“OKAY. SO, I DON’T KNOW who all’s going to be here? But be prepared. Every now and then, some real freaky people show up.”
We sat in Sadie’s car, parked but still buckled in, staring through the windshield at the warehouse. It was a low, squat thing, stretching its way across a gravel lot in right angles of brick and metal. One of many holdouts from the historic Industrial District, located just far enough from the bright bustle of revived, gentrified studios and shops of the River Arts District to reap none of the proximal benefits.
Grey had, unsurprisingly, declined the invitation; he hadn’t exactly sought out my company in the four days since our little nighttime tea party had literally gone tits up, which made day-to-day life more than a tad unbearable. Nothing like having the boy you love literally bolt from the room the second you walk in. Nothing like checking around every doorway and corner to make you feel like an intruder in your very own home.
Plus, he’d clearly told Sadie just a bit less than not a goddamn thing. Not that I was aching to take up that particular mantle on his behalf, but the memory of that night scraped my conscience raw. She was my friend, and she trusted me—and yet, she’d been perfectly comfortable shaming me for my gardening attire, unprompted. Even though what had happened in the kitchen was a genuine accident, I had no doubt she’d find a way to throw every scrap of blame at my feet. And in the end, she was Grey’s girlfriend, not mine; far be it from me to dictate the boundaries of their intimate communication.
So I played along—I mirrored her smiles and giggles, listened in a guilt-edged haze as she babbled through our lunch period about her brother’s art, and when I’d remarked that I’d never seen a metalsmith at work before, she’d nearly lost her mind right there in the cafeteria. She’d texted Connor before I could stop her, informing him of our impending afternoon visit. He’d sent back a neutral That’s fine, which left me at once excited and unsure, nervous to intrude, yet secretly dying to see the fabled warehouse.
“So it’s not a studio?” I asked her, eyeing the selection of badly parked cars in the lot.
“More like a co-op. A workshop, for artists who don’t have their own creative space. There’s no storefront or gallery, nothing like that—oh, and it’s not open to the public. Paul doesn’t care for tourists. Or retail customers. People in general, really.”
“Who’s Paul?”
“He owns the warehouse. Or his parents do, anyway. He’s the one who brought my brother here in the first place, gave him a place to live. Taught him his trade.”
“And they really let just anyone in here? Isn’t there a screening process?”
“Yes—if a person has one hundred and fifty dollars to hand to my brother, that’s the screening process. It gets them free run of the space for a week, anytime between noon and two a.m. They can use the easels and tools and stuff, but if they want to use the finite materials, like paint or clay or whatever, they have to buy them directly from Connor or Paul. But anyway,” she continued, “those are the rules. If someone makes trouble in here, Connor will ban them for life on the spot. If they act creepy, they get banned. If they break something and don’t replace it, or get caught stealing? Banned. Don’t worry—if I see anyone looking sketchy, I’ll tap you three times on the left shoulder, like this.”
“Ow. Maybe not so hard, okay? Anyway, how bad could they be?”
“You never can tell. He’s only had to ban, like, four people, though. That I know of. We should be fine.”
We left those ominous parting words hanging in the car, and let ourselves in.
The warehouse was equal parts cool and scary, the perfect place to suddenly find yourself trapped and panting, running through the twists and turns and rooms in search of a nonexistent exit. The front room was a cavernous open space, with spotless concrete floors and industrial ceiling fixtures, rows of shelving and supplies lined up along the exposed brick walls. Sadie didn’t bat an eye as she led me through a scatter of occupied easels to a hallway, pointing out different rooms as we passed: pottery and ceramics. Beading and lapidary. Woodworking. Fiber arts—a riotous rainbow of yarns and fabrics she had to drag me past.
We found Connor in the metal room, mired in art, soldering iron in hand. He bent over his worktable, not even acknowledging us until he’d set the iron to the side, straightened and stretched, pushed his safety goggles to the top of his head.
“Hey. Didn’t expect to see you two so soon.” He stretched again and glanced at me, lifting his chin to indicate the hallway. “So? What do you think?”
“It’s amazing. A whole room for yarn? A spinning wheel? You’re lucky I even made it back here.”
“You’re into fiber?”
“Connor, that’s pretty much all I’m into. All the handmade items in my dad’s inventory? These are the hands.”
“Really?” He pulled the goggles off and faced me, eyebrows raised in approval. “Do you spin?”
“I’ve never had the chance to learn.”
“I’ll teach you. Once I’m done in here, we can whip up a skein or ten.”
“But first you need to show her how you work,” Sadie butted in. “Let Lane see the process, start to finish.”
Connor rolled his eyes.
