Full Tilt (Full Tilt #1)(37)

A short silence fell. He glanced down at me and the eyebrow went up. Laughter burst out of me and I elbowed his side. I loved hearing him talk about his art. Art I knew nothing about, but was so incredibly beautiful, even strewn all over a table in pieces.

“Okay, show me,” I said. “I’m dying to see how you do this. You can work and entertain me at the same time.”

He looked thoughtful for a minute, then nodded, as if answering a private thought.

We went back to the main floor of the hot shop. Jonah grabbed one of the stainless steel pipes from a rack on the wall and I took a seat on the bench with the two rails.

“I’m going to need that,” he told me. He pulled a chair from the opposite wall and set it up for me near the bench.

“Are you going to make something for the installation?”

“No,” he said. “A small piece. To sell at the gallery. I think a perfume bottle.”

“I love pretty perfume bottles.”

“Do you?” he asked, his face turned away, as he put one end of the pipe into the larger of the two furnaces, spinning it in his hands, back and forth, all the while. When he pulled the pipe from the furnace, a small molten sphere clung to the end, about the size of a tennis ball. He went to the stainless steel table and rolled the glass over it, back and forth until it resembled a thick arrowhead, then put it into the smaller furnace, like he was roasting a marshmallow over a campfire. The fire inside this smaller furnace glowed ten times as hot as the larger one that held all the melted glass.

Jonah rolled the pipe in his palms over and over. Sweat had broken out over his neck and biceps, and I watched those muscles move as he worked.

“Kacey?”

I tore my eyes from his arms. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Color?” He carried the pipe with its glowing arrow of glass to a shelf full of trays. I kept a safe distance from the torch in his hands and saw that each tray was filled with crushed bits of glass in various colors.

“Go ahead,” he said.

“Purple,” I said solemnly. “For Prince.”

“Good choice.”

Jonah pressed one narrow side of the glowing arrowhead shape into the tray of violet-colored crushed glass. Deftly, he turned the pipe, and pressed the heated glass down on the other side. It looked spongy as it picked up the glass bits. With two streaks of purple crumbles now clinging to the melted glass, Jonah took the pipe to the small furnace, always rolling the pipe in his hands. When he pulled it back out, the crushed glass was melted down.

“Why do you roll the pipe back and forth?” I asked.

“If I don’t keep it moving at all times, the glass explodes into a searing hot mess of liquid pain that scorches all it touches within a twenty-foot radius.”

I crossed my arms and gave him a dirty look.

“It keeps the gather centered.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re a smartass?”

He grinned. “A few people. Once or twice.”

I had to agree with Lola—he was pretty damn adorable.

I took my seat in the chair and Jonah put the far end of the pipe to his mouth and blew a short breath into it.

“That glass is blown,” I said, laughing.

“If you think that’s funny, the small furnace is called a glory hole.”

“For real?”

“For real.” He sat on the bench with the metal rails. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Dawson.”

“Can’t. It likes it there.”

Jonah smirked at me, his eyes warm. He sat facing forward on the bench, like sitting a horse, and set the blowpipe along the rails so the glowing ball of glass was in front of him. He used the rail to roll the pipe with one hand and took up a wooden ladle from the bucket of water. The glass hissed and sent up steam as he cradled it in the wooden ladle, rolling them together so the arrowhead shape became a small sphere.

“When did you know this was what you wanted to do?” I picked up a pair of tongs that looked like they were made of two knife blades. “How does one fall into glass blowing?”

“By drinking my weight in beer and whisky shots and almost getting arrested for drunk and disorderly,” he said. “Which, in Vegas, is no small feat I might add.”

“Okay, this I gotta hear.”

“On my twenty-first birthday, a bunch of friends and I got drunk and went casino-hopping. We gambled and drank and then drank some more, until I was pretty wasted.”

“I’m trying to imagine you drunk and can’t do it,” I said. “Which really isn’t fair, all things considered.”

“You’re a much prettier drunk,” he replied, his eyes meeting mine. “All things considered.”

I felt the blush climb up my cheeks, and Jonah cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he said. “My best friend, Oscar, was the ringleader of the whole expedition. He had five casinos on the itinerary, followed by a strip club.”

“A strip club? For shame.”

“It wasn’t my thing, to be honest,” Jonah said. “But I never made it there anyway. We staggered into the Bellagio and I lay down on the floor in the middle of the lobby and refused to get up.”

“The floor?” I clapped my hands together. “This makes me feel so much better about puking in your limo. Please continue.”