I don’t sleep much. I blame Trig’s sister, but that’s not entirely fair. She didn’t make me stay out late. And she didn’t mean to make me toss and turn while dreaming of her face, her laugh, and her smile. Either way, the lack of shut-eye leaves me abnormally crabby. I’m not sure who thought it was a good idea to hike Stone Mountain at five a.m., but they were most definitely incorrect.
Paisley’s entirely too perky when I climb out of my truck at Geo’s house at four-thirty in the morning, yawning. My eyes are still burning, and her neon pink shirt doesn’t help. I rub at my face, and when I reopen my eyes, she’s waving at me like a lunatic.
“You guys ready?” she chirps.
“I’ve got my bag of stuff.” Geo pats a small backpack. As always, she looks like she just walked off the set for a skin care commercial.
Trig yawns and hooks sunglasses on the neckline of his Polo shirt.
I blink several times. “Actually, I vote we reconvene at ten a.m.”
“Cute.” Paisley bounds toward me.
“Is it just me, or is her ponytail bouncing like Rainbow Dash in My Little Ponies?”
“Dude,” Trig says. “You sound ridiculous. From now on, you need to think, ‘Would Vin Diesel say this?’ before you speak. That might help.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m comfortable with how I sound. I’ve got three sisters, and I watched a lot of My Little Ponies. Besides, yesterday a customer told me I look like a short-haired Jason Momoa, so I can pretty much say whatever I want.” I flex my chest muscles one at a time and grin at Trig. He hates that I’m ripped. “If you’d hit the gym once or twice a week, you’d look less like Tom Hanks and more like Tom Cruise yourself.”
Trig exhales in disgust and climbs into his Range Rover. “Let’s go.”
“What? No quip, no witty retort?” I say. “What’s going on?”
“Geo made him promise,” Paisley says.
I turn my head toward her. “Huh?”
She grins mischievously. “Geo made him promise to stop baiting you. I think mocking your comparison of my hair to that of a famous alicorn was borderline. Anything else would be a direct violation.”
“You’re kidding,” I say. “Geo muzzled him? Yanking Trig’s chain is the best part of my day. I’m not sure if this will make today better or worse.”
Paisley frowns. “Remind me why we’re on this date again?”
“Oh, right.” I lean toward her and drop my voice to a whisper. “Because we wanted to get them to leave us alone.”
She purses her lips. “That’s right, I almost forgot. Not that I’m upset this whole thing is a farce. You’re way too poor for me to ever date for real.”
I toss a hand to my chest. “That hurts, Pais. It hurts me.”
She shrugs. “My family has standards. What can I say? Jason Momoa man-boobs aren’t on their list, but they do require a certain level of liquidity. If I tried to introduce my parents to you, they’d lose it.”
I roll my eyes. Paisley has been joking about her family demanding she marry a billionaire for years. Not that her family standards stopped her from dating every body builder at her gym over the past eight years.
We all climb in with Trig and he drives a little too fast to the park. The hike is fun enough, but by the time we reach the top of Stone Mountain, Geo and Trig have realized it’s not a real date for Pais and me.
“Why did you guys even agree to this, if you weren’t into it?” Geo asks.
“At first we agreed as a joke, but then you two were so excited about it,” Paisley says. “We figured it might shut you up if we pretended it was real for a date or two. I didn’t realize Rob would suck so bad at faking it or I’d never have bothered.”
I frown at her. “It wasn’t my fault they figured us out. I was doing just fine.”
“You’re treating me like you treat your little sisters. If that’s how you act on a date, it’s no wonder you’re still single.” Paisley swats my shoulder before heading back down the mountain.
“Who wanted to hike this early again?” Trig asks with a groan.
“Paisley,” Geo and I say at the same time.
“Because I hate hiking,” Trig says. “For the record.”
“Mr. Outdoor Magazine himself hates hiking?” I ask.
“I like sky diving. I like skiing. I like snowmobiling. I don’t hate jogging. Climbing 700 feet in elevation in an hour and a half on your own power is crappy. And that’s the nicest way I can think to say it.”
I don’t hate hiking, but I wouldn’t cry if I could never do it again. There are lots of other ways to have fun outdoors that don’t involve as many blisters, bugs or sweaty socks. Paisley loves hiking though, and since it was supposed to be a date…
“This gets us out of Kennesaw next month, right?” I ask.