“Ah yes, ‘the process.’ And let me guess, Sadie—you want me to demonstrate the process by making you … ?”
“Bangles. Please? Pretty please?”
“Okay, okay, I’ll make you a bangle. Singular. Settle down.”
That was a pointless thing to ask of Sadie, but she did at least fall silent. Not that her chatter would have made much difference—Connor went hyperfocused once more, as he measured and cut a length of thick, half-round silver wire, pounded texture into it, and filed the edges smooth before dropping it into a Crock-Pot labeled NONFERROUS.
“It needs to hang out in there before I can shape and solder it,” he explained to me. “But, Sadie, I want to do a wire wrap on this, string a few stones on. I can leave it plain, if you want, but—”
“No way. I love it when you go all nutty on my jewelry. Now make one for Lane.”
“Oh no,” I said, instantly awkward. “You don’t have to make me anything.”
“Of course he will. Won’t you, Connor?”
“Sure. It’s no problem. Let me grab some more wire, and—” He went quiet, studying me with his head to one side, one finger pressed to his chin. He reached over and took my hand, turned it palm up next to his, comparing the insides of our wrists.
“I think …” He trailed off, bit his lip, and squinted at our arms. “Not silver. Not with your undertones. And not a bangle. Hold on a second.”
He dropped my arm and beelined back to the shelves, pulled down about six bins and started going through them, lip still caught in his teeth. I sent a quizzical glance at Sadie, but she was grinning, nodding her head, bouncing on her tiptoes as Connor headed back to us at a fast walk, laid a square of copper sheet metal on the table. He took my hand and placed it on the copper, bent so close his hair nearly brushed my fingers.
“Perfect. Hold still.”
There wasn’t a force in the universe strong enough to budge me as he measured my wrist, then hunched over his sketchbook. I stood there, staring, until he turned his focus back to the copper, marked his measurements, and went to work on it with a set of shears.
“I’m doing a foldform cuff for you, instead of a bangle,” he said. “I won’t finish it today, but I have a design idea that’s fucking brilliant.”
“You don’t have to do this, Connor. I mean, I appreciate it, but—”
“Lane, it’s happening. You don’t have to take it, but no way am I not making this, now that I’ve envisioned it. It’ll be amazing, as long as you don’t mind—ow.” He jerked his finger away and stuck it in his mouth. “Hand me that Kleenex box, will you, Sadie?”
The edges of the world went dark, shrank to a cave to a tunnel to a slit, and all I saw was the blood edging the freshly shorn copper—fat crimson drops streaking to a smear, as Connor absently rubbed them with the side of his fist. And then my head went bad, and there were two Connors. Then none, as my eyes slid closed, the world listing gently to the side.
“Lane? Oh Lord. Connor, where’s the stool? Lane, sit here, honey. Head down.”
Someone’s hands were on me, one to my forehead, the other on the back of my neck. Another hand held my shoulder, another my hip.
“I don’t know what’s wrong. She’s been fine all day.” Sadie’s voice threaded through the fog. “Should I call Grey? Or an ambulance? Lane, can you hear me? Do you need a doctor?”
I shook my head, forcing myself back to lucidity, opened my eyes to Sadie’s flushed, frightened face.
“No, no doctor. I’ll be okay. I have”—I paused, breathing through a wave of nausea—“sort of a problem. With cuts and knives, and stuff.”
“Oh my word, honey, and I went and brought you here?”
“Way to go, Sadie,” Connor sighed. “I don’t make my living on cuts and knives, or anything.”
“Shut up, Connor. Lane, are you okay? Why didn’t you say something?”
“I didn’t know this would happen. I’ll be fine.” I swiveled on the stool to face Connor. Sadie slid into view beside him, hand still hovering near my shoulder. “My mom killed herself when I was five. I found her. Seeing people get cut still fucks me up.”
They blinked at me, two sets of the same wide eyes over frozen, parted lips. It had been ages since I’d had to see that look. When I’d returned to kindergarten after the funeral, my teacher had taken me aside and made it abundantly goddamn clear that the details of my absence should be left at the classroom door. The number of people I’d subsequently told fit on one hand’s worth of fingers, with room to spare. Not that that little tale surfaced often in conversation; it was the kind of thing most people tripped on or scuttled around, before desperately tackling a change of topic. Which, honestly, was fine with me.
Connor recovered first.
“Shit, that’s awful,” he muttered, dragging a hand through his thicket of hair. “I’m sorry, Lane. I didn’t know.”
