Holding Her Hand

Ryan nods. “I was. Shockingly. Stupidly. Irrationally. Jealous. Like, stop my heart jealous. Like, someone just stole all the air from the room jealous. Like curl up in a ball on the floor and suck my thumb jealous.”

  “You were?” My belly clenches in the best way possible.

  “Yes.”

  “So this thing we’re doing, it’s more than just playing with your cap?”

  “I thought I made it clear that this was going to get serious when I invited you to meet my parents. Sorry if I didn’t.”

  “Be really clear, will you?”

  “I want to date you, and only you. I want to kiss you, and only you. I want to make love to you, and only you. But even more than that, I want to be the one who makes you smile, and laugh, and be happy. When you’re sad, I want to wipe your tears, and when you need a break from your responsibilities, I want to provide it. And I want you to meet my mother.”

  “Wow.” I can’t even speak. “What if she hates me?”

  “She won’t hate you, but she won’t approve of us either.”

  “Do you care?”

  “She’ll come around.” He stares at me. “I already told her all about you.”

  Be still my galloping heart. “You did?”

  “Yes.” He still doesn’t break eye contact.

  “Are you getting a tattoo today or what?” Emilio calls from the other side of the curtain. “Or are you just going to keep up the lovey-dovey bullshit?”

  I growl and Ryan’s brow furrows.

  “Emilio says we should get on with the tattoo.”

  He looks down at his watch. “Yes, we should. I have another client at six.” He pulls out a piece of paper with a drawing on it. “You want to see it?”

  I look everywhere but at it. “I trust you. Just put it on.”

  “You don’t want to see it?”

  I shake my head. “I know it’ll be perfect.”

  I’m giving him a daunting responsibility, I know, but I feel confident about this. About his ability and the way he understands me.

  “Do you mind if I take some before pictures?” he asks.

  “Why?”

  “Just for me. I promise not to share them with anybody. I like to compare the before and after shots when I work on scars.”

  I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t see why not.”

  He pulls out his phone and snaps pictures of both my forearms. Then he grins at me. “Ready?”

  I nod and wiggle in the chair because I’m so excited.

  Ryan applies the stencil to my forearm, and Emilio steps behind the curtain. He takes one look at it and then he starts to blink hard and clears his throat.

  “Is it bad?” I ask.

  “He knows you already,” he says, his voice heavy.

  “I think he does,” I say quietly.

  “Trust me, Lark, he does. He knows you better than anyone ever has.”

  “I haven’t known him very long, Melio,” I say. We talk out loud, which I know is rude, but I need some reassurance that what I’m feeling is okay, that it’s real.

  “The heart has a tendency to get acquainted quickly,” he says.

  “I thought that was just a penis and a vagina,” I counter.

  “That too,” he says with a chuckle. “But the heart, that’s the important part, and that boy might just fill up all the space in yours. The hole that was left by your parents, and the guilt that took its place… It’s time to fill that up with something new, Lark.” He sits down beside me and rests his elbows on his knees.

  “I’m ready,” I tell Emilio.

  “You finally are,” he says softly.

  Ryan starts his machine, and I wince as the needles begin their journey. Ryan smiles at me in reassurance, and I listen to Emilio as he tells me stories of when we were all younger. They’re things I can’t even remember, but Emilio has every event stored in his head like a filing system, and he can spit stories out any time. It’s what made him such a good songwriter, once upon a time.

  Any time Emilio tells you he can’t remember something, you know he’s lying. Through his teeth. But it’s hard to stay mad at him, because he does it for us. Because he loves us.

  Next, he’ll threaten to maim and dismember Ryan if he does anything to hurt me. He’ll probably involve body parts no one wants to lose. I just wonder how Ryan will respond.

  Ryan

  I am doubting myself a little bit. I drew up the tattoo and now I’m just hoping like hell she’ll like it. If she doesn’t, she’s stuck with it. Until this moment, I was feeling very confident. But as I lift my machine, lay it down, and swipe the extra ink off her forearm, I would be lying if I said I’m not a little bit nervous. I clean the area and get it ready for her to see.

