Fire and Water

  Fire & Water

  BY

  Amanda Kayhart

  Copyright © 2020 Amanda Kayhart

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without prior permission of the author.

  Cover Art by May Dawney

  Edited by Holly Schneider

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER STORIES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The idea for a hot glass romance really began in the autumn of 2007, long before I realized I had stories to tell. Visiting the Foliage Arts Festival in Stowe, Vermont, my wife and I came across tables full of hand-blown glass. All colors. Styles. Shapes. The craftsmanship was impeccable. I left that day with a business card, a bright orange pumpkin with a swirly emerald stem, and a heart full of artistic inspiration I didn’t understand how to use quite yet. But I never forgot—with the pumpkin now perched on my writing desk at home.

  Fire & Water, evolving from pure wonder and curiosity of glass blowing to a book idea, wouldn’t be possible without the folks at Manchester Hot Glass. I had the pleasure of meeting with Andrew Weill, owner and artist, in his Southern Vermont studio last spring, while he guided me through my own glass blowing experience. My gratitude goes out to Andrew for, not only gifting me that hands-on encounter with the art form, but for being so kind and generous, and providing me vital information needed to make this book the best it could be. If you’re ever in the Southern Vermont area, please visit Andrew, check out his incredible pieces, and play with some hot glass—after reading this book, I promise it’ll be impossible not to :)

  DEDICATION

  for

  DB

  Thank you for teaching me.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The sky burned red. Clouds, charcoaled. Storms in Florida never lasted long, but they always left a significant impression. From the eighteenth floor, Diane watched the tangle of traffic through the wall-to-ceiling panes of cold, wet glass. Down below, Tampa warped into a blur of bright car lights and flashing brakes. Somehow, she always knew she’d end up here. On her own. On the edge. But she fought so hard. Fought for so long to make everything work, to make two puzzle pieces meet, despite never having the right curves to fit.

  It was July. A thick slathering of humidity suffocated the city, and the central air hummed on, the cold cutting straight through Diane’s white silk blouse to her golden beige skin. She clung to herself, while the rain clung to the windows and slid down in long, silent strips. The anticipation was sickening. Toying with her gold necklace, and the single, cream-colored pearl draping her collarbone, she tried to endure the agonizing minutes with a refined composure.

  “I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” Kevin said.

  Diane flinched. His deep voice and the sharp click of the door closing, cut through the conference room. She turned on her heels. “No worries,” she said with a halfhearted smile. “I know you have a tight schedule.”

  “I do. But I always have time for one of my oldest friends.”

  Diane raised a dark brow at her lawyer. “And by that, I hope you’re referring to the length of our friendship.”

  “Of course,” he said with a smirk. “You’re only fifty. That’s far from old.”

  She rested her hand on his shoulder. “I’m glad we agree.”

  Kevin positioned himself at the head of the large mahogany table with a collection of paperwork, and Diane regarded him with a familiar admiration: purple pocket square, pristine pinstripe suit. Eggplant tie. Kevin always presented himself well; it was one of the many reasons her best friend, Maureen, fell in love with him after college—as an interior designer, Maureen had a fetish for flare. And Diane didn’t blame her. Especially in a moment of emotional duress, it was comforting being guided by someone so put together, so calm and collected, someone she trusted like family, as if he was her very own brother.

  “Have a seat,” he said.

  Her stomach boiled with nerves, and she eased down next to him before her legs gave out. It hardly helped. Her eyes sunk to the slew of documents, the final shreds of her dignity drowning in the black boldness of the ink.

  PETITION FOR SIMPLIFIED DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE.

  Diane swallowed. She cleared her wavy, shoulder-length gray hair from her face, and tore her gaze away with an overwhelming remorse. Nothing about divorce was simple, even when it was uncontested, but it still pained her. Her hands still shook, despite the moment being months—years—in the making.

  “Can I get you anything before we start?” Kevin ran his hand over his smooth, dark brown scalp, and scratched his tight beard, specs of white mingling with the short black hairs.

  “Whiskey might help,” she said with a solemn smirk.

  Diane rarely drank hard liquor, but her nerves called out for it.

  Kevin spun towards the mini bar in the corner of the room and grabbed a bottle, pouring. Diane stared out the window. In the distance, the Gulf of Mexico was nothing but a sweep of black waves and snarling whitecaps. Her stomach fed off the scene, churning like the unsettled waters.

  “Here you go, Dee.” He handed her the glass.

  “Thank you.” Diane tipped the whiskey to her lips and took voracious sips, until the bottom dried. She didn’t care if her throat hated her for it. The alcohol scorched everything along the way, and Diane relished the burning numbness settling inside.

  “I can call Maureen, if you’d like.” Returning to his seat, Kevin regarded her for a long, quiet moment, locking his fingers together on the impending paperwork. “I could put her on speaker. You know, for support.”

