’t stop thinking that Gavin is a glassblower—no, an artist. And I didn’t know.
Only maybe I did.
Maybe I didn’t want to see or believe he was so much more than met the eye.
I asked him the first day here and he said no—only he didn’t. He asked me if that’s what I thought and it wasn’t, so I wrote him off.
Like an idiot.
It’s easy to tell myself I can’t be with someone because they don’t have any drive. But him chasing a dream to near perfection and letting it all go because his family needed him?
That’s not a detriment; it’s a testament.
And fucking annoying.
“Miss Reese!” Addie barrels toward me with Nancy not too far behind her.
“How was your first rehearsal?” I ask, wrapping my arms around her.
She barks like Toto then turns her attention to Gavin. “What’s he making?”
I shrug, following her gaze to him. “No clue.”
For the first time since he started working, he looks at me with a smirk that turns to a grin when he sees Addie next to me. He points at her and mouths, You’re a glass bubble.
Glass bubble, of course. I dismissed it as a weird inside joke.
Addie mimics the movement but repeats the words out loud, sounds rounded the way she makes them with a huge smile on her face.
And there’s that emotion I hate, making my chest ache and eyes burn.
“Something else, huh?” Nancy says.
I nod.
“Greg and Bud loved watching,” she says, her eyes glued on her son. “Hours and hours just sitting here while he worked.”
“I can see why,” I admit. His movements are God-given.
Addie asks for juice, leading her and Nancy to weave through the crowd to the refreshments.
Gavin’s movements get smaller, more precise, and Sabrina shifts to telling the crowd about the history of glass and answering questions.
In my ear, the breathy whistle of an ocarina makes me wince.
“Don’t you have community service hours to fill?” I ask dryly.
Banyan lets out a pleased sigh. “It makes sense Fire Lady would fall for a man who wields it.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not falling for him.”
That’s not a lie because it’s already happened.
Banyan pauses mid-blow of his ocarina “You need to be more like the grape seed.”
Sabrina explains the difference between clear and colored glass while Gavin and his team blast the piece at the end of the pipe with a torch.
To Banyan I ask, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Banyan frowns. “Do you ever listen? Do you see the world?” He points to his eyes then taps the tip of his crooked nose. “You’re samsara wrapped in Wall Street, you know that? Stuck in the wheel.”
I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth. “Stop.”
“I’m going to say it again for a little refresh,” he says, not stopping. “The seed wants to sprout, then the sprout wants to grow. The plant wants to be a vine, then the vine wants love so it can bear fruit.” He gestures with his hands, like, ring a bell. “It keeps changing.”
“And?”
“And?” He’s aghast. “Have you learned nothing, Fire Lady? Same soul. Same life. Different goals. Written in the sky not in stone. Evolving.” He pauses, bringing the ocarina halfway to his lips before pausing.
“And my O-dar’s saying you won’t be able to follow suit and fix”—he gestures at the length of me—“all this, until you acknowledge what you want and get tickled by a love stick.”
My nostrils flare. “What does that have to do with anything?”
He drops the ocarina to throw his hands up, outraged. “Sometimes I wonder why I even bother with you.”
I smirk. “That might be the first time we agree on something, Banyan.”
“Alrighty, folks,” Sabrina interrupts through the speaker.
“Looks like they’re finishing up now.” A man wearing two Kevlar gloves cups the piece as Gavin taps the pipe to break it free.
“Stu will walk by on his way to the annealer, but you have to look quick because every second matters. The difference between a few degrees is astronomical when it comes to cooling glass.”
I glance at Gavin, who’s giving congratulatory high fives to his assistants before pulling his glove off then taking a sip of water.
Stu comes into view, as Sabrina says, “This might be a first in the hot shop. A glass slipper.”
Around me, the crowd applauds, and across the shop, Gavin gives me a smug look.
There’s no fighting my smile.
Even when Banyan blows into his ocarina.