“Okay, favorite piece you did?”
I thought about it and crossed my legs. “Damn, that’s a hard one. But I did one on Veronica’s arm that’s two skeletons embracing, like one is clutching the other to its chest. I love being able to work with nothing but black ink, no color, just that ink and the negative space of skin to tell a story.”
Annika was still smiling, her lips wide and red and perfect. “I love to hear you guys talk about your work. Sometimes I just listen to Joel geek out about art and tattoos with my head propped on my hand and my heart all fluttery.” She sighed and glanced down at her clipboard. “So, what have you been up to this summer?”
“Nothing much. We’ve mostly been working on Ramona’s wedding, but everything’s been done for a few weeks, so now it’s just a matter of waiting.”
“What’s left to come?”
I ticked everything off on my fingers. “Dress fittings tomorrow. Bachelorette party in a few days. Then it’s time to get the lovebirds hitched.”
“You make it sound so easy.” She looked a little skeptical.
I chuckled. “Yep, and you’re next. But you were built for wedding planning. I bet you have spreadsheets out the wang. Color-coded. With, like, fourteen tabs.”
“At least I’m consistent enough to be predictable,” she said on a laugh. “So tell me about the bachelorette party.”
“Oh, that’s not fit for censored television. Let’s just say, there will be debauchery and plastic penis accoutrements.”
She wrinkled her nose.
I pointed at her. “You’re participating. No pussing out, dude.”
Annika dodged the implication and smiled. “Have a date for the wedding?”
I waved a hand. “Nah, I’ll just go stag.”
Her smile fell. “You don’t have anyone to bring? You always seem to have guys on your heel. Surely one of them looks good in a suit. Your taste in men is impeccable.”
“Thank you,” I said with a nod of my head, but I squirmed a little. “I dunno. Weddings are a big deal. Like, I’ll have pictures from this wedding on my fridge until I’ve got tennis balls on the feet of my walker. Plus, there’s love in the air at those things. I wouldn’t want to catch something.”
She laughed. “So you’re not seeing anyone?”
I shrugged, still feeling squirmy. “I’m always seeing someone,” I answered lightly.
“Who’s the current guy?”
That stupid smile crept onto my face again. “Oh, just a guy,” I lied, not wanting to talk about him on camera.
When things fell apart, I’d have to look back on any admissions without regrets. My stomach sank at the thought, but I put a lifejacket on that motherfucker, and it perked back up.
“Favorite thing about the guy?”
“His dick,” I said without hesitation, knowing she’d have to cut the whole segment.
She burst out laughing, which was especially funny for her — she was a self-contained creature. But when she let loose, it was like a unicorn galloping across a rainbow.
“Well, I hope you change your mind about inviting Mr. Dick Guy to the wedding.”
I laughed. “Oh my God. That’s going to be my new name for him. Mr. Richard Guy.”
“I’d love to meet the man who has you so into him that you won’t kiss and tell.” One of her brows was up, teasing me.
“Oh, come on. I don’t always kiss and tell.”
She gave me a look.
“Fine,” I sighed, rolling my eyes. “I just want to keep this one to myself for a minute. Is that so wrong?”
“Not at all. I’m intrigued, that’s all.”
At that, I smiled. “You and me both.”
9
OPERATION: PENNY JAR
Bodie
The next afternoon, I walked down the sidewalk toward the tattoo parlor where Penny worked, the sun shining on my skin, the birds chirping in my ears, and the same smile plastered on my face that had been there for a week.
Operation: Penny Jar had been a success. So far at least.
I’d seen her every day since we ran into each other at the ice cream shop. She’d knocked me out then, and just when I’d thought it couldn’t get better with her, she’d proven me wrong.
I was right after all; Penny didn’t want complicated. So I didn’t complicate things. It wasn’t hard — being with her was so easy and so fun that there wasn’t a need to talk about more. Every second with her was perfect to the point of disbelief. A crush realized. A fantasy in physical form.
I’d shown her that I meant what I’d said, even if my heart betrayed it all. Because the pretense hung in the air between us — the pretense she’d asked for and I’d agreed to.
For her, this was temporary.
For me, it wasn’t.
Not that I was looking for a commitment. I wasn’t. But I knew I didn’t want it to end until we’d run our course. Thing was, I didn’t know how long the tracks were, and I had a feeling mine were longer than hers.
My plan was still in place: be so fucking awesome that I became essential, necessary to her. Of course, in doing that, I’d also found that she was indispensable to me.
Catch-22.
In any event, I was taking advantage of every second with her. Including today.
She’d surprised me when she’d offered to do my tattoo — it felt like a relationshippy thing to do. Personal. Intimate. She was going to mark me with ink that would stain my skin for my whole life. Of course, she’d marked hundreds of people, maybe even thousands over her career.
It was as small and impersonal as it was huge and meaningful. But I locked my focus on the end of the spectrum labeled Not a Big Deal just as I approached the parlor.
The word Tonic was printed in a font that looked like an old Victorian apothecary label with gold leaf and line work above and below, framing the word. When I pulled open the door, the sounds of Nirvana hit my ears as the sights the shop had to offer washed over me.
