“Don’t worry about it. He’s gone now it doesn’t matter,” he said as he leaned against the side of the chair.
Still upset about Tyler saying anything about me, I rolled to my side and gazed up at Blake. His hair was the same usual adorable mess, just spiked a little higher than normal. His eyes were puffy and he looked exhausted, as if he had slept very little the night before. I didn’t feel it my place to pry into his personal life, and I guessed it was completely possible that his fight with Tyler had worn on his nerves so much that he was simply worn out.
“So what all did he say?” I asked, “Just tell me, I won’t get mad.”
He shook his head lightly, grinned, and eventually started to laugh. As he raised his hand to cover his mouth, I realized he had yet to rub his hands together since I had arrived. I began to wonder just what it was that triggered him to rub his hands together in the manner he did so, and as I was preparing to press him a little harder about Tyler, he began to speak.
“He said you were a slut. He said you were wearing those clothes to encourage me to try and fuck you. I explained you weren’t like that, and he just kept going on and on about it, swearing you were nothing but a skank,” he said.
I sat up in the seat, “A skank? Really? Wow. Wait till I see him.”
He shook his head. “Forget it, really. I made him leave for the rest of the day. He’ll think about what he said, believe me.”
A slut?
Really?
“You know what?” I asked.
He sat on the edge of the chair, reached for my ponytail, and moved it to the side as he studied my back. After a moment of leaning behind me and staring, he sat up straight.
“What’s that?” he responded.
“One guy. Just one. That’s how many people I’ve slept with. One. I was with him from my junior year in high school until last year. One. I wonder what Tyler can say about himself? That fucker,” I growled.
“Wow, that’s impressive,” he said as he stood.
He stood at the side of the chair nodding his head. After a moment of what seemed to be deep thought, he continued.
“Holy shit, I’ll have to tell him how wrong he was. But Tyler? He’s a man whore who’s basically addicted to sex. He fucks anything that moves, so he’s not one to talk. Just forget about it, you ready?”
“Sure,” I said as I relaxed onto my stomach, “That fucker. It just makes me mad. Who’s he to say anything?”
“Exactly. Let’s just both forget it.
The thought of Tyler calling me a slut or saying I was intentionally trying to lure Blake into something sexual was aggravating. I was conscious of what I was wearing, and I was even a little apprehensive to come in with it on. The reluctance, at least in my mind, confirmed my intention as being more wholesome than whorish.
“Okay,” I said.
I closed my eyes as he wiped my back, shaved the area, and pressed the stencil onto my skin. After checking the placement in the mirror, I relaxed onto the chair, and he sat beside me on his stool.
“Ready?” he asked.
I tilted my head to the side and glanced upward. He seemed peaceful and much different than when I arrived. After a few seconds of admiration, I grinned and nodded my head.
“I’m ready. You really enjoy this, don’t you?” I asked.
“If you find something you really enjoy, you’ll never work another day in your life,” he responded. “This isn’t work. For me, it’s therapeutic. It keeps me at peace.”
“I like it. It’s weird, but getting a tattoo seems soothing,” I responded as I lowered my head.
A song I recognized, Pearl Jam’s Yellow Ledbetter, began to play. I realized as I absorbed the guitar solo introduction that the music wasn’t some special “for tattoo shop only” selections. It was probably music that he had personally chosen.
“I like this song,” I said.
“Yellow Ledbetter. I feel that way sometimes,” he said.
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Ready?” he asked.
I pressed my face into the leather and nodded my head.
“Ready,” I mumbled.
The buzzing began, and immediately following the sound, the needle pressed against my skin, causing me to jump slightly.
“You alright?” he asked.
“Fine,” I responded.
I tilted my head to the side, “What did you mean you feel like that sometimes?”
“Close to the end,” he said over the buzzing, “He says he doesn’t know whether he’s the boxer or the bag. Sometimes I feel like that.”
I thought about what he said, tried to remember the lyrics of the song, and realized for some reason I liked the song despite the fact I had no idea what they were saying.
“I think I feel like that sometimes too,” I said.
I closed my eyes and tried to decide based on the feeling of the needle against my skin exactly where he was tattooing. After some time, I realized I had no idea, and the tattooing, in some respects, caused my skin to feel numb and almost immune to feeling anything with accuracy. It was almost as if I felt the needle in my right arm even though I fully realized it was on my lower left shoulder.
“Have you always been artistic?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he chuckled over the sound of the buzzing, “When I was a kid I used to paint the railcars at the tracks downtown. You want to know the coolest thing about that?”
“Sure.”
“Seeing one of the cars being pulled along the tracks a few years later with my mural still painted on it,” he said.
“That’d be pretty cool. I wonder how many people over the entire United States saw that mural. You know, everywhere it had been,” I said.
“Exactly,” he responded. “I thought the same thing. I felt like a celebrity, I don’t know, like I’d made it into the big leagues. I just remember feeling pretty proud.”
“I bet. Yeah, that’s pretty cool.”