  Diane eyed the conference phone in the center of the table. Divorcing her wife was the final step of a long and heartbreaking journey, one that started before their official separation one year ago. And there was a time when they were all friends, the four of them. With double dates. A vacation to Cancun. And celebrations. But Kevin and Maureen quickly took sides when they witnessed Diane’s suffering. Listened to her frustrations. Regrets. Fears. Diane’s relationship with Nora, though it started full of love and happiness, was never easy, becoming overwhelmingly apparent three years ago after saying “I do”—their last-ditch, misguided effort to salvage their relationship.

  “You’re here, Kev,” Diane said, voice shaking through the sentence. Tears formed and melted her frosty blue eyes into a blurry mess, and she choked on her emotions. She started to crumble, but regained control, reminding herself she wouldn’t cry. “I can’t imagine going through any of this, if I had to endure it all with a stranger.”

  “You underestimate yourself,” he said. “Y
ou’re a strong, resilient woman.”

  “And you exaggerate.”

  Flashing his charming smile, he leaned back and gestured to his attire. “Do I seem the type to exaggerate?”

  Plucking a tissue from the box on the table, Diane dried her eyes and gave his diamond cufflinks a glance. She chuckled.

  Kevin laughed too, then gently slid the papers towards his client. “You can do this, Diane.”

  She nodded and drew in a long breath. “I suppose I best get this over with before my nerves kick that whiskey back up.”

  “I agree.” He pulled an elegant silver pen from his jacket pocket and offered it to her. “It would be like New Year’s ‘96, all over again. And I really don’t want to relive that experience.”

  Her mouth dropped open.

  He laughed.

  “Really?” Diane asked. “I’m about to end a twenty-year relationship with my partner, and you’re making jokes?”

  Kevin laughed harder.

  Glaring at her friend with a smirk, she snatched the papers up. “Apparently, the hefty retainer I paid didn’t include a professional divorce attorney.”

  “It did. It did.” He chuckled a few more times, then fixed his tie and sat up straighter. “Promise. I’m sorry.”

  Focusing on the task at hand, Kevin began reading, but Diane couldn’t help the couple of giggles that escaped her own lips, as he ran down the requests on the petition. Filing for divorce was terrifying, especially having to embark on a new journey midway through her life. She didn’t know what was around the bend or how she wanted the rest of her life to look. It wasn’t change that scared her as much as it was the looming uncertainty of it all. But as she listened to her marriage unraveling—line by line, item by item—a small, hopeful feeling found its way into Diane’s heart, and her lips perked up with a subtle smile. Because, as long she had friends like Kevin Cook keeping her upbeat, keeping her laughing, she knew once the divorce finalized, she still could be laughing and happy in the future.

  With or without her wife.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Do we have to go?” Diane said, throwing herself on Maureen’s white leather sofa. She watched the palm leaf ceiling fan, whirling twenty feet above her, and moaned. “I don’t live here anymore.”

  Not that Diane ever felt at home when she lived in Gulfport. Their massive house on the St. Pete peninsula was Nora’s style. Not hers. Diane was flea market chic, a proud middle-class woman through-and-through, waitressing her way from undergrad to her MFA. She only inherited money after she met Nora, and even then, becoming the girlfriend of a wealthy corporate investor required a lengthy adjustment period. The lavish dates. Expensive gifts. Designer clothes. It was a lot to handle. Looking back, Diane didn’t know why she started dating a woman like Nora to begin with—one date simply led to another, until years later their relationship led to the Golden Palms Yacht Club—the most exclusive gated community in all of Pinellas County—despite Diane’s outspoken repulsion to its extravagance.

  And that was the whole problem.

  Nora constantly made decisions without consulting her wife, putting Diane smack-dab in the middle of that hoity-toity, high society life she loathed. Which was why finding herself back in that neighborhood, for another god-awful get-together, made Diane’s skin crawl. After signing the divorce papers with Maureen’s husband only a few hours prior, all Diane wanted was to hop in her ‘68 Cobra, work the engine, and hightail it home as fast as her Goodyear tires could take her.

  “Don’t you just want to stay here, share some merlot, and binge-watch Grey’s Anatomy?” Diane asked Maureen, throwing her arm dramatically across her eyes. If there were two things their thirty-year-old friendship flourished on, it was the brilliant Shonda Rhimes and glasses of bold California reds.

  “I do, babe,” Maureen said. She slipped on her favorite heeled sandals from across the large living room and eyed Diane sprawled on the cushions. “But the girls still consider you a neighbor. Plus, if we don’t go, they’ll just show up here looking for you.”

  Diane groaned.

  ‘The girls’ were members of the Golden Palms Women’s Association. A few of them Diane enjoyed spending time with, but the majority were an uptight, snobby bunch made up of the neighborhood’s emotionally stunted housewives. The social group was Maureen’s thing not Diane’s, but she joined reluctantly after moving down the street with Nora. Diane wanted to be a supportive best friend, after all.

  “And I’ll tell you what,” Maureen continued, strutting across the floors and rounding the corner into the hallway, “if I have to choke down any more of Stephany’s bland guacamole, I swear to God . . . I don’t know how that woman fucks up avocados every time, but she does.”

