“Get it together, Aspen,” I murmured, staring out the front window and sniffing back more tears. This feeling… this loneliness had been around for a while, except now? Now it was raw and aching. The chasm left behind in the center of my chest at the loss of literally everyone I held dear was killing me slowly.
“One day at a time,” I whispered. “You’re doing the best that you can with the hand you’ve been dealt.”
I repeated the positive affirmations the social worker had given me and they just didn’t work anymore. I felt like I was drowning, like there was no more coming up for air and I didn’t know what scared me more – the prospect that I had literally lost everything inside of a month’s span, or the deep-seated feeling of apathy that was creeping from the darkest parts of me and had me so thoroughly bound up.
I sighed, struggling within myself and finally gave up.
Enough of this. I was tired, so damn tired. I set my tea aside, switched out the lamp and went to bed.
I wish I could have slept a solid twenty hours like I had a few times since, well, everything, but I had to work the next morning.
There were certain perks to owning your own business, but there were a lot of drawbacks, too. My biggest drawback right now was that I needed to be there.
I couldn’t let my business crumble. I had to keep going, but it was hard, so unimaginably hard right now. I didn’t have anybody who understood, or who I could talk to anymore. I’d been on my husband’s health insurance and he’d switched jobs after the break up. I don’t know if it had been just to kick me off of it, I mean, I don’t think he was that spiteful.
I sighed and went to bed, waking up just as tired as when I had laid down.
The weather was better, at least. I mean, it was still crisp, but the skies were blue and the leaves were changing as fall battled it out with these last dregs of summer. It was so Pacific Northwest in that you needed to layer. Cold in the mornings, misty and foggy, but by the afternoon, highs in the seventies.
Plus, it was always warm in the back of the shop with all the kilns firing unfinished pieces.
If it was one thing my mother and I had been close on, it was for our mutual love of pottery. Otherwise, our relationship was fairly strained. Copper and I both agreed, it was like we carried too much of our father in us and for some reason… our mother hated him, but we never knew why, precisely.
It wasn’t like he was around. He’d ditched us when I was just a baby and never bothered to look back. Copper was two, and pretty quickly it was apparent that he needed to become the quote, unquote man of the house.
He really came into the role when I was five and he was seven and he nearly shot an intruder when Mom was working a late shift at the diner. That was back when we lived in Colorado. She nearly had us taken away from her and she moved us to Washington to avoid it.
Her best friend, Annie, had lived out here which is what brought us this way back in the eighties. Annie had died of lung cancer back in 2014. She smoked a pack and a half a day from the time she herself was fourteen, so it wasn’t exactly a shocker. It still sucked, though. Annie was like a second mom to me and Copper and had owned a bead shop. She’d left everything to my mother, which is how my mother had bought this place.
Copper had a home, a wife, and a daughter of his own when he died, so everything that was his was now theirs, which left me in quite a bit of limbo since half of this house was his. I didn’t worry too much for right now. His wife, Christen, was a bitch but his son, Silver, was as sweet as could be – a little darling with his dad’s smile and – God, I missed my brother.
He had always been the one to take care of the big things. I mean, I had taken care of my mom while she declined with her pancreatic cancer, but the big decisions and power of attorney and all that? That had been Copper.
He’d always known what to do.
I drove myself to Seattle and my little pottery shop off Airport Way in the Georgetown neighborhood.
It sat in an old, squat, brick building just a bit down and across the street from the old Rainier beer brewery and down the block from one of the oldest bars in Seattle – the Jules Maes Saloon.
Georgetown was quickly becoming the second artsiest neighborhood in Seattle. The first always was, and always would be Fremont, but the prices to rent in Fremont were exorbitant and a little shop like me would struggle to survive.
I keyed my way in the front door, raised the blinds to let the natural light in the front windows and with a sigh, went and put my purse and jacket away and to don my clay-and-glazed-stained apron.
It was time to unload the kilns, restock the shelves, and see what pieces I was getting low on to make some more. I was almost certain I would be at the wheel churning out some more potbellied mugs – those always went fast.
My thoughts turned back to Fenris and the baby goats on his farm from the day before and I smiled. He was strange, such a mixed dichotomy of dark and light, gentle yet rough. He’d been so selfless and I didn’t feel right, like I’d not properly thanked him.
I thought about his house, and how rustic, yet homey it was. How he and his father really seemed to appreciate the simple things, and I had a sudden idea.
“You’re crazy,” I muttered to myself but I was smiling, and it felt good to do something good. As soon as I had enough mugs made to go into the kiln for a first firing, I took stock of how much room I had left and set to work on some more dishes.
I liked working the wheel. It allowed my mind to click off and for me to just coast for a while. I didn’t have to think. I just had to concentrate on what I was doing so whatever piece I was working on didn’t come out malformed. The nice thing about clay, unlike my life, was if it wasn’t cooperating or turning out how you wanted it to? You just slapped it down into a lump and could start again.
I wish everything else was so simple.
Chapter Four
Fenris…
“Yeah, Pops, what’s up?” I pressed my cell to my ear and plugged the other with the middle finger of my other hand.
“Where the fuck you at, boy?” he demanded gruffly through the line.
“Waiting out this rain shower under an overpass, why?”
“Just wanted to let you know, the stray kitty you picked up at the bar last week was back. Left a couple heavy-ass boxes here for you.”
“Shit, yeah?” I asked surprised. I hadn’t heard from Aspen and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been massively disappointed by that.
“No, I’m making it up,” he said dryly. “How far out are yah?”
“Twenty more minutes if this shit would settle to a dull roar,” I answered. I didn’t mind riding in the rain but when it came down this bad, it wasn’t a question of my riding but of citizen’s driving. I didn’t want to get slammed into by a cage or worse because they couldn’t see my ass for the road spray. So, when it hit a certain threshold, I pulled my ass over to wait it out a few minutes so shit could settle down.
“Fine,” he grumbled.
“Well, open ‘em up if you’re that damn curious,” I said laughing.
“I can wait,” he said and with a harrumph, ended the call on me. I laughed again and tucked my phone away. The rain wasn’t exactly letting up, but my curiosity was getting the better of me, so goggles down, I fired my bike back up and cautiously pulled back into the flow of traffic on 18.