“Why didn’t you call me? If you really didn’t want Hairy here, I could have come over.”
“Because you’re busy and I didn’t want to bother you.” I rubbed my arm. “That hurt.”
“Good. That’s for being presumptuous. Always call me, okay? You had a concussion for God’s sake, not period cramps.”
I chuckled. “All right. I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” she said, not elaborating, not needing to. I reached for her hand.
“I’m glad you’re okay and that Hairy was here to take care of you.”
“Thanks. Me too.”
“So, are you feeling okay now?”
“Better than earlier for sure. I feel like I should be hungry, but my stomach is a little tender. I just came down to see if Joel was still here and to try to get him to leave again.”
“I don’t think he would have.”
I sighed. “Me neither. You’re right about him being into me, and it’s not that he’s not … I mean, you’ve seen him.”
She laughed.
“But it’s just a bad idea.” My stomach clenched, though I pinned it on the concussion, not the thought of him and me doing the naked tango. “It can’t happen, and it won’t. But he’s … persistent.”
“Well, so are you, so I don’t doubt you’ll remain at an impasse forever. A couple of gluttons for punishment, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask you, so feel free to keep it to yourself,” I half-joked.
She rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine. Want to watch TV?”
I yawned, surprised that I somehow still felt sleepy. “I think I’ll head back up and read for a bit before sleeping some more. I feel like I could sleep for a week, honestly.” I hauled myself off the couch and yawned again.
“Don’t forget your tea.”
I picked up the monkey mug and found myself smiling down at it. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Just text me if you need anything and I’ll bring it up.”
“Really, thanks, Rox.”
“Anything for you. Now go get yourself better, okay?”
I smiled a little wider. “Okay.”
The stairs creaked under my feet as I climbed them, and within a minute, I slipped back into bed, tea still steaming. He’d picked my favorite, jasmine tea, and I wondered if it was a coincidence or if he somehow knew I’d like it. I shouldn’t have been wondering about him at all. But I was. I wondered what he’d done all that time. Kaz jumped onto the bed and into my lap, curling up into a purring ball, and I wondered about that too, how Kaz, the spawn of the Devil, would have befriended Joel. I wondered what Joel was doing just then, what he’d do for the rest of the night, when I’d see him again.
But those roots of decision wound around my heart and squeezed. Joel and I made no sense. He was charming and annoying and bossy and hairy and all wrong. He was everything I wasn’t. He was everything I’d tried to avoid in my life. He was the opposite of what I needed, of what fit into my plan. And that was exactly why I had to put him out of my mind, put him into a safe, lock it up, and throw away the key.
But even though my mind tightened up the reins, my heart whispered the assent, too soft for my mind to notice.
WANG FEAST
Joel
“HOW DO MY BOOBS LOOK?”
I glanced over my shoulder with one eyebrow cocked, but Penny wasn’t talking to me. Her hair was hot pink this month, and it was all done up like a pinup girl. She shimmied around her breasts in her bustier, and Veronica laughed from the chair next to me in makeup, which used to be my stock room.
“They look perfect. Stop worrying.”
My makeup artist turned my face toward her and kept dabbing at me with a makeup brush.
“You have great eyes,” she said.
“Thanks. It’s genetic.”
She chuckled.
“I’m not really worried,” Penny continued. “Mostly excited. We’re gonna be on TV, Ronnie. Like, you realize we’re about to become a household name?”
I found myself frowning, that familiar apprehension winding through my guts.
“Maybe I’ll get a deal for my own line of makeup, like Kat Von D,” Penny mused. “Or hair dyes. You should get one for eyeliner, Ronnie. Nobody rules the cat-eye like you.”
Veronica chuckled. “One thing at a time, all right? We haven’t even started filming yet.”
“But we will today,” Penny sang. “Man, you also realize we’re about to have access to pretty much any man we want? It’s going to be a freaking man-buffet. A shlong smorgasbord. All-you-can-eat wang feast.”
“And what makes you think all those men are going to come running?” I teased.
She gave me a look. “Have you met me?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. I’d seen hordes of men trip over themselves for Penny, pretty much since the second I’d met her. But she was about as attainable as world peace. “Bunch of suckers. Always wanting what they can’t have.”
She shrugged. “That’s on them. I don’t make promises I can’t keep.” She smiled at that and winked at me, and I shook my head.
Penny and Veronica kept talking, but I zoned out, my eyes fixed on a point across the room where shelves used to be. Luckily, we stored most of our supplies at our stations, but it peeved me to have my space packed with mirrors and makeup and lights, making it unfamiliar to me, changing the space I’d practically lived in every day for the majority of my life to something unrecognizable.
Better this than Hal, I told myself for the eleventy trillionth time. So many times, in fact, that it had nearly lost its effect all together.
I heard a voice in the front of the shop and turned my head, certain it was Annika. The makeup artist guided my head back toward her with the patience of a saint, but my heart ticked up just a notch, just enough to notice.
I hadn’t seen her since I’d left her house on Saturday. It was Monday. It could have been a month, as much as I’d thought about her. I spent all Sunday working, replaying the day before to the steady hum of my tattoo gun, the vibrating of it in my hand comforting, hypnotizing. The motions were automatic, as easy as remembering to blink or breathe. But she was on my mind all day.