“So you’ve owned this shop for two years?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“What did you do before this?” I asked.
The buzzing stopped. His stool inched across the floor until he was at my side. As he cradled the tattoo machine in his hand, the expression on his face changed to one of a more serious nature. After a long moment of obvious contemplation, he responded.
“I was a cop,” he said flatly.
I raised myself up in the chair slightly. “A police officer? A cop? Like an actual cop?”
He nodded his head.
His face washed with a look of concern. In a matter of seconds, it was almost as if his mind had slipped into memories of the past, thinking of his former profession. I began to feel guilty for asking, and had only been trying to get to know him, but it was obvious thinking about whatever he was thinking about upset him.
“It’s an admirable profession,” I said softly.
He blinked his eyes, glanced at the tattoo machine, and after a short pause, nodded his head.
“I suppose so,” he said.
“What about you?” he asked as he scooted his stool around to the other side of the chair.
“I’ve uhhm, I’ve never had a job. During school, my mom wanted me to focus on studies, and after school I was in a relationship with a guy who was pretty well off financially. He didn’t really want me out in public, and for sure didn’t want me to work. So, I stayed at home unless I was with him,” I said.
“Didn’t want you out in public? What the fuck was that about? Seriously?” he asked as he began to press the needle onto my back.
“He was pretty protective of me,” I responded.
He stopped the tattoo machine and cleared his throat. “That’s not protective, Riley. It’s controlling, there’s a difference.”
I found his belief on the issue to be comforting. I had originally felt the same way, but Stephen continued to assure me he was protective, not controlling. Over time, he convinced me it was his protective nature that caused him
to prevent me from doing anything alone. Having someone agree with my thoughts on his behavior was reassuring.
“You think so?” I asked.
“Fucking know so. What the fuck was he protecting you from by making you stay at home? I mean, really. Protecting you from life? From exposing yourself to society? Protecting himself from potentially losing you if you bumped into someone who enlightened you into understanding he was a controlling prick, maybe. Ready?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, go ahead. Yeah, he was probably more controlling than most,” I agreed.
As he began to work on the tattoo, he continued, speaking just loud enough for me to hear him over the buzzing of the machine and the music.
“I’ve never really been in a relationship. I’ve been waiting for the right one to come along I suppose. I always told myself when the right one came along, I’d treat her with respect and truly try to act as if we were equal. I’m sure most guys tell themselves the same shit,” he said.
I raised my head slightly, and rested my chin on my clenched fist.
“You’ve never been in a relationship?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“Wow.”
“So, what qualities does the right girl have?” I asked.
After a long moment of him continuing to work on the tattoo, he stopped and dipped the needle in the ink. He wiped my shoulder clean, rested his forearm on my side, and paused.
“On the outside? Bold glasses, ponytail, a well-defined waist, but I really don’t care about tits. I prefer unpainted fingernails, and she’s got to have toes that don’t look like little sausages. The toes are important,” he said.
My heartbeat immediately increased ten-fold. He had just described me. As I tried to think of how to respond, he continued.
“On the inside, she needs to be kind, forgiving, understanding, and appreciative of art, music, enjoy eating hot dogs as much as sushi, like riding on the back of a motorcycle, and be willing to be tattooed. As far as I’m concerned, there are only two types of people on this earth: those who are tattooed and those who aren’t; and I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t have a tattoo. I’d say that’s about it,” he said flatly.
“Wow. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you just described me,” I said jokingly.
“I did,” he responded.
My mouth immediately went dry, my body began to tingle, and I felt like I was a little girl again.
As I turned my head to the side and gazed in his direction, he stopped the tattoo machine and grinned.
His eyes were hazel. I hadn’t been able to identify the color before, but they were every bit as green as they were brown. As I gazed into his eyes, I felt my heart began to swell with something comparable to pride. I wasn’t really prepared for the feeling I felt, and although I had every intention of getting to know more about Blake, I wasn’t necessarily ready to have an actual feeling of attraction in the sense I was feeling it. Slightly confused, but pleased with what I was feeling nonetheless, I gazed into his eyes and imagined him kissing me softly.
And for that moment, as he sat and silently returned my gaze, I felt as if we had been pulled a little closer to each other.
Yet.
I wanted more.
BLAKE
Not only had I been making every effort to avoid women I found attractive or tempting, if for some reason I encountered one, it seemed I had been running the other direction. Since I decided they were as much as a problem to me as crack cocaine, I felt it my duty to separate myself from them as quickly as possible. Riley, however, caused me to lower my fists and slowly but curiously walk in her direction.
I had no idea how to pinpoint what it was about her that allowed me to place her in a different category altogether, but it really didn’t matter. For whatever reason, my mind decided she was safe for me. Any other woman with her looks, personality, and sense of right and wrong would have long since had my cock between her legs and my hand on the back of her head after the second tattoo. She, on the other hand, seemed to be protected from my sexual advances.
