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“Now blow. Harder.Harder…”
It was adorable, watching Aiden’s face turn each successive shade of bright red. He inhaled one last time then closed his mouth around the blow-tube. I was too slow to stop what happened next.
“N—No wait!” I stammered. “Notthathard!”
The thick glass bulb at the end of the tube inflated quickly like a balloon, stretching itself to a near paper-thin consistency. I thought for a split second he’d created something fragile and beautiful. But then it burst, collapsing in on itself in a heap of molten red slag.
“Aw shit,” Aiden groaned.
He’d gone too far, as I’d seen thousands of students do before him. In trying his hardest — or perhaps in his quest to impress me — he’d simply flown too close to the sun.
“And you do this all day?” he asked, wiping his brow. “You let students shatter their own dreams?”
I laughed and patted him consolingly. “Not always,” I chuckled. “Sometimes they actually do make something.”
Aiden frowned back at me playfully, and for a moment I thought he might flip me off. Instead he turned his attention downward.
“Look,” he said, kicking around pieces of his past four failures. He picked one up: a hardened swirl of tri-colored glass that had formed a knob-like shape as it cooled. “I made a doorstop.”
I started a slow clap for him, as the sound of something shattering resonated across the shop floor. I giggled.
“See? You’re not the only one.”
It was fun, taking him to work with me for the day. He’d sat back and watched me teach for a few hours, and then he’d wanted to try. I’d given him a crash course in glassblowing between classes, with me working as his assistant. So far, no dice.
“I think you’re going a little too fast,” I told him smartly. “Biting off more than you can chew.”
“Yeah, well I don’t want to make amarble,” he sneered. “That’s lame.”
“Everyone makes marbles at first,” I told him. “Think Eddie Van Halen playedEruptionthe first time he picked up a guitar?”
He eyed me shrewdly and slicked back his hair. Aiden’s face was glistening with sweat. It made him even hotter, in my eyes.
“You have to make six or eight marbles, then you try a bowl. Then you do a vase. Then after that maybe you do something bigger, but you have to learn the basics first.”
“Do you fill the bowl with more marbles afterward?” he asked, handing me the blow-tube.
I took it and used it to poke him. “Wise-ass.”
“Alright then teach,” Aiden said, setting his hand on his hips. “Marbles next time.” He mopped at his brow again. “Got any other pro-tips for me?”
“Yeah,” I chucked. “Don’t stand next to the two-thousand degree furnace when you don’t have to.”
As much as I was picking on him, it was damned sweet of Aiden to come with me today. I’d returned home from Iceland late last night. He and Connor had been there to greet me with warm hugs and drive me back from the airport. They’d taken me home, fed me a late dinner, and tucked me safely into bed.
I still wasn’t caught up on sleep by the time I left for work today, which was primarily the reason Aiden tagged along. “You can sleep in the car both ways,” he’d said, “while I drive.”
“And what about during my shift?” I’d asked. “Are you just going to roam the City, or…”
Shrugging, he’d only smiled. “Maybe I’ll join one of your classes. You could teach me how to blow glass.”
He hadn’t, but only because I’d told him not to. As one of my students, Aiden would’ve been too much of a distraction. Instead, I took the break between classes and showed him a few things. And by a few things, I basically showed him how to shatter almost everything we touched together.
“When’s Elliot coming back?” I asked out of the blue.
Aiden stepped even further away from the furnace and removed his gloves. “Dunno,” he said. “He has several meetings lined up now that the Iceland thing fell through. London. Marseille. Munich. He could end up going to some or all of them.”
“What happened in Reykjavík?” I asked.