To see her soft, almost silly. To hear her laugh. The feel of her against me, leaning into me. The vision of her lying in bed with her hair around her like a veil.
I’d figured I wouldn’t see her Sunday, but every time the bell over the door rang, I whipped my head toward the sound, ripped from the trance like a that bell was a bucket of ice water. I worried about her, too, hoped she was all right. But I knew I’d see her today, and even though I tried to play it cool, I’d found myself counting down to it, even waking an hour earlier than usual, which left me early enough to have nothing to do. I felt like a kid waiting on my front porch, fully dressed and ready to go.
So, I’d spent the early morning reading Persuasion, which I found myself enjoying more than I thought I would. Getting into the way they speak was the hardest part, but once I got past that, it was easy. It was a story of two people finding their way back to each other, of finding the way to themselves after being lost. I found I could relate to the sentiment.
I’d killed time waiting for the hour when we’d all file upstairs and into the green room for one-on-ones with Annika. We only had a few hours, and then we’d resume our regularly scheduled clients, with more to film tonight after we closed the shop. Days were going to be long, and we’d need to be ‘on’ for all of it, which wasn’t something we were used to. I just hoped everyone held up without cracking.
Believe it or not, most tattoo parlors are pretty boring, day to day. We sit in a chair with flesh and ink under our hands, mostly in silence, other than the music that plays and the buzz of the gun in our hand.
I heard her voice again, closer this time, and forced myself to sit still. I’d see her when I saw her, I told myself. But my nerves buzzed just like a tattoo gun with nothing but a rubber band to hold everything in place. Because something had shi
fted between us, and I wanted to find out if she felt it too.
But she never came back to us. My makeup artist dabbed a little more goop on my nose and leaned back to look at me. Her eyes darted over to one side, and she froze like she was listening to something. She smiled at me.
“They’re ready for you in the shop,” she said, and at my confused face, she pointed to her ear where a monitor sat nestled.
“Thanks …” I started, searching for her name as a PA appeared at my elbow to mic me.
“Kyla.”
I smiled. “Thanks, Kyla.”
“You’re very welcome,” she said with a smile as she slipped the brush into her apron.
I climbed out of my chair and headed out and upstairs to the interview room. A chair stood in the middle of the room with lights and reflectors all pointed at it, and a cameraman and boom operator fiddled with their equipment, but I barely noticed them.
Annika sat on a stool next to them, smiling up at me. She looked fresh and recharged, though still cool and collected. The animosity seemed to be mostly gone, if I wasn’t making up the notion.
“Hey,” she said as I approached, standing to greet me.
“Hey,” I smiled back at her.
She hitched a thumb over her shoulder. “Can I have a word while we finish getting set up?”
“Of course,” I answered, feeling a little nervous, playing it off completely as I followed her out and into the hallway.
She reached for my hip, and I froze, too caught off guard to react. But her fingers closed over my mic battery and clicked it off with a snick. She popped her own monitor out of her ear, leaving it dangling over her shoulder.
Her face was calm, masked, cast from marble, but she smiled, which gave me the tiniest modicum of hope. “I just wanted to thank you again for taking care of me the other day. It was really great of you, and I appreciated it a lot.”
Great. Appreciated. These were not the words of a woman head over heels in love with me, and I felt my smile fall. “Yeah, sure. I wouldn’t have left you on your own like you were.”
“It was so nice of you.”
I almost flinched at the least productive adjective in the English language. “Well, you know me. I’m just a nice guy.”
“I just hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression. I know I can come off as a little … frosty, but I like to think that I’m not a terrible person. I’m just cautious, is all. And I know yesterday my guard was down, so I just didn’t want you to think I was …” she trailed off, and I picked it right up.
“Into me? Defrosting your cold, black soul?” I inched closer, and she leaned toward me just a degree, just enough to give me permission. I pressed the opening. “Waiting for me to kiss you?”
“Joel,” she said, her voice layered with warning and yearning, and I couldn’t help myself. I leaned in closer still.
“Or were you waiting on this? Were you waiting on me?” I breathed the words, my nose filled with the scent of her — honeysuckle? No, that wasn’t it either—
She put a hand on my chest, her face hardening. “Stop.”
The word was a punch in the gut, stopping me immediately, and I drew a breath at the sting. I stepped back.
“I was concussed. Whatever I said or did the other day, I wasn’t in my right mind. Literally. Nothing has changed. I still don’t want you hit on me. This isn’t going to happen, okay?”
But her eyes — her eyes, her tone of voice, her hand on my chest like it was connected to me rather than trying to push me away — they told me a different story than her words. So I put on my best smirk, because she could say she didn’t want me all day long, but that wouldn’t make it true. “Okay, Annika. Whatever you say.”
Her brows dropped, the tension broken. “Don’t say that like I just challenged you.”
I shrugged. “You’re the boss, boss.”
