“Alright,” he said, removing the other two options and leaning in close. “Now, instead of holding it like a pen, go ahead and slide your middle finger down here next to the needle head. Yeah, like that. And as you ink, you’ll use that as a guide.”
“Thisis a tattoo gun?”
“It’s a machine, and yes,” he said. “They’re not so scary, at least when there’s no skin involved. They’re actually really cool machines.”
I peeked at him. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he murmured as he gently slipped it from my hand and adjusted the knobs, settings, and tube to his liking. “Especially the newer ones. See, up here, you can adjust voltage which is like speed, and needle depths which is going to help you keep a clean line.”
Had he ever sounded so excited before?
I hummed, eying him as he brought the machine up to eye level and inspected something. As his excited eyes turned on me, a hopeful smile playing around his lips, I decided that no. I’d never seen him this giddy about anything, not even the tattoos themselves. Yet the machine put this look on his face?Huh. “What makes them so special? Isn’t the important part the art?”
“Nuh-uh,” he said right away. “Well, okay yeah that’s the important part. But it’s the art in conjunction with your tool thatmakes things special. And the personalization possible with the machine or the way you handle it, becomes part of the art itself.”
“Oh,” I said, looking at it again. I wasn’t quite seeing the same things, but I saw how much he believed in it and that alone was enough to put me on his team. “That’s pretty cool.”
“The coolest,” he said. “I collect these things. I can show you all my favorite ones when we’re done. I even built a few. Anyway— You ready?”
I blinked. “For what!”
“To turn it on.” My blank expression must have given away my thoughts, because he grinned even wider. “It’s just a pen cartridge—to practice. I want you to play with the settings against the orange and see which one you like. If you’re good, then I might actually give you a needle.”
“Yippie,” I said sarcastically as nerves took over my chest, though I was actually a little curious.
He let me practice on the orange, first with the ink cartridge and later with an actual needle. He made me glove up and everything. He gave me freedom to play around with it, monitoring only loosely while he finished up our drawing close by and giving tips here and there when necessary. By the time we were done, it was midnight and I’d blown through ten oranges.
On that tenth one, as soon as I connected the last line I squealed.
“Harper, turn it off! Turn it off!”
“Baby, the power button’s on the top.”
“No, here, you take it.” I shoved it his way like it was a loaded gun. With gentle hands he took the machine and turned it off, allowing me to spring up and hold my orange in the air like it was baby Jesus. “I did it! I did it!”
“Of course you did,” he said, eyes tracking me with an easy smile playing on his face.
I was jumping up and down, protecting my orange with my life, but the sound of his words brought me to a halt in front of him. Thesmile he held was so big you would think he was the one who’d just tattooed their very first orange.
“You knew I could do it?” I asked.
“I know you can do anything,” he said. “Anything you want.”
Something in me felt like it was flying. Rising up to the sky and living in the clouds with the crazy feelings this man gave me.
Shoot.
Shoot, shoot, shoot!
What was this feeling he kept pulling out of me? What was this invisible,invinciblefeeling that I only got around Harper? And why was it becoming so addicting?
I had no idea, but I wasn’t going to give it up. And Harper didn’t ask me to each day he allowed me through the doors of his shop and of his heart. Showering me with affection and encouragement, so much that now when I was around him, I expected to feel a million feet tall.
What I didn’t expect though, was that a couple of nights later he would come into the main room of the shop holding up our drawing on stencil paper with the widest grin on his face asking, “Ready?”
Looking up from my computer where I had been working on my project, I asked, “For?”
“For the real deal, baby.”
