Page 159 of Nash
I watch it emerge. My design in her hand. My art made permanent by the woman who taught me what my hands could do. The tears dry on my face and I don't replace them. The crying is done. What's left is the watching.
Nash's hand finds my knee. His thumb traces a slow circle through my jeans while Frankie works on my arm. I meet his gaze. Something passes between us that doesn't need words. I'm okay. I'm here. This is happening.
He nods once.
"Done," Frankie says.
She wipes the tattoo, applies ointment, wraps it in clear film. Then she sets her machine down, takes off her gloves, and pulls me out of the chair.
I grip her shirt with both fists and hold on. Her hand cradles the back of my head. She smells like sage, turpentine, and the faint sharp note of green soap. She smells like every morning I've walked into this shop. She smells like the person who made me.
She pulls back. Holds my face in both hands.
"You're ready," she says.
I nod. I can't speak. Someone has to. The mantra that has run through my head for months, letting me justify every sacrifice, every favor, every time I carried something that wasn't mine. But this time someone did something for me. Frankie did something for me. She gave me the shop, the art, and the intention. Now she's standing in front of me, holding my face telling me I'm ready, and I didn't have to earn it. I just had to show up.
She releases me. Picks up her tray. She stops beside Nash's chair on her way to the back room. I can't hear what she says to him, but he stands, then his hand comes up and rests on her shoulder for a moment. Frankie puts her hand over his, squeezesonce, and walks through the door. The click of the latch is quiet and final.
I stand in the middle of the shop. My shop.
The flash wall is half Frankie's designs and half mine, layered and overlapping. Two artists sharing a wall the way we shared a practice. The machines sit on their trays, and the client chair holds the indent of everybody that's sat in it. The altar shelf holds candles burned down to stubs. The whole room holds the ghost of sage.
Nash takes my hand. Leads me to the couch against the back wall, the one clients wait on. The one I've napped on during slow afternoons while he sat beside me and pretended he wasn't watching me sleep.
He sits. Pulls me down beside him. I curl into his side, my head on his chest, my hand resting over the heartbeat tattoo on his forearm. My compass rose points east, toward the heart. His heart rate is in my handwriting on his arm.
We stay.
The shop settles. The machines are clean. There's art on the walls. My art. My walls.
"Nash."
"Yeah."
"Talk to me."
"About what?"
"Anything. Tell me about the first time you saw me."
He presses his mouth to my hair. Closes his eyes.
"You were wearing a yellow dress. At the clubhouse. You walked in and the yard got louder."
I trace the outline of his heartbeat through the clear film on his arm.
"You stole a fry without asking. You looked at me while you ate it. Daring me to say something."
"Did you want to say something?"
"I wanted to say a lot of things."
"What stopped you?"
"I wasn't ready to be the man who said them."
My fingers go still on his arm. I press closer. My body relaxes into his.