She rolled her eyes and huffed, reaching for my hip again. I resisted the urge to lean into her hand as she turned my battery pack on and brushed past me. I turned and followed, taking my seat in front of her. She wanted to play it this way? I’d play along, back down, let her be the boss. Let her take the lead.
I had a feeling that if I did, the payoff would be well worth the wait.
Annika
I sat in my chair across from Joel, clipboard in my lap, heart thumping like a kick drum against my ribs.
That hairy bastard smirked at me from his chair like he knew a secret. I could practically hear him singing neener-neener-neeeee-ner like a child, hands clasped between his parted thighs, like he knew exactly how sexy he was, how right he was.
What a dick.
I slipped my pen out of the clipboard’s clip and smiled as Randy nodded to me from behind the camera.
“So, Joel,” I started, “have you always been an insufferable horse’s ass, or is it a more recent development? Something acquired in your old age?”
He laughed, and the sound was so hearty, so full of life and pleasure that I pursed my lips, determined not to laugh back.
“Oh, no. I’ve been insufferable since my exit from the womb. It’s only sweetened with age.”
I’d been doodling absently on my blank page and realized with a smile that I was drawing a dick as I thought through my questions.
“Noted. So, tell me a bit about how you got started in art and tattooing.”
He began to talk, his eyes taking a far-away look back into his life, and I listened, making notes, drawing what looked like scratchy pubes on the balls of the dick, giving the crown a beard and a smirk, trying not to listen too deeply. Because everything I learned about him piqued my interest even more. And that stupid interest pissed me off. I didn’t want to be interested, but there I was, listening to it all, trying not to think about how he’d almost kissed me. How much I’d wanted him to.
He told me about how his parents had always encouraged his drawing and sketching, even his tattooing, which, he explained, most of his companions didn’t have growing up. They were a rag-tag band of misfits, finding home in their culture, in their jobs. They were their own family, especially once Joel and Shep lost their parents.
I wrote the word Hairy at the top of the page, tracing it over and over again as we volleyed questions and answers back and forth to each other, digging deeper into his life. What started off fluffy had delved a little deeper than I suspected he was comfortable with, but part of my job was to push the boundaries. Make people cry like Barbara Walters or Oprah. Get them to open up. So I asked a question I shouldn’t have, only in part for my job.
“Tell me about your ex-wife, Liz.”
I might have just imagined it, but I swear he flinched a millimeter when I said her name. “What do you want to know?”
Everything. “Where did you two meet?”
“A bar.”
“What did you think of her the first time you saw her?”
His eyes narrowed. “That she was somebody I’d like to know.”
I nodded, annoyed that he wouldn’t answer me as I added more pubes to the balls. “Sure. I heard she’s beautiful. I saw some pictures from her wedding day when we were vetting Hal for the show.”
Somehow, his eyes narrowed even more.
“She and Hal looked really happy. That was, what, a few months after your divorce was finalized?”
He stood up and pulled off his monitor, refusing to look at me. “We’re done here.”
My stomach fell into my shoes as I realized what I’d done, and I stood as he passed me, leaving my clipboard on the stool. He stormed out the door, and I followed. The control room came to a silent stop, including Penny and Ramona, who were waiting for their turn.
“Joel, I—”
He whirled around, wounded and angry. “What the fuck was that, Annika?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you—”
“Like hell you didn’t.”
I took a breath. “You’re right, but I didn’t mean to hurt you. It’s easy to forget that you have f
eelings when you disregard mine.”
His nostrils flared. “That’s all well and good, but you’re not the one being filmed.”
My mouth opened to speak, but he headed me off.
“Don’t bait me. Don’t push me. This show isn’t about Hal and Liz. This is about my shop, about our culture, about art and history and people. I’m not a fucking puff piece or a puppet for you to dick around with. I’m a human fucking being with baggage just like everybody, and I don’t appreciate that being exploited on national fucking television.”
“I know,” I started, hoping he’d let me finish. “But people are going to want to know about you, about your past. The women are going to want to hear about why you’re single, imagine themselves with you.”
He took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling slowly, lips a thin line. “I don’t give a shit, Annika. This is my life, and there’s a time, a place, and a way to talk about it. But that—” he pointed toward the front of the shop where we’d been sitting, arching over me, “—is not the way. Have some fucking respect.”
I blinked at him, my mouth open at his proximity, as close as he’d been earlier. But now he breathed hot anger and hurt instead of the heat of desire. My thoughts swam as he spun around and marched out the door, leaving me standing in the middle of the room with a dozen sets of eyes on me. So I did what any good producer would do.
I looked to Penny. “You’re up. This way, please,” I said with my voice cold, carrying a calm I didn’t feel.
The interviews went on for a few hours, and we got through the first half of the staff. I couldn’t stop thinking about Joel, about the anger in his face, in his words. But I kept smiling, kept talking, kept going. It didn’t stop me from feeling like I’d done real damage. It didn’t stop me from feeling all sorts of things.
I found myself asking the artists about him under the guise of looking for material, telling myself I was looking for chinks in the armor. But really, I found their stories and words about him a testament to the kind of man he was. Everyone I interviewed spoke of him with admiration and respect, with smiles on their faces and eyes full of love. Because they did — they loved him with something close to worship.