  Lark has been sitting here talking with her dad while I work. He’s been telling her stories and they laugh and joke around. Every now and then, her shoulders shake with laughter, and it makes me smile to see that he makes her so happy. The feeling is apparently mutual, and he’s just as happy to hang out with her as she is with him. Every now and then, he reaches over and brushes a lock of hair from her face or she lifts her arm to touch his, and it makes me realize that the love of a parent is incomparable to anything else. It doesn’t matter if the parent is one made by blood or by circumstance; the feeling is still just as strong and that’s all that matters.

  “You ready to see it?” I sign to Lark.

  She nods and stares into my eyes.

  “It’s done.” I look down at her forearm. Even I have to admit that it’s good, and I’m a little biased.

  “I’m nervous,” she says.

  “It’s too late to be nervous now. It’s not like you can do anything about it.” Well, I could cover it up at a later date if she hates it. But it’s not going away. “Take a look.”

  She looks down and I can feel the wind from her gasp. She covers her mouth and stares at her arm. Her eyes flood with tears, but she blinks them back furiously.

  “You hate it,” I say.

  But she stops me, waving her hand in the air. “It’s perfect.”

  “I told you he knows you,” her dad says.

  “He does,” she replies, her hands soft with emotion.

  I knew a few things about her, going into the tattoo. Her favorite place to visit was the beach, back before her parents died. I had already done the male and female seagulls tattoo, which represents her parents, and it covers up the largest of the splash burns she has on her arm. The male bird looks really masculine, and the female bird looks really girly. They’re both wearing wedding rings on their legs, the same rings that hang on a chain around Lark’s neck all the time.

  The challenge in this case was hiding the scars from her suicide attempt. They slice across her forearm. I also had to cover up a bunch of small splatter discoloration spots from where the hot oil hit her skin and burned her.

  Her suicide scars were something I refused to hide completely. They’re part of her and she got through it, so I felt like it was important for them to stay there. I turned her suicide scars into clouds in a sunset sky. The jagged edges form the edges of the clouds. To an outsider who doesn’t know her story, one might think it is a perfect sunset. But it’s not. It’s a sunset fraught with challenges. But the thing to remember is at the end of the day, the sunset will always happen and it will always be beautiful. It’s one’s perception of it that matters. Do you see the scars or do you see the sunset? Some days, you need to see the scars. Some days, all you’ll see is the sunset, the perfect end to the perfect day. But to get to the perfect end, you had to face your challenges all along. We all do, and I wanted her tattoo to depict that.

  I turned her small spatter scars into tiny seashells that litter the beach. They’re colorful and playful and she grins as she counts them. There are twenty-four in all.

  When you look at the tattoo as a whole, it’s like a painting. But there are so many parts to it that I can’t even imagine anyone who looks at it would understand. But Lark understands all of them.


  I watch her face as she takes in the tattoo. “Do you like it?” I ask.

  “No.”

  My heart stops. “I can cover it up with something else. Maybe in a few weeks,” I rush to say.

  She catches my hands and stops them from moving, then lets them go.

  “I don’t just like it,” she says. “I love it. It’s perfect. You put everything that’s important to me in it, and I’ll never stop looking at it. It’s wonderful.”

  “Really?” I stare at her face.

  She takes a step closer to me. “Really.”

  Then she surprises the hell out of me when she grabs my shirt and jerks me to her, steps up onto her tiptoes, and presses her mouth against mine. I vaguely recognize that her dad leaves the curtained area where we’ve been working, but I’m not sure I care. She kisses me, and heat shoots straight to the center of me. I’ve kissed quite a few girls, and done a whole lot more than that with some, but I’ve never had someone kiss me the way she does.

