The Hot Floor (23 page)

“It’s not for me. It’s for my boyfriend. My other boyfriend. So he can feel what it’s like for me and Rai.” Oh shit. Now I really had said it all. I stared at my hands, waiting for someone to say something. Great. For once, Dylan really was speechless.

“No. Fucking. Way.” Okay, maybe not speechless. “You’re screwing Rai Nakamura and Evan Truman?”

“I’m not
screwing
them. We have a relationship.” Of sorts. I was going to make them see that.

“All three of you? Man, the sex must be amazing, but I don’t much fancy the arguments.”

“We don’t argue. We discuss things.”

“Sounds like a riot,” Dylan said archly. “Christ, though. Evan Truman? Is it true that he’s got a dick like three Coke cans put end to end? What does that feel like? I bet it hurts so fucking good, doesn’t it?”

I must have been crimson by that point. Dylan was leaning forward, all his usual cool evaporated in his eagerness for a bit of gossip. Liam’s mouth twitched under his moustache. I thought for a moment it might be disapproval, until he spoke.

“Leave Josh alone. Unless I got the wrong end of the stick, we’ll get to settle all questions of size when we make this piece. Am I right?”

I nodded. “You know how?”

“Used to make them all the time. Still do sometimes. Come in at the weekend to do it. Custom pieces, you know?”

“How come you’ve never said?”

Liam shrugged. “You get so embarrassed at any mention of sex, I figured I’d best keep it quiet. Didn’t want you walking out in disgust. You’re the best assistant I’ve ever had.”

“Hey!” Dylan protested. “What about me?”

“Give it a few years and I might be willing to revise that opinion,” Liam said, his eyes twinkling, “but for now, you’re bottom of the pile, okay?”

“That’s where I love to be,” Dylan teased. “Bottom is best, eh Josh?”

Okay, now I was officially burning up—my face hotter than the crucible inside the furnace.

“Come on, then, boys. Let me teach you how to make dildos. We could make a few butt plugs while we’re at it. They’re fun too.”

Dylan’s face lit up.

“To make, I mean,” Liam qualified. “I wouldn’t know about the other.”

“Oh, come on, seriously? You make them, but you’ve never tried one out?”

Liam shook his head.

“You should, mate. They feel great, don’t they, Josh?”

Two pairs of eyes bored into me. “I…I wouldn’t know.”

“And you say you’re going out with the kink-meister? Come on, you don’t expect me to believe that!”

“Kink-meister?”

“Rai. Your boyfriend. One of your boyfriends. He’s got a reputation too, you know. Oh, Jesus Christ. How’d a sweet innocent like you end up with those two? I’d have thought they’d have eaten you up for breakfast.”

I’m sure my face had reached supernova heat, what with the memory resurfacing of exactly who had been eating who in our last pre-breakfast encounter.

“Leave the poor boy alone,” Liam chipped in, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure Josh knows how to handle them. He’s got more grit than you’d think, deep down. Determined, that’s what he is.”

“I am?”

“You can be, when you see something you want to master. It’s what makes you such a good glassblower.”

I glowed inside like a red-hot gather straight from the furnace. Determined. Yes, I could be, sometimes. I needed a bit more of that going on in my life right now. I could make things happen, couldn’t I? I could march up to Rai and Evan and tell them to make me theirs.

And I’d do it. Just as soon as I got these gifts ready for them. I’d tell them that I loved them, and that it was okay if they didn’t feel the same way just yet, but that I wanted the chance to stick around and convince them. And if that might just take the form of me becoming their plaything, their fucktoy to use as they wished… Well, then, we’d all be very happy, wouldn’t we?

My owl didn’t have nearly the same degree of sophistication as the demo one Liam made first. I’d watched him shape the gather with his jacks, pinching out ears and wingtips. I tried my best to copy his movements afterwards, but glass is a tricky mistress, as Liam often said.

“She’s lopsided,” I said when Dylan approached, brandishing the knife we use to knock finished pieces off the iron and into the vermiculite.

