I contemplated this, wondering what he was doing when he saw me. What he was thinking. “What’d you see?”
He opened the door to the shop and looked at me pointedly as if to say,go in. But his voice was soft as he said. “I saw a girl I know having a bad day. Now c’mon, Boss. We got tea and shit inside to warm you up.”
Blinking, I tried to fight the sting of my eyes as I stepped inside. I had no idea how early I was for our appointment, but when I came into the shop I saw no one else was there. Every station was empty, and the lights were off except for the one directly over Harper’s chair.
When he shut the door behind us, he locked it and then immediately went toward his station removing his one glove as he walked. All around it, there were the normal signs of a recently used station. Like a moth to flame, he gravitated toward it. Quickly starting to pick up his mess. “Break room’s in the back. Tea or coffee’s in the cabinet if you don’t want to wait. I just gotta wipe down real quick.”
“I can wait,” I said as I watched him meticulously clean the tubes and nozzles attached to his machine, returning the different tools to their designated areas as he went. He must have just gotten done with a client when he spotted me. “I thought you said there were no appointments.”
For a guy who was tattooed almost everywhere, his hands were mostly bare. The only visible ink I could spy was a short phrase written along the outside of his thumb, going down his wrist. I couldn’t make out the words from back here and I wasn’t about to give up my position a safe distance away to see it better.
“Yeah, well,” he said as he changed his gloves and started in on cleaning the chair. “Had a regular ask if I could squeeze them in, so I did. We were slow and I’m always here anyway, so I took her.”
My brain halted for the briefest of seconds, sticking on a particular word.
Her.
Blinking around the room, I noted for the second time how dark it was. Is this how he’d tattooed her? In the dim lighting of the vacant shop? With no one around to interrupt. Could tattooing be a romantic experience?
Did I care?
“What’d she get?” I asked. Apparently I did care, since I also wanted to ask,‘and where?’
I, of course, didn’t. But Harper didn’t seem all that shy about the information, anyway. “We’ve been working on this major piece. It’s a cemetery of broken dreams. The dreams are all like zombies coming out of the ground and shit. It’s really cool, but it’s sort of difficult because it spans the whole length of her side. So we have to work on it in pieces.”
“Huh,” I said, unsure of why my chest got tight. I was used to this feeling when he made me mad. When he cut me with his lackadaisical attitude or grating laughter, but right now he was being nice. I had no idea what I had to be annoyed over. “What part did you work on today?”
“Hip and thigh,” he said. “Wanna see?”
“What does one wear to get their hip and thigh tattooed?” I asked.
He appeared next to me with a roguish smile. “Not much.”
I wrinkled my nose, the irritation in my chest burning even worse. “No thanks, but I will take you up on something warm to drink. My fingers are freezing.”
“C’mon, Princess,” he smirked, leading the way into the break room. “I’ll make you some coffee.”
Following him I said, “Could you not call me princess, please?”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t like it,” I said. “It’s insulting.”
He scoffed, pushing a black door into a room I’d never seen before. It was small, only large enough to house a card table, acounter with a one tub sink, and one little black microwave, and finally a stainless steel fridge tucked into the corner.
“Most people take that as a compliment,” he said. Moving over to the counter he reached above the cabinets to grab the coffee and a small one cup coffee maker.
“Being told you’re too fragile to dirty your hands with work is not my definition of a compliment,” I countered.
He snapped the coffee cup into the coffee machine, then turned to look at me, leaning against the counter as he did. “I never once said you don’t get your hands dirty. Or that you were fragile.”
“But you did say I didn’t belong here,” I said under my breath. I wasn’t even sure if it was loud enough for him to hear. More like a memory spoken out loud.
Suddenly, I was transported back to that day. Walking into the shop and seeing something in his gaze as he took me in for the first time. For a split second, it was like he approved of me somehow. Like I was everything he needed coming through that door at the exact right time he needed it. But reality set in quickly, that first illusion crumbling with his first words.
You lost or something? The question still boiled my blood to this day.
He regarded me in silence now, his jaw held tight as he surveyed me.
