This Mess We''re In

  “Now, how do I get you out of your clothes?” he asked.

  I stiffened. He was going to touch me with his big dexterous hands.

  I pulled off my hoodie, and Damien gathered my hair and swept it to the side. His fingers grazed my skin, sending a tremor down my spine. He slid his fingers over my neck and down my upper back, tracing the lines where the tattoo would be.

  “It will go from here to here.”

  “That feels like the right spot.”

  He wiped my back with antiseptic, making me tingle. Then he placed the stencil on my skin and pressed. When the ink had sunk in, he peeled it away. With two hand mirrors, he showed me the stencil. I looked at the design on my skin. It was even more beautiful than it had been before.

  “Perfect.”

  He slathered his hands with hand sanitizer and then snapped on a pair of rubber gloves. The sound of his tattoo gun buzzed behind me and the first jabbing sensation of the needle bit through my skin.

  “Mother fucker!” I spouted. It hurt far worse than I’d imagined.

  “The lines are the worst. Are you going to be okay?”

  “I gave birth. I can do this.”

  He chuckled and pressed the needle into my skin again. I let out a long, low moan and whimpered.

  “I wish it wasn’t pain that was making you make those noises,” he said, barely audible above the sound of the tattoo gun.

  “What?” My head was spinning. I could smell ink as the needle pierced my skin. Endorphins hummed through my blood stream. I knew what he said. I wanted him to say it again.

  “I’d like to hear you make those noises from pleasure.”

  “That’s what I thought.” I groaned again, and he laughed. “Are you enjoying this?”

  “Hurting you? No. But the tat is going to be amazing. I’m just imagining you groaning for better reasons.”

  “Stop it. You don’t have my permission — ouch — to think that,” I teased, barely keeping myself from moaning again.

  “You can’t stop me. In my head, you’re all mine.”

  “Should I be worried?”

  “What is there to be worried about?”

  “I don’t know. Tattoo biker guy who likes to make me groan. Ouch… And somehow weasels his way into my house to press his sharp needles into my skin. Could be dangerous.”

  The buzzing of the gun stopped, and Damien was silent. “I’d never hurt you,” he said. The tattoo gun buzzed back to life and the needle dug into my flesh.

  “You don’t even know me.”

  “You’re you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m nothing special. I’m just a girl on the edge who hasn’t slipped over. There are plenty of us, everywhere you go.”

  “Do you want me to agree that you aren’t special? Would that make you more comfortable?”

  “Well, then you’d sound like everyone else. Maybe it would.”

  “I’m not everyone else.”

  “So, you’re the special one.”

  “Maybe. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m special because I can see how special you are.”

  “Oh brother. Just do the tattoo, would you?”

  He chuckled and the gun buzzed in the air between us. We sat silently while he finished his work. My skin became numb to the pain, and I relaxed into the feeling of it slicing my body. Finally, he wiped my back and covered it with ointment and a bandage. “The outline is done. We can do the shading later. How do you feel?”

  “A bit lightheaded. But the pain got better after a while.”

  “It usually does. Hey, you want to maybe go for a ride or something. It’s still early, and I have the day off.”

  “A ride, with you, on your bike?”

  “Yes. Why not?”

  “I guess.” I shrugged. Was he asking me out? We were treading an uncomfortable line. This was exactly what I was afraid of. My head shouted at me that I should have said no. My body reminded me it wanted nothing more than for him to lift me onto the kitchen counter and shove his tongue in my mouth. I told both parts of myself to shut the hell up. “Where?”

  “It’s still light out. We can head up to the park.”

  “I can’t resist a ride to the park. Let me just tell Zoe.” I found Zoe upstairs, playing with Rose on the floor in my bedroom.

  “Um, so, Damien asked to go for a ride. Could you watch Rose while I’m gone?”

  “Wow. Hot. Like a date?”

  “No. I just figured I might as well take the opportunity to get out of the house for a while.”