After considerable thought, I decided she had to be special in ways and manners that I wasn’t even able to see or even identify. The fact she could share time and space with me, and I wasn’t attempting to move forward sexually proved to me she was truly deserving of whatever I was able to offer her beyond sex. In my opinion, she was entitled to learn things about me that no other woman had, and I was eager to share myself with her.
Slowly, but without much real resistance, Tyler was beginning to understand my placement of Riley.
“So, you’re trying to tell me you don’t even want to fuck her?” he asked.
“You’re so fucking stubborn sometimes. I’m not trying to tell you anything. I’ve told you. Over and fucking over, Dude. No, I don’t want to fuck her. I mean I think about it, and yeah, I’d like to fuck her, but not like fuck her fuck her. Maybe one day, but not now. You know, if we ended up in a real relationship, yeah. But not now, no. Make sense?” I asked.
“Makes sense, just hard to believe,” he responded.
I continued to separate my needles by size, placing them in their respective compartments as I did inventory. After a moment of thinking, I continued speaking to him over my shoulder.
“You know, I think sometimes life, like, puts shit in front of us that we can use to make progress toward a personal perceived perfection as long as we’re smart enough to recognize it as being what it is,” I said.
“What in the holy fucking hell did that mean? That sounded like some fucking twelve step triple ‘p’ horseshit right there. Personal perceived perfection,” he chuckled.
“Fuck you. Just listen. You’re getting up and going to work, and doing your deal every day, say, just like me. And you fuck every chick you can. Hell, you even make it a point to try and fuck the ones that don’t want to fuck, just to see if you can. Fucking the chick at the gas station who works the register. Fucking the chick at the bar who works the late Tuesday shift. Fucking the meth head that wants a tattoo, but can’t save the money. Then, one day, you realize you’ve got a serious problem. So, you try and abstain. You know, go without sex or whatever. And then some hot as fuck bitch comes in for a tattoo. I mean normally I’d have been all over her, but for some reason I wasn’t,” I paused and turned to face him.
“And the reason is that she’s different. She’s actually like the answer to my problems. She’s like an AA meeting for a drunk, only in human form. Being around her makes me not even want to think about other woman. So, she’s been put in front of me as a resource or a solution. And it was my recognizing her as being just that that has allowed me to make progress toward actually recovering. It’s like I don’t even have a problem anymore,” I said.
“You’re fucking cured?” he coughed.
“No, asshole, not cured. But not actively pursuing other women. It’s a huge step in the right direction,” I said.
“Suppose so,” he agreed.
“So, what did you tell her about yourself? Were you honest?” he asked.
I glanced up from my drawer and nodded my head. “Yeah.”
“Completely?” he asked.
“Yeah, completely,” I responded.
“Doubt that,” he said sarcastically.
“Tell her you were a cop?” he asked.
I nodded my head.
He began to laugh hysterically. After what seemed to be an eternity of breathless laughter, he stumbled to the bathroom. After a few minutes, he came out; no longer laughing, but coughing and trying to catch his breath.
“What?” I asked, “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. Dude, I’m happy for you. Keep doing what you’re doing. But one of these days, you’ll have to tell her everything, you know that, right?” he asked.
“I will,” I said as I pushed the drawer closed.
“No, I mean everything. And be truthful,” he said.
I nodded my head again, “See? I’m not even getting upset. It doesn’t
bother me that you’re saying that. Know why? Because I’m comfortable with everything. Don’t worry, as soon as I feel like I can trust her one hundred percent, I’ll tell her everything.”
“Everything?” he asked.
I nodded my head, “Everything.”
The sound of the front buzzer caused me to shift my eyes away from Tyler and toward the door. A thirty-something year old MILF with big fake tits came through the door wearing a pair of Daisy Dukes and a wife beater. After swallowing heavily and craning my neck to see her feet, I was shocked and slightly worried that she had extremely thin toes. I quickly turned to face Tyler and winked.
“I’ll get this one,” I said.
He ran his finger through his thick hair and grinned.
“Seriously? Did you see her toes?” he whispered.
“Yeah,” I replied.
“Dude, you’re a sucker for thin toes like that, leave her alone. Let me get her,” he said under his breath.
I shook my head and took a step in her direction.
“You’re serious?” he asked.
“Yeah, to prove a point. Just watch,” I said as I turned her direction.
“How can I help you?” I asked as I walked up to the counter that separated the shop from the waiting area.
Now that I was standing directly in front of her, it was pretty obvious she was wearing no bra, nor did she need to. Whoever had performed her augmentation had shoved her tits so full of silicone that the defied the laws of physics and they stood straight up, one nipple directly in the center, and one slightly higher and to her right. As much as I didn’t care, my obsessive nature caused me to want to tweak her nipples into their correct locations.
“Hi, I’m Candee, but my friends call me Diamond. I’m a friend of Sandy’s. She said I should ask for Blake, are you Blake?” she asked.
Sandy was a single mother who had come in early in the previous winter, wanting a complete back piece done. If I was giving a quote for the tattoo she had requested, it would have been the upside of $2,000, but she negotiated getting it free of charge.