“Kat, this is Ashlynn. She had an appointment with Gary for today, so you’ll need to fill in,” Brie explained.
“I wish Gary was still here. He was so hot,” Ashlynn pouted, and I had to make sure that my thoughts didn’t show on my face. Her voice was grating, reminding me of a valley girl. It was too early to deal with this shit.
“Well, it’s just us girls now,” I said, taking a sip from the bottle of water I had grabbed from my refrigerator before leaving the house. I wouldn’t tell him because it would give him a big head, but Jason was right about dehydration. “Come on back.”
I shot Brie an exasperated look, and she suppressed a smile. Apparently, she thought it was funny to start my day with this chipper princess.
“This is my very first tattoo, and I’m so excited that I’m getting it before my sister’s wedding, so everyone will see it in my strapless dress,” she prattled on and on as we walked through the curtain and into my workspace. “Does it hurt really bad? My bestie has one on her foot, and she said she cried when she got it.”
My headache was starting to come back.
“Why don’t you have a seat and tell me what you want?”
“Okay. I wanted something really special to me, you know?” I thought about the memorial I’d done last week for a man that lost his wife and wanted to honor her. That had been special and some of my best work, in my own opinion. “So, I was thinking I want the words live, laugh, and love on my shoulder blade.”
I wanted to roll my eyes. Could she have picked a more generic phrase?
Whatever.
“Okay, let’s pick colors.”
Whether I liked the girl’s choice or not, it was time to get to work.
Four
Blade
I needed to find a job. The street fighting could be lucrative, but it was far from a steady paycheck. I had a sweet setup at my old job, working on the demolition crew of a construction company—which also helped me to work out my aggression—but I had been unceremoniously fired when I slept with my boss’s wife.
In my defense, she hit on me.
Luckily, I had a broad skill set. As I pulled up to the little tattoo shop that was hiring, I couldn’t help thinking about the little hole-in-the-wall place where I had first learned how to use a tattoo gun. That had been a small shop in a northern Californian city, where I’d lived right after graduating high school eight years ago.
After failing to enlist as was expected of me, I’d left my father’s house. He was going to charge me rent to keep living there anyway—I was now an adult, after all, and he was a vindictive ass—so it wasn’t worth putting up with his attitude just to stay in a house that I didn’t even care about.
I’d learned not to get attached to people or places when I was young. Every new school, new friend, and new house was temporary. The army kept my dad moving around too much, which uprooted all our lives. My mom was more understanding than me, but she’d signed up for that life when she married him. I didn’t have much of a choice.
So, suddenly, living on my own at the young age of eighteen had been exciting. I could finally settle somewhere. I threw myself into the job at the tattoo shop, starting by working closely with a seasoned tattoo artist, learning everything the older man knew. It came easily to me, and I was working on my own within three months.
I liked the work, but I always had a knack for finding trouble. After less than a year, I got locked up for six months for stealing a car. I hadn’t even really wanted the thing, but I was trying to impress a girl. It worked, but by the time I got out of jail, she had moved on, and my spot at the shop had been replaced.
I was young and stupid back then. At least it was the only thing on my record.
Since then, I had worked various jobs, but I still owned a tattoo gun and did the occasional tattoo for a reasonable price out of my home. Going back to it as a job felt like a good move.
I pulled my bike into a spot in the parking lot, pulling off my helmet and checking out the artwork on the side of the building.Fancy.
Even from the outside, Ink Envy was completely different from that last shop I’d worked in. That place was small, old, and dark. I was pretty sure it wasn’t even remotely up to code. Hell, it probably wasn’t registered as a business.
By comparison, this place wasswanky.
I grabbed the portfolio out of my saddlebag, filled with pictures of some of my best work. Walking through the door of the shop, the first thing I noticed was how clean and white everything was. There was a lot of love that went into this place.
There was a woman sitting on a stool behind a glass counter where there were rows of jewelry on display. I spotted earrings, nose studs, and tongue rings. I had numerous tattoos, but piercings weren’t my thing. They looked hot on a woman, though.
I turned my attention to the woman behind the counter, who was watching me curiously. She was an older woman, probably in her forties, with two full sleeves covering her pale skin, and her long, brown hair was in dreadlocks.
“You must be William,” she said, and I tried not to cringe at the use of my real name. My dad was the only one that called me that these days, but my friend Hawk had insisted that it was necessary to use my legal name on a resume, and I had sent mine when I replied to the job listing online.
