“Huh?”
“You were probably thinking about the list. I have been too.”
List?Oh yeah. Duh. The list that will help make me exciting.“Yep. That’s exactly what I was thinking about.”
“Come up with any ideas?”
Shit. Definitely didn’t think that one through.“Honestly, no. I’m clearly very bad at this.”
“Lucky for you, I did come up with some.” Jax winked at me and sat up taller. “Do you want to start now, or do you need some coffee first?”
Wow.We were really jumping right into this. “You know what? Let’s jump into it before I can overthink it and decide not to do it.”
“Great idea.” Jax moved her feet underneath her butt and turned so she was fully facing me. “Now, like I said, I have some ideas, but it’s up to you. Obviously, it’s good to go outside of your comfort zone, but we don’t want you to do anything against your morals or beliefs or something that scares you so bad, you shit your pants.”
I laughed. “Yes. I’d really like the new me to avoid any pants shitting.”
“Glad we’re on the same page.” Jax clapped her hands together. “All right. First question. How do you feel about tattoos? Do you have any? Do you want any? Are you very much so against them?”
I shook my head. “I don’t have any, but I’m not against it. I’ve actually thought about getting one, but I never have, because I want it to be meaningful.”
“That makes sense. You’re definitely better than me in that way. One night when we were both buzzed, I convinced my tattoo artist friend to tattoo the wordsYour Nameon my butt cheek. I thought it would be funny to be able to tell people, ‘Hey!Guess what? I have your name tattooed on my ass’ to see how they react.”
Great.Now I was thinking about Jax’s tattooed ass, and the thought had my face warming.How embarrassing.I cleared my throat as I tried to get myself to speak. “How many tattoosdoyou have?”
The tattoos of hers that I had taken notice of were the rainbow tattoo on her ring finger, the rainbow of dots across her wrist, the wordequalityacross her other wrist, something written in cursive above each of her elbows, and the heart on her right shoulder that matched the one on my sister’s left shoulder.
“I have nine.”
She started by showing me all of the ones I already knew about. I learned that the cursive words wereMomandDad,each written in her parents’ handwriting.
She lifted up her pant leg to show me a tattoo of a flower on her ankle. “This is a flower I had my grandma draw. She was really against it at first, because she didn’t think I should be marking up my skin, but it definitely grew on her.” Next, she lifted up her shirt to show me a bunch of words written across her ribcage. “It’s a quote from one of my favorite books,” she explained.
“And then for the last one.”
When Jax jumped from the couch and brought her hands to the top of her pajama pants, I felt my face immediately go red. Jax laughed and dropped her hands. “Tricked you. We’ll save that one for another time.” Another damn wink.
“So, what do you think?” she asked as she sat back down. “Do you want that on your list? If you do, I can take you to my tattoo artist. She’s the best. She’ll do a great job. I might even get one with you.”
I took a deep breath and blew it out. This felt like a much bigger deal than it should—like this was the first step in movingtoward my new self. I knew that was dramatic, but I couldn’t stop myself from feeling that way. “Okay. Yeah. I’m in. That sounds great.”
“Perfect. One down. Nine to go.”
I looked around the room. “I need to go get my planner so I can write these down. That way we won’t forget what they were.”
When I returned from getting my planner, Jax had a shit-eating grin on her face. She nodded at the planner in my hands. “I take it that thing is pretty packed, huh?”
I could tell she was getting a kick out of this, but her teasing actually didn’t bother me. “I mean, I don’t have a ton of plans, but anything Icanplan, I do.”
Jax’s smile grew even bigger. “Perfect. That brings me to my next idea. I think you should go on a trip that you don’t plan at all.”
That sounded… awful. Even the thought of it made my stomach hurt. “What’s the point of going on a trip if I don’t plan out every last detail first?” My question was sincere. If I didn’t plan, I could miss out on something, and then I’d regret it for the rest of my life.
“I find it intriguing that you said that without a hint of sarcasm.” Jax tapped my planner. “Write it down. This one is a must.”
I brought my pen to the paper, but I couldn’t do it. I looked back up at Jax. “This one might actually make me shit my pants.”
Jax tapped the planner once again. “Even better. It’ll make for a great story.”
