“No, but I’m up for anything at this point.” I shrugged.
“I am so glad you said that!” Marley clutched my shoulders. “I think we should be stupid and crazy and get tattoos. There’s a place that’s open late night. I’ve been dying to go!”
I laughed and squinted at her. “Since when?”
She huffed out a long sigh.
“Since this year is long and boring, and I have nothing to show for it.” She turned her wrist to glance at her watch. “It’s only eleven, and this place is open until three. We can Uber back to Queens.”
“Queens? You wouldn’t be talking about Rory’s would you?”
“Yes!” She looked up from her phone, her brown eyes saucer wide. “That isn’t the one Anthony is working at tonight, is it?”
I shut my eyes and nodded. “It is.”
“Does this mean I get to meet Mister Hot Mechanic?”
“Yes, I suppose you do,” I conceded, laughing at Marley’s bouncing excitement.
A car pulled up to the corner in five minutes. I pulled out my phone after we climbed into the backseat to warn Anthony of our arrival.
Victoria:You’re about to get two new customers, tonight. My friend Marley and I are heading to Rory’s, now. Well, one customer. She wants a tattoo. I’m just along for the ride.
Anthony:Just along for the ride?
Anthony:I can’t take you in the back and mark you?
My cheeks flushed as I bit back a smile.
Victoria:We’ll see where the night takes us. Sorry to barge in while you’re working.
Anthony:Barge in?I missed you like crazy all day. Get your beautiful ass over here.
“Wow, you really like this guy, don’t you?” Marley asked, elbowing my side.
“Mar, you have no idea. He’s…” I trailed off, a slow grin lifting my cheeks. “He’s different, but in an amazing way.”
“He must be. You never really seemed this into Gavin, or anyone that I’ve seen you with, even back in high school. Your nose was always buried in a book or whatever you were writing at the time, and you never looked up.” She snickered.
I huffed out a laugh, not denying it because she was right. Maybe because this one time, reality was better than the imaginary worlds I’d created or escaped to in my head.
“I have a random question.” Marley leaned against the car door. “When you had sex with Gavin, did he look at himself in the mirror the whole time? I feel like he would.”
I laughed so hard I almost coughed.
“No, he didn’t, but I wouldn’t say he was…giving. He was his priority the whole time.”
Other than a “it’s not too painful, right?” there’d been no tenderness or feelings the night I had sex with Gavin. Yet, every time I saw him around school he would linger as if there had been.
“How about Anthony? Is hegivingor no?” Her brows jumped as she leaned back on the seat.
I looked away as my face heated up.
“He is. In all the best ways.”
We pulled up on the quiet, residential street, the tattoo shop’s neon sign impossible not to notice even with the lit-up holiday bows attached to the streetlights.
“Are you sure about this?” I turned back to Marley before I opened the door.
