Page 79 of For You I'd Mend
“I realized I didn’t need proof of how Lacey died; I needed to honor how she lived.”
Phoenix opened the manilla envelope he’d brought with him and handed me a photo of a little girl holding an older boy’s hand. The girl had lively brown eyes and waist-length hair. She looked straight at the camera while the boy looked down at her with an adoring smile.
“She’s beautiful,” I said. I couldn’t imagine having kids of my own after losing someone so young. The fear Phoenix must carry with him every day would paralyze me.
“Can you draw us like that but like we’re part of a stained-glass window?” he asked.
I saw the image clearly in my mind. Complicated work with smooth skin, but infinitely harder on a scar. I glanced at his arm again. There was enough room, barely.
“It’s difficult to ink over scar tissue, but I get why you want it there. Give me an hour or two to draw it up. It’ll take a couple sessions, but we should be able to nail down the design today and maybe do the outline. Mind if I snap a picture of your arm and take some measurements? I want to get this right.”
“Of course. Big Tom was right about you. You know, a lot of people would have laughed at him for that cat tattoo.”
“Grief is grief,” I said.
He nodded and cleared his throat. “Well, take however long you need. Just text me when you’re ready.”
After I measured his scar and took several pictures, I lost myself in the sketch. I made a copy and played around with different shadings until the bell over the door rang.
I looked up expecting Phoenix had come back early. Instead, Aries walked in with a girl who didn’t look old enough to drive, let alone hang out with a man in his early twenties.
“Theo,” he said, wrapping his arm around the girl. “Heard you moving around down here and figured you could help us.”
Aries and I hadn’t spoken much since Poppy and I got together. Judging by the glares he sent my way Friday, I assumed she’d called him and broken their date. I didn’t feel like hashing it out with him, and apart from the occasional side eye, he didn’t seem inclined to talk about it either.
“My girl Sarah here wants some ink.”
“I’m kind of in the middle of something,” I said, pointing to the sketch on the draft table.
“It won’t take long,” he said.
Sarah held up her phone to an image of what had to be the most boring tattoo I’d ever seen. “I saw Aries’s zodiac tat, and I want one of mine. I’m a Sagittarius, so it’s just an arrow with a cross on the bottom. Nothing too thick. All black is fine.”
“I’d do it myself,” Aries said, “but I promised Max no more tattooing until I get a license.”
“Look,” I said. “I’m happy to do that or something Sagittarius-inspired tomorrow, but I’m working on a pretty complicated design right now.”
“You said this guy would do it,” Sarah whined.
“Come on, Theo,” Aries said, glancing over at Sarah. “You owe me.”
Kid wanted to get laid, and since I’d already cock blocked him once, I nodded. “But just a simple design.”
“Yay,” Sarah said, jumping up and down. Despite her heavy makeup and low-cut shirt, she looked dangerously young.
“I’ll need your ID, Sarah,” I said.
“Oh sure,” she said, digging in her bag. She pulled out a loose ID and handed it to me. “I went blonde after that was taken,” she said. “And, um, lost a little weight.”
The ID looked real, and the picture resembled Sarah. It had her name and an October birthday that made her nineteen, but something didn’t feel right. I looked up at her and frowned.
“For fuck’s sake, Theo,” Aries snapped. “This isn’t even her first ink.”
Sarah pushed up the sleeve of her oversized sweatshirt and showed me a cursive A.
“What does the A stand for?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes. “Aries of course.”