  She snickered at me. “Yes, of course. Go.”

  I trotted downstairs and grabbed my coat. Damien packed his things in his backpack.

  I followed him outside and he handed me a helmet. He got on the bike and helped me get on behind him. We sped down the road and turned toward town and stopped in front of the health food store. He told me he’d be right back, and I waited outside. A few minutes later, Damien came out with a bag that he stashed in the storage compartment in his bike.

  We got back on and sped north along the highway. I had no idea what he had planned, but I didn’t care. My body pressed against his. The motor under me hummed into my already excited core and teased out the moisture waiting behind the surface.

  I felt so safe attached to his strength. My legs squeezed around his hips. The feeling of his hard body between my legs added to my excitement.

  We turned into the Redwood State Park and took the Avenue of the Giants into the forest. We passed the tourist destinations. Tall trees rose up around us, and the shadow of the forest swallowed us in diffused light. The hydrangeas were blooming, white and pink and purple — massive pompoms on tall leafy bushes.

  We drove past the campground and continued down a rarely traveled road toward the back of the park. I clung to him as we drove. Finally, we made it to a turnout that indicated a trail to Island Hill.

  I got off the bike and pulled the helmet from my head. The damp smell of the fog and the richness of the forest intoxicated me. Damien opened the storage compartment of his bike and pulled out a blanket and the bag from the grocery store. He took my hand and led me up the trail. After the long drive the trail was fairly short.

  I enjoyed the feeling of being so deep in the forest. It was pristine, so far from everything. We made it to the top of the hill. It gave a view of the fog-covered valley sprawled out below. In the distance, a hill peeked through the clinging white mist.

  I watched Damien spread the blanket over the grass in a sheltered clearing. We sat down, and he opened the take-out boxes — perfectly moist chicken kabobs, rice pilaf with cranberries, spinach spanakopita with flaky layers of filo and feta cheese, and rich chocolate cake for dessert.

  “You had this planned all along. Didn’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  I dug into the savory food, happy to taste something other than my own cooking or leftovers from the café. Flavors burst on my tongue. He uncorked a bottle of wine and poured it into plastic cups. We touched our glasses together, making a pitiful little tapping sound. I smiled at him. I knew it was a huge goofy smile. I felt happy. His lips curled in a grin and his eyes gazed down at me like they could see inside my soul.

  “So, tell me your story, Damien Cruz.”

  “There isn’t much to tell.”

  “Come on. You trick me into a date and don’t want to tell me your story. Where are you from?”

  “Los Angeles.”

  I sipped my wine and took another bite of my rice pilaf. The sweet tang of cranberry broke between my teeth. “Oh. A SoCal boy. Do you surf?”

  He nearly spit out his wine laughing. I wasn’t sure what was so funny. “No. I’ve never even been on a surfboard. Surfing is for rich kids.”

  I suddenly felt a sense of kinship to him. My heart opened, and I wanted to know more about him. “What was your family like?”

  “It was just me and my mom and dad. We lived in North Hollywood. Hollywood isn’t what people think. We had a lot of gangs and crime and prostitution
going on in our neighborhood. It was pretty tough on the street. Mom always kept things together until she left. My dad was degenerate criminal who could never hold a job.”

  “He sounds like a great guy.”

  “Meh, my dad was what he was. I try not to think about it. He’s dead now.”

  “Do you have a good relationship with your mom?”

  “She was kind of my best friend when I was a kid. I was one of the only white kids in my school. It was tough, but she was always there for me.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “I came home from school one day, junior year of high school, and she was gone. She didn’t even leave a note or a phone number.”

  “Jeez. I’m sorry. That must have been so hard.”

  “Where are your parents?” he said, changing the subject.

  “My mother… she killed herself two years ago. That’s why I’m here and not in college. I was on a full scholarship to a design school, but I had to come home to take care of Zoe. My dad, he left a long time ago.”