“She’s cute,” he said, grinning. “One eye bigger than the other is a sure-fire way to make things appealing. Haven’t you seen any
amigurumi
?”

“Any what?”

“You know, Japanese cutesy handmade toys. Like the zombie rabbit on my bag.”

I stared at the owl. “She looks Japanese?”

“Yep. And cute. Pretty fitting, I’d say, considering who she’s for.”

Liam finished up his tea and came over to take a look. “Nice job. Like the way you formed the wing tips. And the colours will be great.”

I’d used greens and creams, hoping that swirled together inside the clear glass they’d look like Rai’s beloved spider plant leaves.

“You think she’s done, then? I could heat her up again to do some more work on the feathers.”

Liam squinted and shook his head. “Less is more. The trick with glass animals is to keep them simple. Get the overall lines rather than the detail. That’s what you’ve achieved there.”

I thought about trying to even her eyes out, but Liam and Dylan were right. She was cute, and she looked handmade. Rai loved handmade stuff. The more it bore the idiosyncratic stamp of the maker, the better, and this little owl had idiosyncratic written all over her.

I let Dylan knock her off into the tray of vermiculite and carefully lifted her with the tongs to transfer her to the lehr. When the door was closed, I wondered what I’d engrave on the bottom. There probably wouldn’t be time to do it tomorrow, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a design ready, just in case. I picked up a scrap of newspaper and doodled with a pencil. I went for my usual J, but it looked lonely without the Sulis Glass stamp next to it. I drew an R next to it, using the side and cross bar of the J to make the first stroke and the top of the loop. Then I drew three strokes coming off the top of the J, so that if you turned it ninety degrees clockwise it made a capital E.

There we were, together. A symbol of my determination to make it work out between the three of us.

“Ready to make a dildo, then, boys?” Liam asked. His voice was as droll as ever, but I caught the twinkle in his eye.

“Can I make one too?” Dylan said. “It’d be so cool to say that was my first piece.”

“So long as you don’t go telling the customers that.” Liam grabbed an iron out of the fire and opened the furnace door. “Right, we’ll take a large gather for this one. Are you going to want colours swirled in?”

“Maybe just white?” I ventured.

“If you swirl it around enough, it’ll look like sperms. That’d be sick,” Dylan announced.

“I’d have thought you’d like that,” Liam deadpanned.

“’Course I do. Spunk’s gert lush. Sick means cool these days, old man.”

Liam just grinned at me over Dylan’s shoulder and began raking the surface of the glass in the crucible clean.

Liam made a perfectly beautiful-looking piece with a lovely shaped pair of balls at the base. He raised an eyebrow when I took my first gather, though. It was the same size his dildo had ended up as, with the two layers of glass and the colours sandwiched between them.

“I thought you wanted swirls too.”

“I do. I might have room for two layers of them, actually.”

Liam’s eyebrows shot up as if they were trying to catch his receding hairline.

“Way I’ve heard it, this Evan is hung like a donkey,” Dylan chipped in.

“Must be,” Liam said, giving me an appraising look.

I figured I could blame my red face on the glow from the furnace, should anyone remark on it.

The dildo came out beautifully in the end. And yes, the balls at the base were lopsided, but then again, so were Evan’s, so that was all right. I stood it up in the tray of vermiculite when I’d knocked it off the punty iron.

“Jesus H Corbett, is it really that big? I’m amazed you can sit on the bench the next day. Put it here, bro. You’re a braver man than me. I’m making mine the same size as Liam’s one. The dildo, that is.”

I high-fived Dylan and carried my glass facsimile of Evan’s crown jewels off the lehr.

I couldn’t wait to present my two men with these pieces. Tomorrow. Or maybe Sunday, after our trip to the car boot. I was going to be pretty bloody busy tomorrow, what with the big move.

After Dylan made his very first piece of glassware, a dildo that curved to the right and which Dylan proudly announced was the exact replica of a guy he used to date, Liam walked over to the furnace controls.

“Here we go, then, lads, the end of an era.” He flipped the Off button. The hush was peculiar. No humming from the control box, no rumble from the flames. “Let’s go get drunk.”

