Page 54 of Sully

The last guy I was close with had teased me relentlessly about my ‘old lady’ hobbies. You know, while he killed imaginary people in video games for twelve hours straight on the weekends. When I’d once said I wanted to spend my birthday doing one of those wine-and-painting classes, he’d laughed in my face and then told me to take someone else, because he wasn’t going to do that.

And here was Sully. A guy I’d just met. Setting up a craft night extravaganza for me.

“Now, listen, I’m a crafty virgin,” Sully admitted. “So all our projects are from some blog I found online. I have no idea if they’re gonna come out right or not.”

“But that’s half the fun,” I told him, smiling. “This is really, really nice. Thank you.” His only response to that was a squeeze to my hand. “Okay. Where do we start?”

“Easiest first,” he said, leading me over to one of the tables. It was loaded down with an absurd amount of beads. This table alone probably had hundreds of dollars’ worth of brand new supplies. “Jewelry,” he said, genuinely seeming excited at the prospect. “I have about a dozen bracelets I need to make for the girls for Valentine’s Day.”

“Oh,” I said, my heart sinking. “The club girls?”

“The princesses,” he said, too distracted by gathering his beads to notice the relief that moved through me.

“You buy for the princesses for Valentine’s Day?”

“Well, I usually just do flowers and chocolates. But I’m gonna add bracelets this year. Gotta remind them they don’t need no dusty-ass man to have a happy V’Day.”

“Um, you’re a man,” I reminded him as he set up rows of beads, presumably one for each princess with colors or beads he thought would suit them.

“Ouch,” Sully said, pressing a hand to his heart in faux offense. “So, what are you gonna make?” he asked.

“I’m gonna start with a bracelet too,” I said, gathering my own beads.

I was going to make something for him.

Did most men wear beaded friendship bracelets? No. But I had a feeling Sully would be one of the wonderful few who just might.

And despite never actually having any friends most of my life, I’d gotten really good at intricate beadwork friendship bracelets.

So I gathered the turquoise blue—to represent the calming feeling he offered—and the yellow—for his sunny disposition. Then I got some black and gold, just for contrast, and got to work.

“Romcom marathon in three, two, one,” Sully said as he held the remote up to the TV.

So then we made bracelets and watchedNever Been Kissed.

I held onto my bracelet once I finished it, tucking it into my pocket, not quite ready to offer it to him, so I worked on a simple one for myself as he finished up his single-row bracelets for each of the girls.

Funnily enough, I could pick out which one went to Layna, Luna, and Gracie based on the colors alone. Which really said a lot about Sully—that he knew women so well that he could associate colors with them.

“Okay. My fingers are glad that’s done,” Sully admitted. He’d really struggled with his big fingers and the tiny beads.

“What’s next?” I asked, sure I could do this forever.

“Well, a quick trip to the snack station,” he told me, waving toward a table in the kitchen that I’d missed before. It was loaded down with snacks and bottled drinks. “Then we are working on mosaic tile drink coasters. The lady at the craft store wanted me to make sure to tell you that the edges of the glass tiles are sharp,” he told me as we went into the kitchen.

“Duly noted,” I said, feeling like I was floating.

“Having a good time?” he asked, glancing sideways at me as he loaded his plate.

“The best,” I told him, meaning it.

One movie rolled to the next as we made our coasters, then moved on to the next table.

“Air dry clay. The lady at the store said that I had to get all the colors because we can’t paint until it’s dry. And I wanted finished products. I was thinking we can make fridge magnets.”

And that was exactly what we did.

Sully made a longneck dinosaur, a duck, and a margarita glass.

---