Page 58 of Something Good
Unable, or maybe unwilling to process any of it, I shut my laptop and walked out of my studio and into my bedroom. The rest of the emails and paperwork I’d planned to work on today would have to wait. I quickly changed out of my joggers and into jeans, boots, and a T-shirt, then grabbed my leather jacket off the hook and made my way down to the garage.
Bypassing my Charger, I stepped over to my Suzuki SV650 motorcycle and pulled off the cover. It had been too cold so far this spring to ride her, but the sun was finally shining today, and I had a need to get out on the open road, open the throttle, and let it all go.
I rolled out of the city, turning onto the county highway that would take me to my shop just outside Brinkley, about fifteen minutes down the road from Astaire. I allowed my mind to open and contemplate the situation I now found myself in.
Rafi had told me Will was back in Omaha, but with half a million people in the city itself, not including suburbs and outlying areas, I’d thought the odds of running into him were low. I’d figured it was more likely I’d run into him in Astaire or, hell, even Brinkley.
I wasn’t ready.
It had been ten goddamned years, and I still wasn’t ready to see him. Images of the only boy I’d ever loved rolled through my mind one after the other in rapid succession, like a highlight reel of both the best and worst days of my life. I’d given him up. Hurt him and myself in the process. Had pushed him into claiming the life he’d always been meant for while I’d stayed and tried to pull myself out of the ashes.
Had he done it? Had he gotten his degree and built a career? Had he found a partner to love him the way he deserved?
When I’d cut him off and pushed him out of my life, I’d hit rock bottom. It’d been even worse than those days following Charlotte’s abandonment. I hadn’t eaten or gotten out of bed, and I’d nearly gotten fired from my shitty Walmart job after missing three shifts in a row. But after Jimmy’d come to me sobbing with worry over the state I was in, I’d ruthlessly put the grief away, shut that part of my life down, and turned my focus to survival.
What would it do to me to see him again? Would I be strong enough to survive it?
I pulled into my shop, parking my bike out front and setting my helmet on the seat. My “shop” was really an oversized shed I’d built three years ago on five acres of property I’d purchased at auction. The garage had eight hundred square feet of spacefor the various machines, equipment, and materials used in my sculptures, and last year, I’d added a small apartment out back for those nights I got so involved in a project that I lost track of time and needed a place to crash. There wasn’t anything fancy about the building on either the inside or the outside, but it wasmine, and I was proud of it.
I walked inside and flipped the light switch, hanging up my jacket and crossing over to the desk where I did some of my sketching. I needed to get started on the hospital commission, but that wasn’t the only project I was working on at the moment.
Large projects like the one for the hospital only came once or twice a year, and while they brought in a sizable commission, I couldn’t depend on them as my entire source of income. I’d also never been able to completely shake the fear that I was one step away from homelessness, so I supplemented with smaller commissions and sold pieces at art fairs and farmers’ markets during the summer. I used the winter months, when my business was typically slower, to build my inventory of those smaller pieces, and with my first festival coming up next month, I needed to add to my stock.
While I was capable of producing some fairly large sculptures, such as the one I’d be creating for the hospital, the pieces I designed for these festivals needed to be smaller and more easily transported. I typically had some abstract art pieces available in various metals and paint treatments, as well as a collection of wildlife ranging from birds in flight to wolves on the prowl. Most were things that would appeal to the mainstream buyer, as this was a business, after all, but I usually included a couple of higher-value passion pieces as well. These were things I created simply for the pleasure of creating them, and if they happened to sell, then that was even better.
Today, I decided I wanted to work on such a piece. It would be the perfect thing to lose myself in while my brain puzzled overthe situation with Will. I’d found over the years that the process of creating, of taking pieces of metal and bending them to my will, had been the outlet I’d needed but hadn’t had as a kid. I could lose myself in the process and allow my brain the freedom to work through problems in my subconscious.
Today’s project was one I’d been itching to start on for a while but hadn’t been able to get the drawings completed to my satisfaction. I’d finally finished them a couple of days ago, but today was the first opportunity I’d had to make it out to the shop and get to work.
The next several hours passed in a blur as I worked on what I hoped would become the top of a coffee table. Strips of steel were bent and welded in long lengths side by side to resemble the movement of water as it tumbled over a stone creek bed. It didn’t actually resemble anything like that at the moment, but I could see in my mind’s eye how it would look once I completed the welds, smoothed out the metal, and added texture and dimension. When finished, I’d attach a sheet of plexiglass to the top so the surface would be flat and usable, but the metal would give the illusion of movement and depth.
Satisfied with the work I’d completed for the day, I took a step back and stretched, removing my helmet and gloves, and picked up my phone to check my messages.
Jimmy had sent me a couple of messages, mostly stupid shit the kids had said or done at school, but otherwise, there wasn’t really anything of note. He’d been radio silent regarding his relationship with Steven, which usually didn’t bode well. I was worried, but I knew from previous attempts that if I pushed, he’d shut me out even more. I hoped that if the time came and he needed me, he wouldn’t hesitate to call.
I pulled off the rest of my safety gear, grabbed a bottle of water from my mini fridge, and sat on the stool at my drawing desk. I opened my emails, scrolling back to the one that hadcome through this morning from the organizer of the hospital fundraiser, noting that Will’s contact information had been included. I now had his phone number. Would I use it?
On impulse, I saved the contact information into my phone and tapped into my photo album. I wasn’t a picture guy, so the majority of the pictures in my album were those I’d taken of my artwork to send to my PA for posting on socials, but I scrolled to the earliest pictures I had and found the only one I’d kept of Will. It was a selfie Will had taken just a few days before the breakup. We’d been sitting on the boulder at our spot in the woods, and before I could stop him, he’d leaned over and given me a wet kiss on the cheek while snapping a photo with his phone.
The picture was slightly out of focus and off-center, and I had one eye shut against his goofy assault, but when he’d texted it to me, I’d saved it to my photo album and added it to my favorites. And even after the breakup, when I’d deleted his number and shut everything related to Will out of my life, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to delete the photo.
Clicking back into my contacts, I scrolled to Will’s name and assigned the picture to him.
33
WILL
A coupleof days had passed since the charity event, and I was no closer to figuring out what to do. A part of me wanted to go through with the lesson I’d won in the auction, if for no other reason than to satisfy my curiosity, but a weaker part of me wanted to pretend the auction had never happened. To consider the money a donation and bail on the lesson entirely.
But something had compelled me to bid on that item, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with a real desire to learn to weld. Something about Sammy’s art had spoken to me in a real and visceral way. If an artist poured his soul into his work, was it possible that soul could call to me from his art in the same way it called to me from the person?
And what kind of fantastical nonsense was that? Souls calling…good grief, I needed to get some sleep.
Frustrated, I turned over in bed, flipping my pillow to the cool side and readjusting the covers as I tried to get comfortable. Goldie snorted beside me, turned around on the bed, and laid back down with a sigh, as if to say, “Get it together.”
I closed my eyes, but moments later, they popped right back open. I pulled my phone off the charger, groaning at the timeon the screen. It was after three in the morning, just three hours before I had to be up to get ready for work. I unlocked the screen, intending to do some reading on my Kindle app, but I noticed a little red bubble indicating I had a text message waiting.
With my brow furrowed, I tapped into the app, surprised to see a message from an unknown number.
