Something jostles me out of my memory and I open my eyes. I’m startled to find that my cheeks are wet and my nose is running. I swipe under it with the back of my hand, sniffling.
“Are you okay?” Ryan mouths at me.
I nod and motion for him to continue, but he sets his machine to the side, takes off his gloves, and then wheels his chair close to me. He uses his thumbs to wipe the tears from my cheeks.
He takes a deep breath and arches his brow at me, like he wants me to do the same, so I do.
He exhales, and I do too.
We go through this pattern no less than ten times, his autumn eyes staring into mine the whole time.
“Better?” he asks.
I nod. “Much.”
“Memories, or pain?”
“Painful memories,” I admit.
He nods like he understands. But there’s no way he could. I carry so much guilt that sometimes it feels like it’s going to sweep me away in a big, dark tide. Like the waves on the beach knock you over when one swoops in really hard. Only they threaten to never let me go.
He picks up his machine, puts on fresh gloves, and keeps working, looking up at me every now and then to be sure I’m okay. I watch the top of his dark head, and my gaze falls on a tattoo on the side of his neck. It’s a cloud in the shape of a dog, and it makes me smile.
He sets the machine down and looks up, catching me grinning. “What’s funny?” he asks.
“That tattoo makes me happy,” I say. I point to his neck. He covers it briefly with his hand.
“My dog died, and the day it happened, I saw this in the clouds. So I drew it and had someone tattoo it so I could keep it forever.”
“It’s beautiful,” I tell him.
“So are you,” he replies. Then his face goes pink again, and he looks away.
Heat creeps up my cheeks and I suddenly find it hard to breathe.
He grins when he turns back to face me. He points to my arm. “What do you think?”
“Are you done?” I ask.
“For today, yes.” He looks closely at my face. “Do you like them?”
I get up and walk to the mirror, staring at the seagulls that represent my parents so well. I look closely and I see that he has made the wedding bands a little different from the drawing. “How did you…”
He lifts the chain from my neck and dangles the two wedding rings that I always wear in front of my face. They’re my parents’ rings, and I keep them with me always.
I lay a hand on his arm. “Thank you,” I say.
“Come back in a week and we can do some more.” He gives me a question face.
I nod. “Definitely.”
I can’t even begin to tell him how much I appreciate what he gave me, because I’m drowning in my own emotions right now. I feel like that tide is going to sweep right over me.
He silently cleans my arm and applies some lotion, and then he wraps it in clear plastic and pulls my glove back up over it all.
“Same time next week?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“I’ll come up with a good drawing by then. I think you’ll like it.”
“I already do.”
He grins and opens the curtain, and I follow him back out to the front of the shop.
I am surprised to find both my sister Finny and her fiancé getting tattoos from the Reeds. I shake my head and smile at them.
“Are you done?” Finny asks.
“That’s all we can do today,” I tell her. I smile over my shoulder at Ryan. He really does beautiful work and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.
“So, what’s Ryan like?” Finny whispers at me. She’s not signing and he’s not looking in her direction, but it doesn’t feel right to talk about him, regardless.
“Don’t talk about him like he’s not here,” I sign and say at the same time.
Finny makes a face at me.
“And he’s very nice.”
He grins at me as he reads my hands.
I take a minute to look at both Finny and Tag’s tattoos. They are so freaking much in love. They’re getting tattoos in the same damn place and they’re about one another. I never thought Finny would ever settle down, but apparently she has. And now she’s raising a kid. God, it’s crazy.
My stomach protests loudly with a growl. I lay my hand over my belly and wince. I was too nervous to eat this morning.
“You better get some food,” Paul Reed says. He motions toward Finny and Tag. “They can’t leave yet.”
I hesitate for a second, but then say to Ryan, “You want to join me for lunch?”
He shrugs. “Why not?”
“You should wait for Mark to get here so he can go with you,” Finny says, her brow furrowing. Mark is my personal security officer.
“We’ll just be next door.” I brush off her concern.
Ryan holds the door open for me and we step out into the street. Suddenly a bike messenger blasts past me, and Ryan grabs me and pulls me against him. He holds me there until I’m steady, and I can feel his heart pounding.
After a moment, he sets me back. He asks me if I’m okay, with an arch to his brow. I nod. He opens the door to the deli next door and motions for me to precede him. We sit down at a table and suddenly he flinches.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
He points to the corner where a girl is locking lips with a guy. “My ex is here,” he says.
I look at them. “How long has she been an ex?”
“Since two weeks ago.”
Okay, that’s…recent. “You don’t look heartbroken.”
He shakes his head. “Nope. Happy.”
“Should we leave? I mean…is this too awkward?”
He draws his piercing into his mouth and then signs, “If she comes over here, just pretend you don’t speak sign language.”
“But I do.”
“But you can hear. She won’t understand why I’m with you.”
“I don’t understand either.”
His brow furrows like he’s thinking. “Deaf people think deaf. It’s different for hearing people who learn sign language. Culturally, we’re not the same.”