  Her lips crash against mine, and she opens her mouth, inviting my tongue to tangle with hers. Her arms lift and wrap around my shoulders, and she presses her chest against mine, her nipples hard and tight against her shirt. I can feel every curve of her, and I can taste the raw emotion in her right now fighting to get out. I wrap my arms around her waist and hold her tighter, drawing her so close to me that we’re like one person. She moans against my lips; I can feel it in the vibration of her chest.

  The curtain shakes and catches my attention, and I lift my head to look up. Friday sticks her head around the curtain and looks at us. We must look a sight. Lark’s cheeks are pink and my breaths are heaving from my chest.

  “You know her dad is right outside the curtain, right?” Friday asks, sending furtive glances to the other side of the partition.

  “Yes. I know.” I look down at Lark and brush a lock of hair from her sweaty forehead.

  “I’m willing to bet you got a good tattoo,” Friday says with a smile.

  Lark grins, and holds her arm out so Friday can take a look. “I did.”

  I see Friday’s eyes narrow when she notices the suicide attempt scars, but she doesn’t say anything. She does tattoos all day, and she has an eye for art. Of course she would notice. “It’s beautiful,” she says. “Some of your best work. Ever. I love the shells and how they’re all different. I loved the birds the other day when you did them, but this…this is magical.”

  I find myself blushing at her praise. “It turned out okay.”

  “It’s more than okay,” Lark tells me. “My parents would love it.”

  “No more gloves?” I say, arching a brow in question.

  She looks at her other arm. “Well, once I get this one done, yes.”

  “You want to do it now?”

  Her eyes light up. “You have time?”

  “I’ll cancel your next appointment,” Friday says with a smirk as she flounces out of the room.

  “Thank you,” I call to her, using my voice.

  “Do you already have something drawn up?”

  “Yes. Do you want to see it?”

  “No.” She looks into my eyes. She sits back down in my chair and my heart swells with pride because she trusts me to do this.

  She starts to roll her glove down and all the blood in my body shoots straight to my dick. Kissing her was amazing, but having her undress in front of me is shocking and amazing and enthralling. I adjust my junk, because the bite of my zipper is making me wince.

  “Something wrong?” she asks with a cheeky grin as I move my chair to the other side of the table, and then pull my table-on-wheels that holds my ink around too.

  “My dick’s hard. Sorry.”

  Her brow arches. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does your dick usually get hard when you finish a tattoo?” She narrows her eyes at me.

  “My dick has never gotten hard in this building before,” I admit. “Give him a second. He’ll stop trying to get to you in a minute.”

  “He’s trying to get to me?” She grins.

  “Yes. Like a sporting dog who spots a bird. He wants to go get it. Sorry.”

  “Like a sporting dog who spots a bird…”

  I shrug. “Probably a bad analogy.”

  “No, I like it.” Now she’s laughing, if the way her shoulders are shaking is any indication. “So I’m the bird and you’re the dog.”

  “No. Your vagina is the bird. And the dog, my dick, really wants the bird. Like, a lot.”

  She twirls a lock of hair around her finger, then lets it spring back. “So, what would the dog do if it caught the bird?”

  I bite back a laugh. “The dog would eat it, I’m sure.” I look directly into her eyes.

  “Are we still referring to my vagina?” She points down toward her lap. “You mean like, eat it eat it?”

  “Among other things.”

  She sits back against the chair. Her chest heaves with…want? Curiosity? I’m not sure. “I’d be okay with that.”

  “Today?” I ask. I’m smiling like a fool. “You want to go to my place when we get done here?”

  “Yes.”

  The curtain shakes again and her dad pokes his head in. “You getting more ink, huh?” he asks.

  “I’d love for my arms to be all the way done,” she says.

  “Do you mind if I stay?” Emilio asks, scratching his head.

  “I’d be sad if you left,” she says. She holds out a hand to him and he sits down next to her. “Tell me the story of how Marta slapped you in the face the first time you talked to her,” she says.

  “Your wife slapped you in the face?” I ask him.