Everything looked vintage with a Victorian flair. Old velvet couches lined the full waiting area, and the walls were covered in macabre paintings in elaborate frames. Booths lined the long wall, all with counter-high walls to mark each space. Each booth contained a retro black tattoo chair, an antique desk, and cabinets for inks and supplies, I assumed. The electric buzz of tattoo guns hummed in an undercurrent to Kurt Cobain as he sang about heart-shaped boxes, and I scanned the room, looking for the flash of purple that would tell me where Penny was.
She bounded out from a hallway leading to the back, smiling and practically skipping to me as everyone in the shop watched her — her coworkers curious, the people in the waiting room practically salivating.
I had no idea the protocol for such a public greeting, so I stood there smiling, waiting for her to make a move that would tell me where the boundary was.
The thought was moot. She practically jumped into my arms, hooking hers around my neck as she kissed me hello with enough gusto that I felt it all the way down to my shoes.
She broke away, smiling at me with twinkling eyes. “Hey,” she said, the sweet scent of bubble gum on her breath.
“Hey,” I echoed, setting her feet on the ground.
She grabbed my hand and pulled. “Come on, let me introduce you to everybody.”
I already knew who everyone was from watching the show, which was really weird. So I played dumb, following her into the shop a bit, walking up the line of booths to start at the front where a gigantic dude with an intense beard and the thickest head of hair I’d ever seen was tattooing a girl’s back. She was stretched out on her stomach, back bare, and he moved his machine, stopping the buzzing by removing his foot from the pedal.
“This,” Penny said, extending a hand toward him, “is Joel, the owner of the shop.”
Joel smiled, but his eyes sized me up. “Good to meet you.”
“You too.” I tried to smile in a way that was amiable but also as masculine as possible, feeling the alpha roll off of him. He wa
s most definitely the boss.
“And this,” she said, guiding me to the next booth back, “is Tricky. Patrick if he’s in trouble.”
Patrick stood and extended a tattooed hand for a shake. The guy looked like a male model with a sharp jaw and deep, dark eyes, every inch of his skin tattooed, except for his face.
“Hey, man,” he said with a sideways smile. “Heard a lot about you.”
I took his hand and pumped it. “Thanks,” I said lamely, wishing I had something to offer other than, Cool tattoos, bro.
Next down was a dark-haired, leggy brunette with lined eyes and red lips.
“So, you didn’t officially meet the other night, but this is one of my roommates, Veronica.”
Veronica smiled and waved. “Glad to finally meet you, Bodie.”
“And this,” she said as she dragged me across the room to the counter where a blonde stood, smiling, “is Ramona, my best friend and our piercer.”
“Need your dick pierced?” she asked brazenly.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m good today, but thanks.”
She shrugged. “Let me know if you change your mind. I’ve heard good things.” She looked down and jerked a chin toward my waistline.
The girls cracked up laughing, and I shook my head, not even embarrassed. I took the fact that they had talked about my dick as a good sign.
A couple of guys were laughing in the booth behind Veronica’s, which was our next stop.
“These knuckleheads are Eli and Max.”
“Hey,” they said at the same time. One punched the other in the arm.
I waved a hand, and she pulled me back to her booth.
It was very Penny. The artwork on her walls was everything from comic-style to detailed portraits. The largest heavy-framed painting was of a woman with a starburst crown, holding a flaming heart in one hand and a rosary in the other. And in the center of the smaller pieces on her wall was a gilded mirror, speckled and veined with age.
She smirked at me and patted the seat of her tattoo chair. “Come on. I don’t bite.”
“That’s a lie, and I have the marks to prove it.”
She giggled, her cheeks high and flushed and pretty.
I took a seat, and she moved to her desk to get the transfer she’d printed.
“Shirt off, please.”
I waited until she turned around to face me before reaching back between my shoulder blades and grabbing a handful of T-shirt, pulling it over my head.
Her lip was between her teeth. She was wearing the same high-waisted shorts she’d had on that first night with the buttons on the front with a T-shirt that said, Feed Me Tacos and Tell Me I’m Pretty, in red iron-on letters that matched her lipstick. But the best part was that she had on tall black wedges, her legs long and knees together, toes pointed in. She looked like a goddamn calendar girl, and the way she was eye-fucking me had me wishing the booth had four walls and a door.
She blinked and walked over, hips swaying, lips smiling. “Is this too big?” she asked, holding up the transfer.
I opened my legs a little wider. “No such thing.”
Penny laughed at that and held it over my arm, inspecting it. “I do like it when it’s extra big.”
She stood at the arm of the chair, and I slid my hand up the outside of her thigh.
“Oh, I know all about that.”
She was unfazed other than shifting to lean into me as best she could with an armrest in the way. “I think it’ll work. Let me put it on, and we can look at it.”
She went to work, arranging the transfer before wetting it down with a paper towel. When she smiled down at me, a little jolt shot through me.
“You ready for this?”
“Always,” I answered.
She peeled the transfer off and blotted my skin dry, inspecting it all the while. It was like she had flipped a switch and was all business and then flipped it again, all pleasure.
“Okay. Take a look.”
