Page 50 of Now That It's You
“You’ve never been in the gallery, right?” he asked.
“Right.” Meg turned and bit her lip. “After—well, I just thought I might not be welcome.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “How about I give you a tour?”
“I’d love that.”
She sounded like she meant it, which made Kyle’s heart swell. He watched her tuck a curl behind one ear, and he noticed the earrings she wore were a pair he’d made for her one Christmas long ago.
He swept an arm out to the side. “As you’ve probably guessed, you’re standing in my work space now. This is where I do all my planning and sketching and welding and sawing and tearing things apart so I can start again.”
“Do you only work with metal now?”
“Mostly, but I integrate wood sometimes or even glass.”
“Usually big sculptures?”
“A lot of those, but I still play with jewelry sometimes. There’s a whole line of mixed-metal flowers I sold for a few years, and those have become collectors’ items in some circles. I’ve even tried my hand at a couple swords with Damascus steel.”
She smiled. “Those are probably a little sharper than the ones used for LARPing?”
Kyle grinned back. “Sure, but they’re no match for marshmallows.”
Something about the shared memory seemed to shift the tension between them, which was odd. They had plenty of shared memories from a decade of family connection.
But they didn’t have many that were theirs alone.
Meg tore her gaze from his and let it travel around the hodgepodge of art that lined the edges of his workspace—an unfinished sculpture of a tractor, a big sheet of punched tin, a box of old railroad ties he’d been meaning to sort through.
“Does everything you make here go into your gallery when it’s done?” she asked.
Kyle shook his head. “Nope. Some of it’s commissioned by private collectors and some of it’s going into galleries in other cities. And some of it’s yet to be determined.” He toed a spare piece of steel on the floor at his feet, wondering what it would be by this time next year. “That’s the beauty of doing this kind of work,” he added. “Sometimes you don’t know how something’s going to turn out.”
She looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “That is the beauty.” She turned and took a step forward, then reached out to stroke a tentative hand over a half-finished T. rex sculpture made from pieces of an old chain-link fence. “You know, that’s true of you,” she said, her hand moving over the dinosaur’s neck while her gaze didn’t quite reach his.
“What’s true of me?”
“The fact that you don’t know how something’s going to turn out.” She shrugged, eyes still on the sculpture. “I remember getting to know you that first year Matt and I dated. I was fascinated by the notion of having two artistic brothers in one family when I can’t draw a stick figure to save my life.”
He laughed. “I’m kinda hoping there’s never an occasion where you’ll need to draw a stick figure as a lifesaving measure.”
She glanced at him and smiled, but he could tell her mind was still drifting down that path of memories. Back to those early days when Matt had been this big-shot photographer showing off his star-studded portfolio and his photo credit in Sports Illustrated and his hot new girlfriend. Meanwhile, Kyle had still been trying to figure out how to pay for a box of Cap’n Crunch.
“I remember meeting you that first time,” she said. “You were this grungy guy in ripped-up jeans playing guitar on the street corner to earn money for art supplies.”
“Considering how badly I played guitar, I think I made enough to buy a box of pipe cleaners at the Dollar Store.”
She took her hand off the dinosaur and moved on, stepping closer to a copper piece he’d started two days ago. He still didn’t know what it might turn into, but at the moment it bore an uncanny resemblance to a toboggan.
“I remember you asking Matt for twenty bucks to get your power turned back on,” Meg said, stroking a hand over the giraffe. “Matt was worried about you freezing to death in that crappy little apartment, but all you cared about was getting your electric band saw running again.”
“First piece I sold, I went out and bought a cordless saw. Problem solved.”
Meg laughed and drew her hand back from the toboggan. She looked at him, and Kyle had the unnerving sense she was staring straight through his eyes and into his brain. “Did you ever think you’d end up here?”
“Yes.”
She looked at him. “Really?”
