The idea of not being with him, of losing our slow, lazy mornings and his hands on my skin… feels like losing a part of myself. How is it possible that another person has become so important to me in such a short amount of time?
“Lacey?” Gina asks, clearing her throat, and the triumphant tone in her voice must mean she thinks I’m stunned silent from the offer. “Are you still there?”
“Y-yes,” I say, scrubbing a hand over my face and staring at myself in the mirror. My hair is a mess from practically running down the mountain, then trudging right back up. I’m both freezing and sweating. My slippers are caked in mud and likely ruined. “I’m here. I’ll take a look at that. Thank you, Gina.”
“Anytime,” she says, chipper, surely expecting an email from me accepting the position the moment I look at the benefits they’re offering me.
What will it be? A luxury gym subscription and shares in Gaia, pet insurance for the pet I don’t have and transportation to and from work? Meal stipend and conference money every year? They could even get away with offering the newest games, delivering them to me before pre-order.
Thinking about it all — all the things that, at one time, would have elated me — feels like thinking about someone else’s life. What good is a gym membership going to do me when I’d much rather be walking through the woods with Max, working on the trail that stretches between my cabin and his?
I end the call with Gina and shuffle into the living room, staring at the little device in my hand. Maybe I should have left the damn thing in San Francisco.
Almost angrily, I press the button on the side until the power option pops up. Then I power down my phone and slide it across the floor, not quite having the constitution to throw it against a wall.
Finally letting the tears well up inside, I fall onto the couch, grab a pillow, and let myself cry into it until I can’t breathe.
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 arethese?”
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.
