An Afterstory from Find Me, Book Three

Jeremy pulled into Sky’s driveway at nine o’clock sharp. He knocked softly on her door and was rewarded with a fully done up, vivacious woman to spend the day with. 

“Shall we?” he offered a hand to his lady. 

“We shall.” She took his hand before grabbing her keys and throwing a knapsack over her shoulder. Realizing she still needed to lock the door, she said, “Um, I need my hand back for a second, please.”

She locked the door and he opened the car door for her to get in. She threw her bag into the back, noticing an old-fashioned picnic basket with a brightly colored Pendleton blanket rolled up alongside it. Hmm… romantic. He’d even looped the car seat belt through the arm of the basket, no doubt to keep it from moving if they had to stop suddenly. Hmm… practical, and safety conscious. 

Settling in, she took in the car as he walked to get in on the driver’s side. It was clean, smelled like pine trees; no doubt recently spruced up, there must be an air freshener somewhere in here. A fresh new bottle of Evian sat on her side of the drink holder. A bag of fruit snacks was tucked into the side pocket of the door. And he brought snacks? How in the world did he know I love these? Perhaps he had seen the wrappers at work?

Pulling out of the drive, he glanced at her before looking all around to make sure it was clear. 

“I’m so glad we are doing this.” Jeremy said, before reaching for her hand and finding a comfortable spot to rest the pair. 

“Me, too. This will be fun. I haven’t been to the beach for a while.”

“ I mean this,” he held up their hands and gave her a squeeze. “I’m so lucky you came along, I just can’t imagine life without you now.”

“Well, there is still a chance you won’t want me, once you get to know me more.”

“ I doubt it- so far I love everything about you.”

“You haven’t heard me sawing logs at night.” she joked.

“Can’t wait.” he countered back.

They settled back into a nice but not sweaty hand hold. It felt natural, a part of some bigger plan.

“Lincoln City is a straight shot, so I thought we’d start there. Maybe we can dip our toes in the water and see if there are any tidepools we can poke around in?”

“Sounds great! I didn’t get a room anywhere in case you changed your mind, no pressure you know. We can be completely spontaneous with the day. I did bring some munchies back there if we get peckish, but that can also wait, since I put an ice pack in there. Whatever we want.”

“You thought of everything.” A man with a plan, sigh. 

“ Would you like a coffee? I can stop somewhere.”

“I’m okay, let’s get to the ocean. I love being there, listening to the water, smelling the sea air.”

“I hope you aren’t horrified by my hairy toes. But my nails are short and my feet are clean.” Jeremy cowered.

Sky laughed and laughed. “Now that I know to look, I will one hundred percent be checking out your toes.” She laughed harder, and out came the surprising and undesirable snort which only made her laugh harder. 

“Listen, I’m going to have to pull this car over if you don’t get a handle on that,” he joked. 

They both laughed harder, and he reached their joined hands to his face and kissed her on the back of her hand. “What fun you are.”

They settled into a quiet comfort and Sky looked out the window to take in the scenery. Miles and miles passed of beautiful conifers were punctuated with the white-colored trunks of aspens and poplars, that were showing off their best in the autumn season.

There were other cars whizzing by, with families arguing no doubt, on the way. “Are we there yet?” Sky speculated, remembering back to her earliest childhood days. 

As they crested the pass, Sky noticed the blue of the sky growing larger- an uninterrupted expanse that told her they were close.

Hwy 101 is a relic, epic in its job of connecting Mexico to Canada all throughout the most western states. Landslides take sections out but somehow it is always there, doing its most important job of getting people from each beach town to the next. It is the lifeblood of the businesses, hotels, bed and breakfast inns that pock each side, one with the most impressive and expensive view, the other side wishing for it.  

“Want to stop in any of the shops?” Jeremy asked, breaking the silence.

“Sure. Can we stop at the Lincoln City Glass Center? I have always wanted to stop and watch the artists make their pieces.”

“Yeah, that sounds like fun.”

They pulled into a public parking lot and strolled their way into the studio. 

Glass cases lined the storefront windows, a menagerie of pungent colors acted as a kaleidoscope when walking along the rows. Each glint of sunshine that poured through the windows accented a different aspect of the piece than Sky had noticed before. 