“It’s not your fault. It just means I have a thing about sharp edges. And blood. Really only when one results in the other, but still.” My eyes darted between them, a single concern bobbing to the surface of my infinite supply. “Could we maybe not mention this to Grey? Like, in any capacity? I don’t want him bringing it up at home. Getting my dad all worried, stuff like that.”
“Absolutely, honey.” Sadie’s reply was immediate and sincere. “We won’t say a word, will we, Connor?”
“I don’t mention much to Grey in general. It stays in this room until Lane says otherwise.”
“Thanks.” It was easier than I expected, returning his smile. “Are you okay?”
“Me?” He looked genuinely confused, until I nodded to his hand, redirecting the focus along with his gaze. “What, this? This is nothing. I don’t even need a Band-Aid. Do you need anything?”
When I shook my head, Connor sat back and studied me, stared at the shears, then at his fingertip. At the remaining smudge, dark against the copper gleam.
“Well, if you’re hanging out in here, blades and blood are unavoidable. And … to paraphrase … the best way around a problem is to go right the fuck on through it. So—yeah. Let’s fix it.”
He pushed aside the shears and selected something from the worktable drawer—something long and silver, shiny and sharp. My insides turned to acid.
“When I moved in here,” he said, setting it down between us, “Paul had a pet tarantula. Scared the shit out of me, but I had to live with it, so I’d carry it around on my shoulder. To desensitize me.”
“Ohhhkaaaay. Did it work?”
“It worked in the sense that I no longer fear that particular tarantula. Just as you will no longer fear this brand-new, super-sharp X-Acto blade, once you cut me with it.”
His words took root, seethed and sprouted, choked my automatic laugh with whip-strong vines of panic.
“No. No way. Cut you?” My lungs closed off, vision wobbling at the edges once again. “You think I can hurt you like that, and be okay with it?”
“You won’t hurt me. Look at my hands.” He stretched them toward me—they were fine-boned but strong, rough with calluses, threaded with scars. “I work with knives every single day. Do you know how many times I’ve bled? Go on. I trust you.”
“This is not about trust. I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Do it.”
“Connor, I literally can’t. I—”
“Do it.”
His voice went dark and alpha; his eyes burned through me and out the other side. He was the Connor Hall of rumor—he was the warehouse itself, dark and labyrinthine and halfway to crumbled. Brimming with strange people and stranger creations.
Someone else’s arm reached for the knife. Someone else’s fingers gripped the handle, turned the blade. Took hold of his left hand, drawing it closer.
“That’s it,” he said, low. “Steady.”
When I was nine, Dad took me to a swimming hole in Pisgah National Forest—a long-anticipated day trip, cut short when I slipped and went under, got myself stuck in a waterfall. Not behind the curtain, but beneath the falls itself, trapped and blind and clawing, unable to breathe without choking. That single word from Connor put me right back between water and rock. Right back between two very different heartbeats.
“What did you say?”
“Keep your hands steady. You can do this, Lane. You’re in control.”
I touched the knife tip to the pad of his thumb, paused, looked up. He hadn’t blinked. He hadn’t even flinched. And he didn’t flinch in the next second, when I bore down, dragged it across. Felt the flesh give beneath the blade.
It was over in less than a breath, about the same amount of time it took for me to break.
He never took his eyes off mine even as my hand revolted. The knife clattered to the table, scattered drops of his blood across the surface. His good hand reached for one of mine, gripping it tightly as I wept.
“That was perfect. I’m proud of you.”
“You’re proud of me? What the fuck, Connor. You’re deranged.”
“Lane, look at me. I’m fine. It’s barely a scratch.”
“But I made it happen.” I practically tore the top off the Kleenex box as I grabbed a wad of tissues, squeezed them hard as I could around his thumb. The pressure only made it worse. “Oh God. I made you bleed. I’m so sorry.”
“Yes, you made me bleed. You did this, and look—you’re still on your feet. You’re already stronger than you were this morning. And now, you’re going to fix me.”
I stared at him, gasping around my sobs as he gently pulled his hand from my tissue grip and laid it, palm up, between us. The cut was already clotting, the bleeding slowing to a trickle. He pulled a small first aid kit from the drawer, set it between us, and looked at me. Waited.
Connor was quiet as I cleaned up my mess, soaked cotton balls bright red, fumbled with gauze and iodine and medical tape. He was quiet when I broke down again, and as he cleaned his blood off my fingertips and closed his bandaged hand over both of mine, holding them still until my tears dried up and my tremors subsided.
And Sadie, for once, was also quiet. So quiet, I’d forgotten she was even there until her voice drifted over from across the table.
“You guys,” she said, breathless as me but twice as calm. “I mean, I love y’all to death and all, but seriously? Y’all are a special kind of crazy.”