Page 132 of The Difference Between

He was the one who went through the shop and took names of tools and made them wines.

He was the one who saw me looking at the Corning program and said, “If them, why not you?”

Whatever it was, I was done.

I turned down the residency, took a job with the city, and closed down the shop. I focused on Addie and helping at the vineyard until that last good day with my dad when I told him about the offer from John. The local art guild was looking for someone to teach community glassblowing classes.

My dad was dying and wanted me to do it, but more than that, I wanted to. I’d missed it.

Slowly it came back to me. I stuck to the basics until the anger and sadness melted into acceptance in those two-thousand-degree furnaces. It took six months and Reese stomping into town in her fancy clothes and ridiculous shoes for me to start showing up the way I had before life took a turn.

Wild how it only takes one person to put a bend in the road.

Reese wasn’t wrong when she said I was a dreamer with nothing to show for it, but she wasn’t entirely right either. It’s why I haven’t told her about this part of me. I want her to want who I am today, not who I was before or who I once thought I’d be. I cut grass, I love Addie, and a few days a week, I teach people about the very same glass Reese introduced me to all those years ago.

Based on the way she’s chasing things I’m not sure I fully understand, maybe she doesn’t see that who we are and the ideas we have can start as one shape before softening into something else if we allow it. The difference between people and glass aren’t so great if the conditions are right: We bend or we break.

I was pissed she lied—pissed about a lot of things really—but the second I saw how lonely she was, I got it then. Everything about her fell into place.

But as long as she’s in Fontain, I’m not giving up, even if she did punch me and might benefit from a psychiatric evaluation. She feels what I do—I see it every time she looks at me—but she’s also stubborn as shit and frustrating as hell.

But Reese isn’t my concern right now, it’s the people who are here to watch me do what I love.

“Alright, everyone,” Sabrina’s voice calls through the speaker. “Grab a glass of wine and get settled in. Gavin will be up in just a minute to introduce the team and tell y’all a little about the shop and what he’ll be making tonight.”

Three students will be assisting me with tonight’s demo: Jimmy, a pizza delivery driver in his early twenties, Stu, a retired cop, and Janet, an art teacher from the local high school. Sabrina, a college kid with purple hair, is on the mic.

They’re in class every Saturday, but since I’ve been coming in more often, I’ve opened the shop for them to do personal projects when they want, and they never miss a Thirsty Thursday. Half the crowd is their friends and family.

I push my safety glasses to the top of my head then wipe my brow with my forearm, already sweating from the heat. I gesture to Stu, and he opens one of the large garage doors, pulling in a breeze that cools me instantly.

“Wine or rocks glass tonight?” Jimmy asks, organizing the tools.

They’re our go-to projects for these events because they’re fairly quick and showcase the basic techniques.

I swipe a blowpipe from the rack. “Wine don’t we make both?”

“Dude,” Jimmy says in a tone that makes me feel far older than thirty. “You’re worse than my dad.”

I grin then step next to Sabrina, taking the mic she offers to introduce myself and the rest of the artists, each of whom lift a hand at the mention of their name.

“Welcome to Hot Sand,” I say with a smile.

There’s a good crowd tonight, maybe twenty-five, and the ones with wine lift their glasses in greeting. As much as I loved doing this full time, I love the sense of community that teaching brings more. Maybe it is mediocrity, as Reese put it, but it doesn’t change how happy it makes me.

“Sabrina here’s gonna be talking you through the process while we work, but I want to thank y’all for coming out and tell you a little bit about what you’re looking at before we get started.” I give them my very brief history, starting with having a crush and learning to read. “I still have the first piece she gave me.” I pull the leather band out from the neckline of my shirt and show them the small chunk of sea glass I’ve barely taken off since my eighth birthday. I’ve seen Reese eyeing it, but she’s never once asked. She probably doesn’t remember giving it to me.

“Things progressed from there.” I tell them the story of me throwing sand in the fireplace to see if glass would be the result. “My mom still reminds me it wasn’t.”

They laugh.

I explain the major pieces of equipment: the furnace where we keep the molten glass at two thousand degrees, the glory hole used for keeping in-progress pieces at proper temperature, and the annealer where finished pieces cool slowly.

“Once I gather glass on one end of this pipe from the furnace”—I twirl the blowpipe—“I’ll blow into the other.” I demonstrate with a quick puff. “And that’s when the fun starts.”

“You ever get burned?” a man asks.

I chuckle. “More than once.”