“I’m not trying to sell me. I’m trying to sell my services.”
“Yes, but people like knowing who they’re doing business with. You’re clearly talented, but it takes more than that to get people’s attention. Sex sells, Seb. We have to get you on there too.”
His grin turned feral. “There is so much there to unpack. I don’t even know where to start.”
“Shut up.”
“You think I’m talented?” he smirked.
I rolled my eyes. “Of course I do.”
“You think I’m sexy?”
I huffed out a ridiculously strong sigh and shot him a hard glare. “You know you are.”
“You want to sell me on the internet?”
“Ew, gross. No,” I laughed. “I want you to answer a couple of questions about yourself and let people see who they are trusting with their permanent skin decorations.”
He smiled and climbed onto the other side of the chair with me, trying to fold his legs like mine. “Jesus, how do you contort yourself to sit like this?” he asked, struggling to get his feet under his thighs.
We ran through the list of questions, starting with the easiest and making our way to the harder ones.
“What made you want to become a tattoo artist?” I asked.
“I loved drawing when I was younger. I would doodle on every piece of schoolwork or scrap of paper I had. But it wasn’t until I got my first tattoo, one that I had drawn up myself, that I thought of it as a career. After I got it in my head, I did what I needed to do to make it happen.”
“Did you face any challenges when you first started in this industry?”
He chuckled, his lips curved into a smile. “Only from my mom. I dropped out of college with one year left, and she was constantly trying to get me to go back and finish my degree. When I got my first job at a tattoo shop, I think she knew that was it for me. There was no convincing me to change course at that time.”
“How is your mom?” That wasn’t one of the questions I had prepared in advance, and I didn’t know Gloria Devereux all that well, other than as Seb’s mom, but she was always super nice. She came to our annual Christmas party every year and would bring the best chili. “Does she still make a mean pot ofchili?”
“She’s good. And yeah, that shit could win awards. I’ve told her to enter the Thanksgiving food festival competition, but she doesn’t believe me.”
Seb’s face lit up talking about his mom, and I laughed. “Tell her I agree with you. That was delicious.”
He smiled at me. “I will.”
I grabbed my paper so I could get back to the actual questions, ignoring the strange, pleasant feeling in my chest.
“What made you want to work with mastectomy clients, specifically?”
He looked at me with unexpected tenderness. “A friend of mine lost his mother to breast cancer. Honestly, I didn’t go out looking to get involved in any way, but the first client that came to me looking for a mastectomy tattoo, she was so fearless, so brave, so full of life. I couldn’t help but think that if this friend’s mom had survived, that she would be like that too. I was proud to do what I could to help her in her journey. I’ve felt that way about all the women, and one man, that I’ve been able to help.”
My nose stung as a tear slipped down my eye. Seb leaned over, using his thumb to wipe it away. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry.” I shook it off. I missed my mom. She’d had so much life left in her. It felt so unfair. I was truly so happy for these women that they were able to beat it. But it didn’t lessen the sting that that wasn’t the outcome for my mom.
“Don’t be sorry. I didn’t mean to make you upset.”
“I’m okay,” I said. “Let’s keep going.”
I read through all of my questions on autopilot, my mind circling around the man that Sebastian had grown into. In my head, he’d been the same twenty-year-old asshat whobroke my heart all those years, but I had to admit that wasn’t the case. The man before me was smart, sensitive, and kind. There was more to Seb than a pretty face and a good time, and every time I saw more of the man he was, the more my heart reached for him.
Seb’s next client came in, so I switched into photographer slash videographer mode. He was naturally so personable, people gravitated toward him with his easy smile and extroverted nature. I was one of them, circling around him and feeding off his good energy.
The session took a couple of hours, and since Seb only had a consultation booked for later that evening, when it was done, I had to get going. I had a lot of work to do putting together a strategy that would highlight the artist without losing focus on the actual artwork.