  “Oh, I totally deserved it. She should have kneed me in the balls,” he says. Then he starts to tell the story. And I get busy with the second tattoo. But in the back of my mind, all I can think about is the dog and the bird, and I can’t wait to take her home with me so I can spend more time with her. The dog doesn’t always get what he wants. But what I want is her, and I’ll take her however I can get her. I want the small things. And I want the big things. I want her.

  I need to know one thing to get started with this tattoo. “What’s your mom and dad’s last name?” I ask Lark.

  She looks at Emilio. “Well, now my last name is Vasquez. It used to be Perry.”

  “Got it.” I pick up my pen and start to draw freehand on her arm. Her past will collide with her present, but it needs to happen.

  Lark

  I’m a little more than apprehensive about this tattoo, but only because I have no idea how he could ever top the first one. He did such a beautiful job on it, and although I know he’s a talented artist, there are limits to how creative a person could be. I love the first tattoo so much.

  Ryan wrinkles his nose, and then rubs it into his shirt.

  “Something wrong?” I ask.

  His hands are full, so he doesn’t answer, but he swipes his nose against his shirt again, lifting his shoulder and pressing his face against it.

  “Your nose is itching?”

  He nods and wiggles his nose.

  “Want me to scratch it?”

  He waggles his brows at me. It’s a good thing Emilio’s not in here.

  I look into his eyes. “I’ll scratch that itch later.” I hold out my fingers and he rubs his nose against them. “Better?”

  He nods and grins at me.

  “Almost done?” I ask him.

  He nods again.

  I’ve been trying really hard not to look, but where he’s sitting, it’s hard not to look down. I’m dying for him to finish it so I can see.

  Finally, he lays down his machine, stands up, and stretches his arms and shoulders. Then he cleans the ink from my skin and applies ointment.

  “What do you think?” he asks.

  I look down and my heart stops. He took everything I ever told him about my parents and put it on my forearms. The new tattoo is another beach scene, kind of like the one on the other arm, si
nce he had to do a lot of tiny shells to cover up the spatter scars. But it has a totally different feel. While the first one had the concentration on the birds, this one has kites.

  The kite strings are my suicide scars. You can clearly tell what they are, that I once tried to kill myself. Each kite looks like a Scrabble tile, canted so that it’s shaped like a diamond. The five kite tiles spell out the word Perry. He even went so far as to include the point value for each tile on the kite. At the base of each string is a different chess piece, holding the string. They’re the anchors, which is what my father was. He was the anchor. My mother was the one who kept us all dreaming. My father was the one who kept us on task.

  It’s a perfect representation of my family. But the piece that gets me, that totally guts me, is the fact that he’s tied it all together with the name Vasquez written in the clouds. You could only find it if you knew what you were looking for. But I know. They’re perfectly entwined.

  “Explain this to me,” I say aloud and sign too. My voice cracks, and I’m glad he can’t hear it.

  He points to the Scrabble tiles. “Your mom.”

  I nod.

  He points to the chess pieces. “Your dad.”

  I nod again, and swallow past the lump in my throat.

  He lets his finger trail down one of the suicide scars. “Your grief when you lost them.” He looks at my face. “Maybe guilt.” Then he points to the clouds. “Hope.” He draws a circle with his finger around the whole thing. “Your future is not defined by the past or the present, but it does lead you at times.”

  He pulls out his phone, snaps some “after” photos of the finished tattoos, and shoves it back in his pocket.

  Ryan wraps both of my arms up with some clear wrap, and then he pulls his gloves off and stretches his back.

  “Are you too tired to hang out tonight?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “No.” Then he grins at me. “Can we watch another scary movie?”

  “You don’t like scary movies,” I remind him, but my heart is pounding.

  “I like having you grab me and hold on tight.” He walks toward me slowly and presses his forehead against mine, his eyes closed. Then he rubs the side of his nose slowly up and down mine, and then he kisses me, and it’s never been so perfect.