Milo glanced at Hanna. “Just catching up with a friend.”
“Jenner!” they barked over the counter, eyes gliding back to their phone. “Hot guy here for you!”
Jenner, all six-foot-five of him, burst out from the back of the shop to the lobby, his amber eyes searching over the few lingering faces before pulling Milo into a warm hug.
“I thought you were coming by two hours ago,” Jenner boomed.
“I got distracted.”
Jenner’s eyes fell to Hanna. “Can’t blame you.”
Milo reached for her hand, a gesture sober Hanna might have resisted, but drunk Hanna found quite enjoyable.
“It’s a great space,” Milo said, gesturing to the walls claimed by black paint and framed tattoos in a dozen different styles.
“Thanks, man. You still looking for something?”
Milo tilted his head toward Hanna. “You mind?”
She shook her head, happy to sit with him. She followed them back behind the dimly lit lobby and down a hallway punctuated with black doors.
“Each artist gets their own private studio,” Jenner explained, tapping one of the open doors. “Sup, Javi?” The artist in question leaned over his tablet and waved as they walked by.
“Are we still doing the bouquet you sent me?”
“Yeah,” Milo said, dipping behind Jenner and into the last door on the right. He pulled his shirt off and tossed it onto a chair in the corner, pointing to one of the few empty spaces on the back of his arm.
Jenner held out his fingers, measuring the spot.
“Let me go print a few sizes. You want anything to drink, Milo’s Plus One?”
“Hanna,” Milo said, leaning against the table. “And she needs water.”
Jenner smiled, his lips pierced with two sterling silver hoops that glinted in the overhead fluorescent lights.
“You can sit,” Milo said, pointing to the chair. She scooped up his shirt and laid it over her lap, a plume of his cologne flooding her lungs and dominating her senses. He stared at her for a moment, and if she couldn’t already hear Jenner’s heavy footsteps returning down the hall, she might have asked him what he was looking at.
“Alright, I’ve got two options. Let me do the bigger one first.” Jenner wiped Milo’s arm and placed the thin stencil down, peeling it slowly and pointing at the mirror across the room.
“Hmm,” Milo hummed, lifting his arm and looking at it from a few angles. “What do you think?” he asked Hanna.
She stood and crossed the space, standing next to him in the mirror. Between a whiskey barrel and a cowboy hat, a purple outline of a vase and some wildflowers nestled in neatly.
“Flowers, huh?” she asked.
“All my mom’s favorites,” Milo said. “Don’t get too excited.”
Hanna blushed and Jenner sucked air through his teeth.
“I think the smaller one,” Hanna mumbled.
Jenner wiped the space clean and reset it with the second stencil, which left a little breathing room around the petals of the roses and lilies.
“Better,” Hanna said.
“Where are we doing the second one?” Jenner asked, holding up a singular sunflower, the size of a silver dollar.
Milo shrugged. “That’s for her.”