“So she wouldn’t like me because I can hear?”
“She wouldn’t dislike you. But she would definitely question the relationship.”
“Interesting.”
He smiles and shrugs.
“So…you’ve never dated a girl who can hear?”
He shakes his head, and then looks down at the menu the waitress leaves.
I tap the table in front of him. I’m annoyed and I’m trying to bite it back. I don’t say what I was about to say, because it wasn’t terribly kind.
“What?” he asks. He must see the look on my face.
“Nothing.”
“It’s something.”
“No, it’s not.” This time, it’s me who stares down at the menu. He pulls it out of my hand.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“I don’t understand why you can’t have hearing friends.”
His mouth falls open in mock shock. “I have plenty of hearing friends.”
“But you couldn’t take a hearing girl home to meet your mother.” I watch him closely, looking for subtle clues about how my prying makes him feel.
“It would be a challenge.”
“Why?”
“Hearing people sometimes look down on deaf people.”
“I’m not looking down on you.”
He nods and holds up a finger to stop my tirade. “You might not be, but some hearing people do.”
“So, you’re judging a whole group of people by the actions of a few? Are you serious?”
“Why are we discussing this?” he asks.
Because I found it confusing? A change of subject might be a good idea at this point.
“You like working for the Reeds?” The Reeds are some of the nicest people I have ever met.
“It’s great. I get to be the token deaf guy.”
/> “What?”
“That’s why I was hired. Logan was traveling a lot with Emily, and now that she’s pregnant again, they needed someone to take his place on the reality TV show.” He points to himself. “Enter the token deaf guy.”
“That’s what you think?”
He shakes his head. “That’s what they told me.”
That makes me sad. He’s a talented artist. He’s really good at what he does.
Suddenly, someone in the restaurant shouts, “Oh my God! She’s a Zero!”
“Oh shit,” I breathe. I look around, searching for an escape route. When I can’t find one, I pull the baseball cap off Ryan’s head and jam it down on my own, and then I run out the door.
Ryan
She just stole my fucking baseball cap.
I jump up to follow her, having no idea why she took my cap. A group of teenagers races out the door right in front of me, and I see her look back, spot them, and then her eyes go wide and she picks up the pace. They cut her off so she can’t go back to the tattoo shop. She goes in the other direction.
I’ll never catch her at this rate, not with them between me and her, and I really want my cap back. My grandfather gave me that cap. It was the last thing he ever gave me. He bought it when we were at a New York Skyscrapers’ football game. My biggest fear isn’t that she’ll steal it, because I could easily find out where she lives; it’s that she’ll lose it in her mad dash to stay ahead of the mob. There’s also my fear that she’ll get hurt.
I dodge around the edge of the group, which is now running full-out. They are quickly gaining on her, so I jump over a fire hydrant and chase after her. I would love to call out to her, but I doubt she would hear me.
Finally, I pull up beside her and she doesn’t stop to look at me. Someone reaches for the back of her shirt, and I shove him back. She looks at me, begging me silently to help her. I take her hand in mine and give it a jerk, pulling her into the front of an establishment I’m familiar with. I worked there as a busboy for quite a few years. We go in the front door and I pull her toward the back. She looks at me with questions and gratitude in her eyes, and she doesn’t let my hand go.
I turn sideways to run past the owner of the club in the hallway, and he looks at me like he really wants to know what’s going on, but he smiles when he sees that I have a girl with me and motions for me to keep going. I lead her through the kitchen and out the back door, and then we walk briskly down the street. I know exactly where I am. We’re two blocks from my apartment. She tries to pull her hand from mine, but I look back, not sure if anyone will catch up with us.
I walk briskly, tugging her along, and she stops protesting after the first block. We get to my apartment building and I lead her into the elevator.
“Where are we?” she asks.
“My apartment.” I watch the numbers climb, and my heart starts to ease a little.
“Why?”
I shrug. “Why not?”
She shrugs back. “Why not?” She leans against the wall of the elevator, her breaths still coming quick and furious.
“Where did you learn to run like that?”
“You learn a lot when you have such rabid fans,” she says. “God, we love them, but they can be brutal when there’s a mob of them. We usually have security, but I didn’t think I’d need any since I’d be with Tag and Finny. Not to mention the Reeds.” She grins. “Where did you learn to run like that?”
“You looked like you needed help.”
“Thank you,” she says.
The doors open on my floor and I let us into my apartment.
“I need to call for security to come and pick me up,” she says as she pulls her phone out of her pocket.
I nod at her and start to rummage in the fridge for the makings of a sandwich. I make two—one for me and one for her—and I wrap hers in a paper towel. Then I set a bottle of water on the counter beside her sandwich and wait for her to get off the phone.
“They’re on the way,” she says. “What’s your address?”
I tell her and she relays the info.
I point to the sandwich, indicating that it’s for her. She grabs it and bites into it, her eyes closing as she chews. “Thank you,” she says, after she swallows and puts the rest of the sandwich down. “I was hungrier than I thought.”