I stood and checked out the placement. It started just above my elbow and moved up and around my bicep and the cap of my shoulder — it was bigger than I’d imagined but exactly what it should be.
“I like it,” I said.
“Good. Me too.” She nodded to her chair. “Go ahead and have a seat.”
Her station seemed to already be set up, and she took a seat on a saddle stool with wheels, straddling it before rolling over to me, pulling on black rubber gloves.
Several reactions hit me. The sight of her rolling over to me with her legs open, snapping those rubber gloves, hit me below the belt. The realization that she was about to take a needle to me sent adrenaline shooting through my veins in a cold burst. And the look in her eyes got me right in the rib cage.
“All right,” she said as she poured black ink into a little cup. “So here’s the deal. This is way too big to do all at once if you want color. But I kinda think it’ll look better all black, just the outline. We’ve got to do that first anyway, so if you want to have it filled in later, you totally can.”
“How long until I can have more done?”
“A couple of months is usually wise.” She loaded her gun, wrapping a rubber band around the base of it. When she hit the pedal to test it, she smiled. “But anybody can do it. The line work is the hard part. You don’t have to come back to me to get it filled in.”
My heart deflated just a bit, just enough. Penny was putting space between us, telling me we wouldn’t be together in a few months, giving me permission to have it finished somewhere else.
She rolled her tray where she wanted it, scooting close to me with her eyes on my arm.
“Here we go.” She pressed that buzzing needle into my skin.
The thing about tattoos is that when it starts, you think it’s not so bad. Four hours in, and you feel like you’ve been carved like a turkey. So I enjoyed the burn before it consumed me.
Hearts worked the same way, I figured.
“You okay?” she asked after a moment, her eyes darting to mine for a solid second before looking back to my arm.
“I’m good.”
I watched her work, admiring the sureness of her hand, competence radiating from her. She was confident, so certain, completely capable. Penny could take over the world if she wanted to. She could take me over.
She kind of already had.
I looked over the shop and realized I’d met all the important people in her life — her family. I was in her chair as a customer, but it was more than that. There was an intimacy to the act and intimacy to her bringing me to the place that meant so much to her. Not that she’d made a big deal about it, but I knew by how she talked about everyone I’d met that they were her people. And that filled me with hope and pleasure at the connection to her.
Of course, that connection scared me too. Because I knew deep down that I didn’t have as much control as I’d thought I did over the situation. Every single day, she’d marked me in more ways than one, and I couldn’t turn back any more from my heart than I could from the needle in her hand.
“So, Bodie,” Ramona started from the wall of Penny’s booth.
When I glanced over, she was leaning on the wall from the other side, next to Veronica. They were both smiling unabashedly, their eyes never quite reaching mine — they were too busy scanning my chest.
“What is it you do again?” Ramona asked.
“I’m a software engineer. My buddies and I are working on a video game.”
They nodded their appreciation.
“What kind of game?” Veronica leaned in, shoulder to shoulder with Ramona.
“It’s an open world role-playing game. Steampunk, story-driven.”
Their faces were blank.
“Ah, like … think Victorian era, airships, like blimps. Treasure hunting, like Indiana Jones meets Han Solo but British.”
They lit up at that, including Penny, and I found myself feeling pleased.
“What’s it called?” Ramona asked.
“Nighthawk. It’s the name of the ship.”
Penny bounced a little in her seat. “Oh my God, that makes me want to draw stuff. This is seriously genius, Bodie. Who’s doing your artwork?”
“Jude. He’s a graphic artist and handles all of our 3D renderings. Phil and I are the code jockeys. Jude is the art.”
Penny waggled her brows at Veronica, who rolled her eyes.
“So how does that work?” Ramona asked. “Like, what do you do with it when it’s done?”
I took a breath and let it out as Penny carved a line in my skin and wiped it with a paper towel. “The first real step is to get a gameplay demo ready so we can pitch it to a big developer. The idea is that they pay us for the concept and bring us on as part of the development team. But we’ve been working on the demo for seven years,” I said with a laugh.
“Man, that’s intense,” Penny said as she dipped her needle in the ink and got back to work.
“It’s moving a lot faster now that we’ve been working on it full-time, but yeah. It’s been a long time coming. I mean, we came up with the idea in junior high and have been working toward this ever since. Phil’s focused on our outreach, networking through college and career buddies to see if we can get a meeting. There’s this one development company that’s at the top of the list. If we can get in with them, it’s a guarantee that the game would be everything we could possibly dream of. They’ve got the chops and the cash to throw at it.”
“What’s the company called?” Veronica asked.
“Avalanche,” I said, unable to keep the excitement out of my voice. “The games they produce are off the charts. But that’s the pie-in-the-sky kind of dream. We’ll probably get it picked up by a smaller company — I just hope they’ll let us do the work to make it what we want.”
Another gigantic hairy dude walked out of the hallway and into the shop, eyeing me in the chair, then he smirked at Ramona. He slapped her on the ass, and she yelped, laughing when she saw him.
“Hey, Shep,” Penny chirped. “This is Bodie. Bodie, this is Shep, Ramona’s fiancé and Joel’s brother.”
I jerked a chin at him in greeting. “How’s it going?”