  “Shit, Claire. I had no idea. That’s horrible. At least my mom is still alive somewhere. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

  “It was hard. But we had the house, and we live in a pretty safe town.”

  “This place is a little piece of heaven.” He lay down on the blanket next to me. I could feel the warmth of his body radiating into my hip. I took a last swig of wine and lay down next to him.

  Our individual pain seemed to merge into a collective body that divided between us and made it all seem less raw. My broken soul went out to his, and we merged with each other in that moment as the fog rolled over the hillside.

  “What happened to Rose’s father?” he said, lying beside me.

  I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to talk about Jessy. It was one of those subjects I avoided, like my mother’s suicide. He stroked the back of my hand. I drew my hand away and crossed my arms, staring up at the darkening sky. I felt guilty for pulling away from an innocent touch. I knew I wasn’t going to make out with him. I might as well tell him why he should stay far, far away.

  “It was a car accident. After I came home to take care of my sisters, when my mom died, Jessy and I started going out. We’d been friends as kids and kind of more in high school, but it never went anywhere. One night he picked me up in his car, and I was so overwhelmed with everything that we ended up doing it in the front seat of his little pickup. Totally unglamorous.”

  I tried to laugh, making it feel less awkward. “A few weeks later, I found out I was pregnant. Of course, I was stunned and thought about all my options. I was only eighteen. But I’d just lost my mom. I couldn’t lose a baby too. Maybe I was just being selfish.”

  “Of course you weren’t. You were being strong.”

  “I don’t know. But that’s what I did. I love Rose with every fiber of my being. The day I told Jessy about the baby, he got into the crash. I asked him to come over all day, but he kept telling me he was busy. He was acting strange. Finally, I just said it over the phone. He got on the road to come see me.

  “That’s when it happened. He swerved into the wrong lane, then ran off the road into the tree. They did a toxicology report that showed he had high levels of narcotics in his blood. His mother blamed me. He’d texted her right before he left, saying he was a father. She’s never forgiven me. She doesn’t even acknowledge Rose is her granddaughter.”

  “I’m so sorry, Claire, that’s terrible. Some people are just awful.”

  “Don’t be sorry. It’s better not having her in my life if she wants to be that way. I honestly don’t need the drama. Enough about me. What about these high-paying clients of yours? Who are they?”

  He was silent for a moment and finally heaved a sigh. “They are rich old hippies who own a place up in the hills east of town. They’ve got this compound where they host big parties. I’m one of the attractions. I tattoo their guests, and they pay me a salary. It’s a sweet deal.”

  “So you’re staying with them.”

  “Yeah. I’m staying with them.”

  “It sounds like a nice opportunity. Will you go back to LA soon?”

  “I’m not sure. They want me to stay for a while.”

  “Then you can spend more time in the woods. That should be nice.”

  “I can spend more time with you.” He leaned toward me, his lips just inches away. I could feel the heat of his breath on my cheek. Right before his lips connected, I sat up.

  “We should probably get back now.” My heart surged and my body rebelled, but I couldn’t let him kiss me. I felt like a reject. I had some serious issues. It was just a kiss.

  “Just wait until the sun sets.”

  We sat up on the blanket and watched the blazing sun dip behind the fog-covered hills. Light filtered through the mist, casting long streams of illumination over the valley in gradients of orange and red. Pink and yellow radiated through the dimming sky. High above, I could see the first evening star blink in the velvet purple of night.

  Chapter Twelve: Damien

  The morning after I dropped off Claire, I woke early to go find a place to work out. I’d gotten out of shape in the time I’d been here. Long hours of tattooing without working out was making me soft.

  I went downstairs to see if I could find something decent to eat. There was nothing but crap in the fridge, but I found a box of oatmeal at the back of the cabinet and made myself a bowl.

  The other guys woke up later and shuffled out to their various jobs. After I finished my breakfast, I went upstairs and used my smartphone to find a local gym. The address popped up on the screen, and I got ready to go.

