“Al?” Melissa’s voice filled the room of her office suite. “Can you come in here for a second? I need your help.”
Keeping my eyes on the evil woman in front of me, I spoke through my teeth. “Can’t right now, Lis. I apparently have some documents to print.”
“Oh, Grace can take care of that. You should be going soon, right?” she asked. She didn’t wait for my response. “Grace, please get it sorted, thanks.Ahora, Alta.”
She disappeared into her office before either of us could say otherwise.
Lifting from my seat, I kept my eyes on Grace. She looked like she had swallowed an entire lemon and for some deranged reason I sort of felt bad. Which is probably why I sighed and asked, “Do you need me to send you the correct files so?—”
“Alta,” that voice called again from Melissa’s open doorway. “In here, please?”
Pressing my lips together, I dropped my eyes and stepped from behind my desk. Never mind then. Grace would just have to figure it out on her own. And I could feel just how much she hated that by the burning glare searing into my back as I left.
As soon as I stepped into my sister’s office she shut the doorbehind me. Moving over to the little window she lifted the blinds so she could peek out.
A nervous laugh dropped out of my throat. “What are you doing?”
Throwing a glance over her shoulder she let go of the shade and sighed. “She’s gone.”
Straightening, I eyed my sister suspiciously. “You didn’t actually need me?”
“Of course not. I just wanted to help you,” she said. “You shouldn’t let her talk to you like that, you know?”
Of course not.
Folding my arms over my middle I tried to fight the pathetic slide of humiliation that spread through my body. “She’s sort of my boss, Lis. I don’t have a choice.”
“You could tell Ox,” she said.
I don’t know what it was about everyone telling me I needed to have somebody else stand up for me rather than pushing me to do it myself, but it ticked me off. “I don’t want to hide behind Ox for every little thing, Melissa.”
She sucked in a breath, the expression she turned on me full of hurt and confusion. Her lip wobbled, and I immediately felt terrible.
Most people thought I was the sensitive one between Lis and I, and sometimes they would be right. But when it came to feelings, Melissa’s were hurt easily.
“Did I do something to you?” she asked, her voice unmistakably sad. “Ceci already hates me. What did I do to make you mad too?”
“Lis, no. I just?—”
She shook her head, and I startled as her palms came together on her own cheeks in a hard slap. “No. I can’t cry right now. I have to get to that meeting with Ox. I can’t do this now.”
“Right,” I nodded slowly.
Because of course she had some important meeting with important things to do. She’d only stepped in to bail me out to dowhatever “frivolous meandering about” they thought I did every day.
I opened the door and stepped out before her. “Don’t let me hold you, then.”
I burst through the tattoo shop forty minutes late with a lot of unresolved issues trailing in my wake.
“Woah!” I think I heard Ryan’s voice call out. “Big Al coming in hot.”
I never saw the owner of the voice. My eyes instead stripped the place bare, taking in every inch of the full room. Bodies occupied the area like they normally did, but I saw no one in tattoo chairs, which meant there were no appointments.
Well, at least there was that. There would be no strangers here to witness me spontaneously combust.
Pacing the front of the store, I raked my hands through my hair hard enough I feared it might pull out. I didn’t care what the ponytail looked like, I just needed it out of my face. But even with my hair tied back I still felt icky, too bothered and suffocated byeverything, and I wanted it gone.
Gone, off, out,whateverit took to free up some space for me to just breathe.
