Page 109 of Business Casual
I look up at him. “Do you want to see it before I get started with the ink?”
He doesn’t even glance in the direction of his wrist. “No.”
I frown. “Why not?”
“Because I said I trust you, Nova. And that doesn’t have qualifications.”
“But it’s permanent.”
He blinks once. “And I trust you,” he says, the ghost of a grin brushing across his mouth.
It feels like we’re arguing about something in two separate languages. I stare at him and wait for him to change his mind, to yank his wrist out of my hand and laugh at the design I’ve drawn for him, but he keeps his eyes on mine with a steady, calm look.
I reach for the tattoo pen and the tiny pod of black ink. I fill another disposable cup with deep blue and add a few drops of white until it’s the color of the sky on a cold, cloudless day. Pale, pale blue.
Charlie arches an eyebrow at the color but doesn’t say a word.
“If you’re sure,” I offer, one last opportunity for him to back out.
“I’m sure,” he tells me.
I test the trigger of the pen so he can hear the sound. He doesn’t so much as jump, his arm still extended on the table between us, palm up. Trusting.
“It’ll be a pinch when I first start,” I say. “It’ll hurt, but once the blood starts moving in that direction it’ll calm down. It’s a small design. It shouldn’t take me long.”
“I can take it,” he tells me with a cocky grin that falters somewhere in the middle. He’s trying so hard tonight to be the person he usually is in front of everyone else. Good Time Charlie and all the shiny, sparkly things that are meant to distract. He said I’m in Technicolor, but tonight he’s hiding in shades of gray, none of his usual colors shining through. He’s watering himself down, for whatever reason.
I wish he’d stop.
I dip my pen into the pod of ink and let the needle fill, then settle over the design on his wrist. The hum of the pen vibrates from my fingers to my wrist, up my arm and over my shoulder until it feels like my entire being is alive with the rhythm. This is my favorite part. The anticipation right before I set my needle to skin.
I am the one in control. I am the one creating something beautiful on another person. Something permanent. Something lasting.
I tend to lose myself when I’m working, time turning into a fluid concept that slips right from my fingers as I dip my pen into ink over and over. I trace the lines on Charlie’s wrist, my awareness of him reduced to the stretch of his arm across the padded table and his steady breathing. He doesn’t flinch or twitch. His body relaxes into it, a curious, contemplative look on his face every time I flick my eyes up to check on him.
He’s a natural.
“Do you remember when you asked me why I’m always down here?” he asks about ten minutes into my work. My body jolts at the scratch in his voice, bringing me back to the room where there is light and sound and something other than ink and skin and bone and vein.
I lift my pen from his wrist. I asked him about that weeks ago.“Yeah, I remember. You told me you spend time here because you like the food.”
“I do. Like the food. But that’s not—” He swallows, and I know he’s fighting to keep himself still. “That’s not the only reason I visit.”
I turn back to his wrist and trace another smooth line. “What’s the other reason?”
I have my theories. Charlie might smile and laugh and joke when people are watching, but his shoulders curl in as soon as they turn away. He collapses in on himself in increments. It’s like he’s tired down to his bones from the strain of trying to pretend.
Charlie is always doing his best to make everyone around him happy. I used to think it was because it made him feel good, but I think it’s deeper than that. I think he needs to be the loudest laugh in the room. He needs to entertain. He needs to feel like he’s earned his spot.
His body collapses with a sigh, the hand not outstretched on the table scrubbing roughly at the back of his head.
“I’m lonely, Nova,” he says, his voice cracking down the middle of my thoughts, sucking the air right out of my lungs. It’s the simple honesty of the statement, I think, that hits me the hardest. He’s not trying to hide at all.
I don’t look up, offering him the privacy of my diverted attention. But there’s a tremble in my hand that wasn’t there before, and I have to take a second before I finish another two lines on his wrist.
Tell me more, my mind begs, even as my heart feels like it’s going to thump right out of my chest onto the floor.Tell me everything.
His pinky flexes, grazing right below my glove again, and then relaxes. The trembling in my hands stops, my grip sure around the tattoo pen.
