Page 45 of Just a Heartbeat Away

“Yeah, I swear there’s a method to my madness.”

“Oh, I wasn’t accusing you of being messy. It’s just a lot more...stuff than I imagined.”

She wasn’t wrong. There were shelves and shelves of slabs of wood that he’d benched for the time being. There were copper pipes lashed together in the corner, and barrels of more copper scraps and fittings that he usually melted down for ornamentation. There were wood scraps and castoffs of all shapes and sizes organized loosely by imagined project. And along one wall were his projects, all in various stages of completeness. In the middle of the garage were his huge, dinosaur-like machines. His band saw and table saw. His router and drill press. The last wall was covered in tools of every shape and size, some of them shiny and new and others looking damn near ancient. A thin layer of sawdust covered everything. But it was just that—thin. He might be a little messy, but he kept a clean shop.

“Well, once I start a project, I usually see it straight through to the end. But I’ve been a little harebrained lately. And my deadlines aren’t so rigid. So I’ve been alternating a few projects, working on whatever strikes my fancy that day. That dining room set is my favorite. With the Shaker chairs and the table with the beveled edge. But I like that coffee table, too. The mirror over there is giving me gray hairs. Everything has to be so exact with it.”

She had wandered over and was examining each item as he listed it. She was very quiet. So quiet he struggled not to clear his throat.

“The mirror isn’t exactly your style, is it? The metalwork is so industrial and the angles of the wood are so exacting. Most of your other stuff has a more organic, freeform style to it.”

She turned to him, a thoughtful look on her face, one hand tucked under her chin and the light catching on one of her small earrings. But as soon as she saw him, her expression morphed. Something in his face had her blushing.

“Or am I just dead wrong?”

He laughed. “No, no. You’re dead right. That piece was contracted by a very particular client. One who I will not be working with again. But I’m not exactly gonna turn away a paying customer. I just don’t like his taste. I agree. It’s too architectural for me. There are no surprises.” He walked over and whisked a hand over the top and side of the mirror, almost dismissively. “It looks exactly like the drawings I made up for him. It’s boring.”

“Surprises?” she asked as she walked over to the table with the beveled edge. “You mean like the way you sanded this beveled edge into the cut of the live edge?”

Sebastian raised his eyebrows. He was surprised she caught that. Most people wouldn’t have noticed the detail, they just would have sensed the overall tamed wildness of the piece.

“Exactly. The whole thing was supposed to be live edge. But the damn thing snapped off at the grain when I was planing it. I was devastated at first. And angry. But then I realized I could just do something a little bit different than I usually do. Give the table two sides. A polite side.” He pointed toward the side with the smooth beveled edge. “And the go-fuck-yourself side.” He pointed at the wild, knotty side.

To his delight, Via grinned at his choice of words, her dark eyes sparking and her hands jamming in her pockets. “Do you have a client in mind for that one? I feel like it would have to be a very special person who could handle all that...personality in one piece of furniture.”

He shrugged. “It was commissioned by an old friend of mine, but once the wood cracked, I knew he wouldn’t want it. I’ll work on something else for him. I think this one is meant for my house.”

He slicked a hand over the top of the table, like it was a prized stallion. It was far from finished, rough and blond in places.

“Well, it suits you. The two sides of it, I mean.”

“Lion among flamingos?” he teased her, straightening up and dusting his hands off.

She blushed, but this time there was less joy in it. She changed the subject. “I always like seeing an artist’s studio.”

“Have you seen a lot of them?”

She nodded. “Evan is an artist. Or...was. I guess I’m not sure anymore. He says he’s done with it, but he had so much talent. And a lot of passion.”

Seb picked up a stray chisel and hung it in its place on the wall, straightened a can of tung oil and tossed some dirty rags in the hamper he kept in the corner. “Oh? What kind of work does he do?”

“Mixed media. But mostly painting. Occasionally photography. He used to share a studio with a bunch of other artist friends. I spent a lot of time there and was always fascinated at how artists choose to organize their spaces. It says a lot about a person.”

He watched as she sidled around the garage, peeking in a small set of drawers, lightly touching a loose screw on the countertop, squinting at the labels on all the different glues he kept.

Sebastian followed after her, tossing the screw into its bowl, closing the drawers and chucking out one of the glue bottles that he saw was empty. “You think so? The studio says something about the artist?”

“Oh, definitely.” She nodded resolutely. “It’s almost more interesting to me than the art itself. No, no way. I take that back. But I think it sheds light on the art. I like a little window into the artist’s process.” She turned and took her lip between her teeth, her dark eyes staring at the ceiling of the garage, searching for the words. “I’ve been to MOMA, to the Met, places like that, but I’ve never really responded as much to art when it’s perfectly curated. You know, the right lighting with the right blurb, all of it lined up in perfect sequential order.”

“No?” He was intrigued. “How do you like it then?”

“Well.” She squinted, the toes of one shoe resting on the tops of the other. “My foster mother, Jetty, she had such an eye for art. And she could talk about it for days. She had a Picasso.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. A real Picasso. It was a sketch on newsprint paper. Not a painting or anything. Just two messy figures and a haphazard sun all done in orange crayon. She had it framed, of course, but she never hung it.”

“You’rekidding.”

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