Each piece being unique, there was no way to make them the same,  being done by hand, one artist at a time, one batch of glass at a time. They were as different as the people walking around in the shop. Yet all of it made sense.

She stopped, captivated by a magnificent and magnanimous octopus. The head was formed with waves of blues, greens and specks of purples. An inner glass netting of sorts added visual texture to the head and made it look almost real. Its tentacles sprung from its undersides in organic bursts as it sat stably and regally over a splay of smaller starfish in varied hues. Each of them had different colored shards inside that were placed organically by the movements of the glass enveloping each of the colors. 

Sky bent to look closer, coming eye to eye with the creature. She was awestruck at the detail. 

Jeremy sauntered over and glanced at the price tag to see if it might be a good gift for his new lady love. 

“Seven hundred dollars, whoa!” he whispered under his breath, but loud enough for Sky to hear. 

“Well, could you do it?” she answered back in her regular tone.

“I mean, no. No way.”

“This octopus shows what years of learning, trial and error, passion and expertise look like. I mean, no one would be paying us forty dollars a bottle for a nip of grape juice, right?”

“Touche. It is a work of art, it’s true.”  

Sky continued to meander finding her way to the windows overlooking the studio space in the back. 

“Would you like to make something?” asked one of the staff milling about.

“What, really? We could?”

“Sure, the options we offer don’t take super long to do and it is all hands on. You will make your masterpiece and then it will need to sit in the annealer overnight to cool slowly. It drops the temperature of the glass slowly so it will be less likely to crack with the extreme difference in temperature.” 

“Fascinating. Let me see if my “beau” wants to stop and do this.” 

Sky using the word “beau” was new; somehow “boyfriend” felt too juvenile for whatever it was that they had going on. She only wanted to check with him because they had planned to spend the day together and this would turn into a longer stop than maybe he had in mind. If she was by herself, she would have signed up straight away. 

She wandered her mischievous little self over to her beau. “Hey, they said we can actually make something here of our very own, using their tools and they teach us, would you want to do that?”

“Heck, yes, that sounds awesome. Let’s do it!”

Sky and Jeremy walked over to the counter to sign up. 

They were shown options they could pick from and colors that they could choose for their do-it-yourself project. 

Funny that both Sky and Jeremy chose to make a heart. They were each given an instructor and they geared up with safety goggles.”You are lucky you didn’t have open-toed shoes on, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to take you in the back.”

“Even luckier,” said Jeremy’s instructor. “We had a cancellation just now; we are usually booked out. Best to get a reservation.”

“Good to know,” said Sky, giddy for what was about to happen. “For next time!”

Sky walked off with Kelly to make her heart, and Jeremy and Steve wandered off closer to what would soon be referred to as a “Gloryhole.” 

“Let’s lay out the colors you want to have for your heart. We can spread them out on this stainless table, so when we are ready we can glom them onto the clear glass we start with.”

Sky chose frits of blue, green and a lesser amount of white. 

“How will it look when we are done? Do we have any idea?”

“I mean not at first. I’ve been doing this for a long time and it really is a skill to know how to work with the colors and layer them. But honestly, every single item that comes out of our shop is gorgeous, I have never seen anything ugly in glass in my life.”

Kelly pulled a long metal rod out of the furnace and walked over to a larger box furnace to attach a glob of glass to start the process. “I’m doing this part because it takes a bit of skill to add the molten glass onto the putting rod to get started.”

“Sure, sounds good. That looks hot.” 

Kelly explained, “Keep your hands behind this spot here, because we will be putting this in and out of the gloryhole which is heated over two thousand degrees.”

“Woof!” said Sky, paying close attention to the imaginary line Kelly pointed to. 

“So we always want to have the glass somewhat hot, so we will be going back and forth quite a bit here, in between these two areas. We also need to be communicating with anyone around us so we don’t accidentally burn anyone.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

“Here, you hold this and we will go over to the gloryhole to warm it up enough to add the frits of colored glass that will really make it shine. You want to spin it at a good rate while it’s in there so it doesn’t fall off in the furnace. We will add one color at a time, then reheat and then do it again until all the colors are incorporated.”

Sky walked with the rod and molten glass glob over to the metal table sprinkled with frits. 

“You want to lay the blob onto the glass and roll it along the line of glass picking up the pieces, then we will go and heat it up again.”

“Okay.” Sky was riveted to the task. She followed each instruction and was so in tune, she didn’t even register that Jeremy was across the studio. 