Paisley spins around on her apparently unblistered heel to scowl at me, and then she turns toward Trig and Geo, too. “You guys are a bunch of whiners, and you’re ruining this.”
“What did I do?” Trig asks. “I was just wondering who set up this delightful excursion.”
Geo grabs Trig’s hand and yanks him down the trail. “We better jog on ahead, sweetie. Let’s give these two lovebirds some alone time.”
I fall into step next to Paisley. She bumps me with her hip. “What’s up today? You aren’t usually this crappy at pretending, and those two are so twitterpated they never would have noticed if you’d put forth even a half-hearted effort. Do you find me that detestable?”
I shake my head. “I’m sorry. It’s not you at all. It’s that I actually met someone yesterday, someone I like. Probably the first person I’ve liked since. . .”
“Since Geo?” Paisley grins. “That’s exciting. You could totally have brought her today, you know. It would have been better than,” she gestures between herself and me, “this weirdness.”
I almost choke. “I wasn’t weird, and I did ask her to come along. She turned me down flat for the second time in one night and went back home.”
“Wait.” Paisley stops in the center of the trail. “Just wait.”
I glance around. “For what? Is the great Paisley actually out of energy? Or did you get a blister?”
She just shakes her head.
“What exactly are we waiting for?”
“Shut up, idiot. You have no sense of dramatic effect whatsoever. I’m stopping to appreciate the lightbulb moment I just had. You said she went back home.”
“How does that constitute a lightbulb moment?” I ask.
Paisley’s eyes lock on mine like a heat seeking missile. “You met Brekka yesterday, and she lives in Colorado.”
I open my mouth and then snap it shut.
“It’s Brekka? The girl you like?” Paisley practically squeals in delight.
“Close your mouth. Good grief, what’s wrong with you? They aren’t that far down the road.”
“It’s a trail not a road, dolt. And yes, they are. They probably ran down to the car and are making out right now.” Paisley taps her lip. “I heard she’s got an ethereal beauty, delicate like handmade lace, or the trill of a songbird.” She claps. “So, is it true? Is all of it true?”
“Yes, she looks exactly like a bird. Made out of lace. By hand.”
Paisley stomps. “You know what I mean.”
“She’s prettier than Geo.”
“You take that back right now, because I know that’s a lie. No one is prettier than Geo.”
I cross my arms. “She’s delicate and understated, and I asked her out over and over and she still left without a backward glance.” Because she’s way out of my league.
“Well, do you blame her?”
I don’t. Paisley’s right. I’m not even a college graduate. I start back down the trail, my hands stuffed into my pants pockets. I kick every rock I see. Paisley’s hand on my shoulder startles me. “What?”
“You’re mad. Why are you mad?”
“I’m not smart, I’m not rich, and a discharged Marine isn’t a catch for a gorgeous, genius heiress. That doesn’t mean hearing it said out loud by a friend doesn’t hurt. I am human.”
Paisley’s eyes flood with pity and my hands clench at my sides. “No, don’t feel sorry for me. The fact that I liked her at all is promising. It’s more than I’ve felt for anyone in a long time.”
“You’ve always loved broken things,” Paisley says softly. “It’s one of the things I admire about you. You want to fix the world, one broken-winged bird at a time.”
“First of all, she’s not broken just because she uses a wheelchair.” I shake my head. “But secondly, that’s not fair.”
“Are you sure?” Paisley bites her lip. “You never even loved Geo. You just wanted to fix your friend whose heart had cracked in two.”
“I did love her, Pais. I still do, maybe.”
Paisley’s laugh is high and clear. “If you did, you could not have hiked with Trig and Geo this morning. You’d be watching him every time he touched her. Every time they shared a glance, you’d be boiling inside.”
“That guy does bug me.”
“Because he’s displaced you as her best friend, but there’s no passion in it. You enjoy the exchanges with him, which you admitted earlier yourself. If you truly loved Geo, you’d have moved, changed your name and not forwarded your mail.”
I stare at her.
“Okay fine, maybe you wouldn’t have gone that far, but you’d be a far sadder sack than you’ve been. You were more like a little league player denied his token trophy. You wanted to fix her and another guy came along and did what you’d failed to do for four years. But now a new bird has fluttered into your orbit, and if you object to the word broken, how about a lonely bird, and you see your chance to redeem yourself. You want to befriend this one like you couldn’t befriend Geo.”