  “The neighborhood is throwing me a humiliating divorce party, and you’re worried about guacamole?” Diane scowled. “It’s nice to know where your priorities are.”

  Shaking her head, Diane peeled herself off the sofa and paced around the open space, admiring the posh furniture and art, and pops of color—bold blues and vivid magentas—splashed around the room. Living in that upper class community certainly wasn’t Diane’s flavor. But Maureen loved the taste of anything boisterous and colorful, and there was plenty of square footage in that contemporary home to let her wild, stylistic cravings roam free.

  Diane studied Maureen at the hallway mirror, sliding yellow hoop earrings into her ears. Despite living so many years in the South, Maureen retained her flashy, midtown Manhattan motif from her youth—flaunting it beautifully. Canary yellow was Maureen’s color, and vibrant accessories drew out her unique Irish-Portuguese features: long, rich-russet hair, sun-kissed skin, and olive eyes. Diane laughed to herself, looking at Maureen’s matching cocktail dress. With her skin tone, Diane couldn’t pull off the shade of a dying dandelion without looking jaundiced. Maureen, however, looked phenomenal, dazzling in the distance like a ray of sunlight.

  Maureen, though the same age as Diane, had almost the same stunning, angular face and perky breasts as she did their freshman year at Clemson. And Diane was happy for her. Genuinely. Besides, she was never the type to worry about aging or wrinkles or crow’s feet. In fact, Diane flaunted the soft slate colors in her hair as they steadily outnumbered her toffee blonde strands throughout her forties. Her new hair color gave her soft cheek bones and aquiline nose an edgier vibe, and highlighted the distinguished professor look she possessed for most of her adult life.

  Laughing, Maureen slid next to Diane and rested her head on her shoulder. “I’m looking out for you, Dee. You know that.”

  “I know,” Diane sighed. “You and Kevin both. I don’t know where I’d be without you two.”

  “Let’s see . . .” Maureen tapped her lips, “you’d be a Bryan Adams groupie, living in that ugly Ford Fiesta of yours, getting drunk off Bartles and Jaymes.”

  Diane leaned away with an insulted scoff. “That was one concert.”

  “Still, it was really touch-and-go there for a while,” Maureen smirked. “You really had your sights set on marrying him.”

  “It was the eighties. Who didn’t?”

  “Me. I was all about Prince.”

  “You certainly have a thing for men in purple.”

  Maureen laughed. “True, but admit, if you realized you were a lesbian back then, forget Bryan Adams, you would’ve followed Joan Jett to the ends of the earth. I know you’ve got a kink for those edgier girls.”

  “Maybe I should’ve run off with Joan Jett,” Diane said, snatching her clutch off the table and ignoring her friend’s taunting jab. “Things would have probably worked out better.”

  “Things will work out fine.” Maureen smiled softly. “Just sometimes, babe, you’ve got to hike through a bunch of bullshit until it does.”

  “Such as mingling with the obnoxious neighbors?” Diane said in a playful tone.

  “That’s right.” Maureen pointed a stern finger. “Who are going to kill you for wearing pants tonight, by the way.”

 
; “I don’t care.” Diane eyed the same black slacks and cream blouse she wore to the law office earlier. She tilted her chin up, a sudden wave of defiance shot through her. “It’s my divorce party, I’ll wear what I want.”

  “Ooo.” Maureen grinned. “I’ll take another helping of that carefree attitude, Miss Hollenbeck.”

  Diane flashed a bright smile and followed her best friend out into the fresh Florida air, closing the door behind her.

  ***

  As nightfall approached, the sky flooded with rich, romantic papayas and pinks, and stenciled in tall, shadowy palm trees behind the Gulf side neighborhood. Any other night, the atmosphere would have been a Floridian dream—beautiful, hot, and breezy—the same one which called Diane and Maureen to the Sunshine State to begin with, all those years ago. But as Diane walked down the sidewalk, past the row of spacious stucco homes and glistening Land Rovers, she was drenched in sweat. It wasn’t from the humidity, because Lord knows, she was accustomed to that. No, Diane roasted in the heat of humiliation. Embarrassment, as she trudged towards the party, and there wasn’t any amount of tropical breeze that could’ve extinguished the heat of failure, burning through her veins.

  Their trek through the neighborhood was quick, and after a few minutes, they came upon the sprinkling of landscaping lights splashing on Delinda’s home. Its cream façade and terra-cotta roof rose in the hot white lights, and Diane took a deep breath, taking it all in. Her ex-neighbors had good intentions—margaritas and mingling to celebrate her single life—but being stuck at that party, with some of their Percocet, tequila, Botox-infused faces, was the last place on earth Diane wanted to be. To her, divorce wasn’t an occasion for hip country music, coconut shrimp, or casual cocktails. She came from a Christian home in South Carolina, with two loving parents, whose marriage lasted for nearly fifty years, before they passed away. Now, that was something to celebrate. That was a happily-ever-after, blissful fairy tale Diane could’ve lifted a glass to—not her own depressing tragedy her friends were toasting to that night.