She leans over the counter and picks at the meat on her sandwich, and that’s when I see it. That’s when I know.
Her glove has slipped down toward her wrist, and I can see what she didn’t want me to see earlier. My wrapping her upper arm in plastic after her tattoo probably didn’t help the gloves stay up any. I know she wouldn’t want me to see. I pretend to clean the countertop rather than look at it, but over and over, my eyes fall back to it.
Finally, I can’t stand it anymore.
“How old were you?” I ask.
“What?” she asks, her brow furrowing.
“How old were you?” I ask again, and I point to where her glove has slipped down.
She jerks it up, but she knows I know. “It’s not what you think,” she rushes to say, her hands franticly signing.
“How old were you?” I ask again, because I really want to know the answer.
She heaves out a breath. I can feel it where I’m standing.
“Fifteen,” she says.
“Can I see it?” I ask.
“No.” She shakes her head and steps back from me.
“I want to see if I can cover it up.”
“I don’t need it covered,” she says. “I can wear shorter gloves when you finish my upper arms. No big deal.”
“Why don’t you just let me see it?” I ask. I pick her hand up by her wrist, trying to be tender and careful.
“I don’t want anyone to know,” she says, and then she closes her eyes. But she doesn’t fight me when I start to roll her glove down. I take it all the way down to her fingers and then slip it completely off. Her fingers are long and slim and I clasp her tiny hand in my large one.
She has five slash scars across her wrist.
“What did you use?” I talk with one hand while I hold her wrist with the other.
“The jagged edge of a broken mirror.”
A tear rolls down her cheek.
“Please don’t tell anyone.” She’s pleading with her eyes.
I let her hand drop and take her face in my hands so I can look into her eyes. And then I use my voice. I don’t speak often because I’ve been told I’m very hard to understand. But for her, I’ll do it. “I won’t say a word.”
I swipe her tears away with my thumbs, just like I did in the tattoo shop. I have a sudden and irresistible urge to kiss her.
She jumps and looks toward the door. Someone must be knocking. I hand her glove back to her and she pulls it on and up.
She grabs my shirt and pulls me to face her. “Promise you won’t tell.” I have to read her lips because her hands are clutching my shirt tightly.
“I promise,” I tell her.
She looks doubtful.
“You can trust me,” I say.
She heaves out another sigh. “Okay.” She nods. “Thank you for the sandwich.”
“Will you go out with me?” I suddenly ask.
Her eyes narrow. “Why?”
I shrug. “Why not?”
“When you can come up with a better reason, ask me again, okay?” she says. She’s being sarcastic. I can tell by the way she’s holding her body.
She goes to the door, opens it and slips through, and I see two big men waiting for her in the hallway, so I know she’s okay. It’s not until five minutes later that I realize she was wearing my cap when she left.
Fuck.
My phone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out.
Samantha: Were you just with a Zero?
Me: Why is that your business?
Samantha: Are you kidding? Zero!
Me: Again, none of your business.
Samantha: You still hate me?
Me: I’d have
to care in order to hate you.
Samantha: Cold
I don’t respond to her after that and she doesn’t either. I do text Friday Reed, though.
Me: Do you have Lark’s phone #?
Tatted Bombshell (She put her phone number and name in my phone herself.): Why do you want it?
Me: Why do you care?
Tatted Bombshell: Are you being serious right now?
Me: She has my cap. I need to get it back.
Tatted Bombshell: I’ll text her and let her know.
Me: Why can’t you just give me her number?
Tatted Bombshell: She might not want you to have it.
Me: Then she can tell me that.
Tatted Bombshell: I’ll give her your number. Now go away. Bye.
I have two tattoo appointments this afternoon, so I can ask Friday again in person. I really want my cap back. But even more than that, I want Lark’s number. And I can’t figure out why. She’s not my kind of woman. Not in any way that counts.
Ten minutes later, I get a text from an unknown number.
Unknown number: If you ever want to see your baseball cap alive again, meet me at the Italian restaurant near Reeds’ at 8 pm.
I chuckle to myself.
Me: Why?
She sends me a picture of my cap tied to a string, and she’s dangling it over the balcony of her apartment.
Unknown number: I’ll drop it. I will. You have ten seconds to make your decision. Meet me or the cap gets it.
Unknown number: 10
Unknown number: 9
Unknown number: 8
Unknown number: 7
Unknown number: 6
Me: Okay okay. I’ll meet you.
Unknown number: Good. Then your cap is safe. For now.
Me: I’ll see you AND MY CAP at 8.
Unknown number: Don’t be late or the cap will pay the price.
Unknown number: And you’re buying.
I add her number to my contacts and give her a name: Pretty Cap Thief.
Then I delete it and add a different one: Hot Cap Thief.
Then I delete it again and use: Lark McCapSnatcher
I catch myself smiling like a fool and swipe a hand down my face. Then I make another sandwich and go back to work. Still smiling like a fool.