“To bigger and better things!” Liam knocked glasses with me as Dylan giggled at the toast. We were in the Hop Pole again, which reminded me of Evan. Ought to call him, I kept thinking, but whenever I got up to do so, Dylan or Liam pulled me back into my seat and demanded I drink more beer. An exasperated Shannon came to pick up a singing Liam at nine o’clock, muttering about how he needed an early night.

Emboldened by the alcohol, I gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Shanks, Thannon. I mean, thanks, Shannon. You guys are the best bosses in the world. Ever.”

Shannon rolled her eyes but smiled at me as they left.

That was when my phone rang. Evan. I answered with a cheery hello.

“Where are you?” Huh, that didn’t sound particularly welcoming.

“At the pub.”

“Aye, I can hear that. Which one? I’m coming to get you.”

“Hang on, I’m celebrating.”

“Celebrating? Jesus. Didn’t you get my text?”

“Text?” I squinted at the screen and saw the icon at the top. “Shit, didn’t hear it come in.”

“I’m surprised you can hear owt in there.”

“Hey, no need to get all pissy. ’S just a mixed tesht. What did you want?” A thought hit me like a double shot of espresso, sobering me up. “Shit, is it Rai? ’S everything okay?”

“What? Oh, no, nowt like that. We’re both fine. We just wanted to discuss summat with you tonight, that’s all.” He still sounded weary and pissed off. I heard Rai ask something in the background, and Evan replying, “No, he’s rat-arsed. Can’t even talk properly.”

I was about to argue that I could, but I couldn’t get my mouth to cooperate.

“Look, we’ll talk about it tomorrow instead,” Evan said. “Just…just don’t drink too much and get back safely, okay? And call me if you need a lift.”

“I can walk.” I swear, I didn’t mean to sound like a surly teenager, but something about Evan being authoritative with me set it off.

“Fine. Whatever. I’ll see you later.” Evan hung up on me without his usual “Bye, chuck.” I stared at the screen, wondering just how badly I’d fucked things up. But I was allowed to go out for a drink, wasn’t I? It wasn’t a crime to miss a text once in a while.

“Join me for another?” Dylan asked. His words all came out properly. Clearly not drunk enough yet. I’d make him catch up with me, though.

“Two pints of Wild Hare, and two tequila slammers,” I told the bartender. I thought I told him that, anyway, although Dylan did end up translating, so maybe it didn’t come out as clearly as I imagined.

“Now,” Dylan said, wrapping an arm around my waist, “I want details. Come on, your boyfriends. What are they really like?”

I didn’t know how to reply to that one, so I took a noisy slurp of the ridiculously strong ale, spilling a fair amount of it down my chin.

I can’t even remember how I got home.

Chapter Nineteen

I woke up on Saturday morning with the hangover from hell. Worse yet, I wasn’t lying between Rai and Evan but on their sofa. Oh. Shit.

Had I disgraced myself?

My entire head throbbed as I turned it, and something under me made an unpleasantly crackly noise. Yep, there was a bucket on the floor beside me, and I was lying on a bin bag. Classy. I suppose I should have been grateful the bucket was at least empty, but it was hard to feel grateful about anything with the way my head was punishing me. And then there was my stomach…

I got up and stumbled my way to the bathroom on wobbly legs, only just making it to the toilet in time. Puke splashed into the bowl, burning my throat on the way up. I vowed never to drink again. Ever. Except for water, and coffee. Well, anything that wasn’t alcohol.

My mouth felt like I’d been sucking on a dead rat, so I stuck my head under the tap and tried to wash the worst of the sour, rancid flavour out. I choked, splurted water out of my nose and tried not to break down into a blubbering wreck.

I wasn’t even going to look in the mirror. It wouldn’t be pretty.

After pissing a load more liquid out of my body, I figured some rehydration might be in order. Actually, that makes it sound like a rational thought. What really happened was the urge for water overtook me, and I staggered through the living room like a zombie after brains.