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ONE

ROMILY

For three hours, the piece behaved.

Then it didn’t.

The furnace roared at the back of Romily’s studio, the music blasted loud enough to get her fined if the city ever sent someone who cared, and the gather on the end of her rod glowed that deep, molten orange that meant the glass was listening to her for once.

Her studio took up an old warehouse two streets into the arts district — brick, steel beams, a concrete floor a couple decades of glassblowers had scorched soft before she ever got her hands on it. It smelled like it always did with the furnace cranked: hot metal, dust, heat sharp enough to taste.

The playlist blasting through the rafters had strong opinions about heartbreak and even stronger drums. She hadn’t chosen it on purpose. It had never been turned off since March. She’d stopped hearing the music around the same time she stopped hearing her own heartbeat. She chose not to examine what that meant today.

She was three hours into a wall piece for a boutique hotel chain that wanted “ocean, but make it luxury” — her words, not theirs, though she suspected they’d nod along if she said it to their faces. Blues that shifted to green depending on the light. A shape that read as movement without literally being a wave, because she’d tried an actual wave once, and it had looked like a swimming pool mishap. The client had not been thrilled. The client had, in fact, sent an email with the subject line “re: concerns,” which was corporate for we need to talk. Romily had learned to dread that phrase more than almost anything else in her professional life, including tax season.

Rent was due in nine days. She needed this piece. She’d already burned through this month’s margin for error. Twice. The margin had staged a small, quiet protest.

She turned the rod steady, reaching for the paddle to true up one side, then the jacks to pinch a waist where a waist needed to go. Tweezers for the rim. Shears to trim the excess before it cooled wrong. Her hands knew the motions so well they didn’t ask her opinion anymore. Along the north wall, the shelf held the survivors — pieces that hadn’t cracked, warped, or decided at the last possible second to grow a personality. Today’s piece was not going to join them. Today’s piece was headed for the graveyard under the workbench, alongside a collection of past disasters she refused to throw out of pure spite.

“Behave,” she told the glass. It never did. Neither did the jack tray, which had wandered too close to the bench again, or the shears, which had opinions about being sharpened on a Tuesday. She talked to all of it anyway, mostly out of spite.

It didn’t behave.

The wrongness hit her wrist before the sound reached her ears — a shift in the weight, subtle and off, like a held note going flat. Then the crack itself: short, sharp, a complaint she’d heard often enough over six years to recognize on contact and not often enough to stop hating. The gather folded in on itself over a few unhurried seconds, like it had somewhere better to be. Eleven hundred dollars of glass and six hours of work turned into a lump with all the personality of a doorstop. The music kept playing. It didn’t care. It never had.

Cool. Great. Love that journey for me.

She set the rod down before she did anything with it she’d regret, and stood there breathing air that had started to smell like burnt metal and bad decisions. She poked the ruined lump with one gloved knuckle, half expecting it to apologize. It didn’t. Glass never did.

Jessa hit the door at a dead sprint. She must’ve heard the crack through the wall, because she skidded into the room already mid-diagnosis.

“That was the Alvarez piece.” She grabbed the doorframe like she needed it to stay upright. “The one that’s pre-sold. The one where the client already has Feelings — capital F — about the exact shade of blue.”

“I know.”

“The account’s currently—” Jessa didn’t finish. Instead she made a small, strangled noise that communicated the number better than the number would have.

“Don’t say it.”

“Wasn’t going to. I was going to say we’ve been upgraded. Uncomfortable to send help.”

“Is there a good broke?”

“There’s the broke where you eat rice for a week. Then there’s the broke where you consider selling a kidney on principle.”

“We’re closer to the kidney.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Silver lining, kidneys grow back. Probably. I didn’t actually check that.”

“Please don’t check that.”

Romily eyed the wreckage on the marver — her worktable, on a good day — like it might confess if she waited long enough. She waited. It said nothing at all. Typical. “I could tell the client it was insurance fraud.”

“That’s not remotely how insurance works.”

“I know. Not a good joke. Buys me a few seconds, though.”