  As I was on my way out the front door carrying my gym bag, Martel’s SUV drove into the parking lot. Just as I pulled on my helmet, I heard him call my name. I took off the helmet and turned to face him. His eyes were hidden behind wire-frame aviator sunglasses and his lips curved in a grin. The smell of exhaust fumes stung my nose.

  “Damien, just the man I wanted to see.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hop in, let’s go for a ride.”

  “I was just about to go to the gym.”

  “You can go after.”

  I tucked my helmet inside the storage compartment of my bike and went around to the passenger door of Martel’s black Range Rover. The interior smelled new and had a polished sheen. Martel shut his door and turned the ignition. He pulled out of the parking lot and onto the highway.

  “So what’s this all about?” I asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  We drove in silence until we made it to town. He turned down the touristy little Main Street I’d visited with Claire and stopped in front of a vacant two-story shop building. It had a flat, square exterior with huge windows on the first and second floors. The cinderblock façade was painted brick red, and a blue awning covered the window.

  “Come on,” he said.

  I followed him from the car and through the front door of the empty shop. It smelled of fresh paint. The walls were crisp white. It had thick detailed crown molding around the entire ceiling and dark wood floors throughout. It was a nice little space of about five hundred square feet.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “What do I think of what?”

  “The shop, idiot.”

  “It’s nice. Why?”

  “I just leased it. I think it would make a good tattoo shop. Don’t you?”

  My mouth dropped open. He’d mentioned a tattoo shop, but I hadn’t expected this. The location, the building — it was much nicer than anything I’d imagined.

  “Yeah. It would be awesome, but why the hell would you do this for me?”

  “I told you, kid. I promised your old man.”

  I turned around the room again and shook my head. If Martel wanted to set me up in this place, why the hell not? I knew it was going to come at a price, but I’d deal with that later.

  “There’s a small apartment upstairs. That’s yours too. Ca
n’t be bringing that nice girl of yours to the clubhouse, now, can you?”

  “I’d never bring her there,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him.

  He threw his hands in the air in a defensive gesture, his strong arms bulging under his black t-shirt. “Point taken. Now, about the shop. Get me a list of everything you need to get set up. I’ll have it ordered and installed ASAP. In the meantime, the apartment is already furnished, if you want to move in.”

  I glared at him. My face felt like a scowling mask. Part of me didn’t want to be associated with his club at all. Something in me still felt loyal to my dad. I had to give Martel a chance.

  “Here are the keys to the upstairs apartment. You can get up there around the back.”

  “Great.”

  “Now, the gym is right down the street and around the corner from here. I can have someone come pick you up in an hour or so.”

  “Give me two. I’m out of shape. Thanks to you.”

  “Grow up, kid.”

  We walked outside. He locked up the shop and handed me the keys. I grabbed my gym bag from the car, and he gave me a grin and a wave as he drove away in his SUV. I took another look at the shop. The obligation was coming. I knew it. Nothing in life came free.

  I went to the gym and signed up for a full membership with what was left in my bank account. The front-desk girl with the short shorts and fake breasts showed me around the gym. It was well equipped for a small town — weights, treadmills, sauna, punching bags. It had everything I needed except a ring and a sparring partner.

  She left me at the locker room entrance, and I went inside to change. I spent the first hour doing cardio. I’d become soft in the last weeks, and my stamina was low. The second hour I spend lifting free weights. The feeling of my muscles contracting and burning as I curled my biceps, and the smell of sweat as my heart pounded, gave me an intense comfort.

  After my workout, I showered and changed into my street clothes. I went back to the shop and texted Martel to let him know his boy could pick me up.

  Upstairs in the apartment, I found the same crisp white walls and architectural details as in the shop below. There was a black leather couch, a flat screen, and an oak coffee table in the living room. The bedroom had a king-sized four-poster bed with a new comforter and sheets. The kitchen was already equipped with pots and pans, plates and utensils. There was even a juicer and a blender on the counter.