With each section of the glass attached, Kelly guided her into a chair and handed her a “block” which was a wooden cup-like tool with a handle to keep the hot glass away from her but be able to run it inside the cup to smooth the surface. Then back to the gloryhole. 

“Next we are going to pull one side down to make the bottom tip of the heart; for that we use diamond shears that allow us to pull without cutting the glass accidentally. 

Sky pinched the diamond shears onto the bottom and pulled into a perky full tip.

“Back to the gloryhole,” Kelly said. 

There really were a lot of steps to this, Sky thought, but it made sense. Each instruction was given matter of factly and was easily understandable. 

“Okay, for this next part, we are going to make two lobes, so we are going to cut into it with this special tool.” Kelly handed a new tool to Sky. “These are straight shears; they will make the divot at the top.”

“So I just pinch it here, opposite of the tip part?”

“Yeah, that’s perfect, cut in as far as you want, then…”

“Back to the gloryhole,” they said in unison. 

A laugh was shared. There were only a couple more steps. 

Sky stole a glance over at her beau. She liked what she saw. Jeremy was up for adventure- a real positive. They had started the day with no plan and a plan was unfolding for them on this trip, and potentially in their lives.

“So we are going to flatten out the cut edges and round them out with this tool- this is called a ‘tag’.” 

“I am learning so much! This is fun!”

“Well, come by anytime, we are always running the furnaces. Even in the winter we are nice and warm in here.”

 After softening the lobes into rounded shapes, Sky headed over to the gloryhole without being told. 

“Nice, you already knew.” 

Kelly appreciated her star pupil’s efforts. “The second to the last part is that we are going to flatten the front of the heart to make it more like what we show and promise. For that we are going to push the top part into an insulated surface, then back to the gloryhole and smoothing again with the tag, before we start the process to remove it from the rod.”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, we are going to have to get that off of there.”

“Keep it going for a second in the hole, yes, keep it spinning, we don’t want it to change shape at all. I’m going to get the last few tools. Okay, ready.”

Sky was handed another tool, this one looked like some bulky tweezers. 

“This is a “jack.” We will pinch right here where the glass heart connects to the rod, slowly, working it looser so when we tap it, it will fall off.”

“Fall off! I don’t want to break it, no way.”

“I’m going to catch it, no worries. You hit the rod when I see it’s ready with the back part of the jack and the piece will drop into my insulated gloves. We do this all the time.”

Sky trusted the process. 

Dink! 

Her heart fell happily into the safety of the gloves, and Kelly placed the piece, still in the gloves, over on a table, “We have this hump here, but I am going to press our studio logo stamp into it, and the hump from where it was connected to the rod will disappear. Voila!”

With a quick whisk, the stamp was applied, and Kelly ran the piece over to the kiln or annealer to cool slowly over the next eighteen- to twenty-four hours.  

Sweat beaded on her brow. Sky finally took a big breath and let it out. 

“Wow, that was seriously the coolest thing I have done in a while.”

“Glad you had fun. I am excited to see what you think of it once it’s cool.”

Jeremy made his way over to the two women, “That was so fun! I have never thought about doing anything even close to that, but I would do it again for sure.”

The two said their goodbyes to the artisans and went to the car to grab the picnic basket. 

“Well, I guess we kind of need to be back here tomorrow, you know, to pick up our hearts.” Sky teased.
“I suppose you are right. It would be irresponsible to drive all the way back to town, when we can stay somewhere around here and lower our carbon footprint.”

“Yes, it’s most responsible for us to find a place around here. Or at least on the coast.”

“Hmm, yes, maybe venture a tad south?”

“Like minds. I just happen to know a great place we could stay: The Sylvia Hotel in Newport has author-themed rooms available, and they happen to have a room available tonight.”

“What? How do you know?”

“I called and reserved the John Steinbeck room while we were off using the restroom back there.”

“You minx!” Jeremy joked. He was actually quite happy she had made the move. Now he wouldn’t have to wonder if he had jumped the gun with her. He didn’t want to mess this up.”

“I mean it was a book that got us together, right?”

“Technically, yes.”

“Tally ho.”

They enjoyed their snack on the beach and not once did Sky make fun of his toes. 

Lord knows there would be plenty of time later for that in their new life together.

~