I start back down the hill.
“Trig is not going to like this at all, you and his baby sister.”
“Oh shut up, Paisley.”
To my surprise, she does. Then in another surprise turn, Trig and Geo agree to skip out on the rest of our plans and head home. After all, now that they know the whole date was a farce, there doesn’t seem to be much point.
Even without her talking in my ear, Paisley’s words ring in my ears. I do like to fix things. I run my hands over the beautiful ash in front of me. It’s an absolutely enormous slab of ash, two trees fused together. It’s a piece of inosculated ash, which is why I knew the term when I talked to Brekka yesterday. I’d looked it up a week or so before, when my dealer offered me this piece. I jumped at the chance, even though it cost me half my savings for the month.
It’s going to make a perfect wedding gift for Trig and Geo, and there will be plenty left for a few more tables afterward. Well worth it. I lose myself in work as long as I can.
“Rob, son. Turn the saw off and come talk to your Dad!”
I can barely make out the words over the headphones I’m wearing. I shut my saw off and yank them away. “Oh, Dad, sorry.”
“What are you doing in here?” He gestures around to my shop. It’s twice the square footage of my house, which is exactly what I wanted.
“Why do you care?”
Dad shakes his head. “We barely see you anymore. Your mother misses you.”
He can’t just say he misses me, because that’s not manly enough. I smile. “I’ve missed you too, Dad.”
I pull him in for a hug. “I’ll come for dinner tomorrow, okay?”
“What about tonight?”
I sigh. “I need some time for doing this as well. It matters to me.”
My dad lifts his eyebrows. “It’s a hobby, son, which is fine, but you’re letting it take over.” He gestures around the enormous shop, and I look at it as he must see it. I’ve got a thousand square feet of pieces, stacked and stored… for no one. It has taken over all my free time, and even though I have no reason to keep after it, I do. I hide in here when I’m sad, lonely, scared, or angry. I make and make things, like a bee storing honey. I do it for no reason other than it calms me, and I feel compelled to make something.
Dad may actually be right, but I don’t have to tell him that. “It’s my life and it’s my decision how much time and money I spend on anything. I’m not gambling or paying for strippers, or drugs, so you shouldn’t criticize.”
“Don’t get me wrong. It’s cute stuff,” Dad says. “I’ve never seen anyone else fire glass on top of furniture. It covers all the cracks really pretty.”
I don’t groan or correct him. But I can’t help explaining my goal one more time. “It’s not covering the cracks Dad. It’s about highlighting the fact that flaws are what make us beautiful and unique. It’s a statement to the world. We shouldn’t be ashamed of what makes us who we are, even if we’re fragile or different or strange.”
“Uh huh. And that’s really nice, too. Your mom has her coffee table on display in the formal living room for everybody to see it. Every person who comes over oohs and aahs, but that sort of oohing won’t pay the bills. You should spend less time on blowing glass and cutting wood and more time with friends and family.” Dad grunts. “At the end of the day son, this wood is never going to love you back.”
He’s right again. I know it won’t love me, but Paisley’s wrong. I don’t just like Brekka because she’s broken. I don’t think she’s broken at all. She’s a work of art. I meet countless broken people every week, people who have given up, people who need major repairs. They ask for special financing, knowing I can’t approve it. Or they ask me to forgive inexcusable behavior in the workplace. None of those people, the shattered people I deal with and manage, none of them have appealed to me, not like Brekka did.
I like Brekka because she’s unique, not because she needs my help. She doesn’t. But if one of the things that helped shape her into the unique beauty I met was her accident, well it’s an important part of her story.
I grab my dad’s arm and squeeze. “I know I said I was coming to dinner tomorrow, but I think I might not make it. And I’m going to need you to go to auction for me on Monday if things go well enough.”
My dad’s eyes widen. “Why?”
“You were right. Your advice helped me realize that I need to do something I’ve been ignoring. We sent a big shipment of cars to Colorado and I never followed up to make sure Nometry was happy with them. Vertical sales are much easier than horizontal, right?”
My dad nods dumbly. “Wait, you’re going to Colorado?”
I nod. “Tomorrow night. That way I can go see Trig’s sister first thing Monday morning.”
“Okay, well, it’s refreshing to see you taking an active interest in big orders. It seems like you’ve sort of been running things on autopilot lately.”
I nod. “You’re exactly right, and it’s time for that to change in a major way.”