Chapter One
Keston
I spend my days peering at half-naked bodies.
Not for fun and games, unfortunately. As a tattoo artist, I’ve had all kinds of customers—eighteen-year-olds who loved thinking they were being defiant against Mommy and Daddy, grandmothers who wanted their grandchild’s name on a discreet patch of skin. And of course, the couples who came in together, desperate to have their names inked on each other’s bodies forever…then returning not a year later, begging me to erase that mistake from their lives.
I entered my tattoo shop, Inktastic, and as I did every morning, closed the door behind me and stood for a few moments in the semidarkness. Soaking in the quiet. Reveling in it. Until I’d left my foster home at eighteen, I’d had no idea what solitude was. Five foster brothers and sisters had meant little time to myself. Someone was always in my space, in my face.
I walked across the shop, scanning the photos of our more intricate designs, displayed so the customers could see the type of work we were capable of. Early beams of sunlight streamed in through the window, and the street began to wake up. Inktastic was on St. Mark’s Place in the city, and the neighborhood high school kids loved to think they could fool me by pretending tobe eighteen. I constantly had to turn those little idiots away. I understood wanting autonomy, and God knew I’d been a rotten little bastard at that age, but I wasn’t going to contribute to the delinquency of a minor.
My phone buzzed, and I smiled. My brother, Grady, loved to send me morning affirmations, knowing they made me laugh.
Smile, motherfucker. Don’t color outside the lines today.
Snickering, I replied:But I like to live just over the edge.
I’m sure you do, but your clients might not appreciate it.
Of course, he had an answer. We’d both inherited the sarcasm gene. We just didn’t know from whom.
My clients love me. Wanna come clubbing tonight?
Sure. Lauren’s busy. I’ll swing by after work.
I was gonna text him:Girlfriend got you on a leash?but decided not to be a dick. I slid the phone into my back pocket, and not a minute later, Ambrose walked in.
“Dude, what the fuck are you doing here in the dark?” Tall, skinny, and covered in ink, he squinted at me through his red-framed glasses before flipping on the light switch. “You got a guy hidden here somewhere?” he joked but peered around nonetheless, as if half expecting a naked dude to run past him.
I rolled my eyes so hard, they hurt. “Why the hell would I do that?” The shop opened at ten, but we all arrived earlier to set up our stations. I also needed to check our online appointments, which comprised more than half our business.
“Got plans for the weekend?” Ambrose asked as he set out his instruments.
“Going out with Grady tonight. Gonna hit up that new dance club my client Jeff owns on Second Avenue. Wanna come with us? I’ve got passes.”
“Nah. Me ’n Carly are going to the movies. Tomorrow we got an anniversary party for her parents, and on Sunday a baby shower for her best friend.”
“Aww. So sweet. Look at you being all cute and domestic.”
“I don’t mind it.” Ambrose shrugged. “I’m thirty-five. I want a kid—a family. We’re savin’ up to buy a house.”
The thought of having to wake up in the morning and make small talk with the same person every day for the rest of my life was fucking unimaginable. I mean, I was a moody son of a bitch on a good day, and I didn’t even want to talk to myself. Why would anyone else?
I set up the schedule. It was going to be a busy day, just the way I liked it. “I’ve got five appointments for you. That okay?”
“Yeah. The more the merrier, as in a happy bank account.”
As a kid, I’d always been fascinated by ink, and to all my foster parents’ despair, would draw designs on my arms and legs with ballpoint pens. The kids in school would make fun of me, and I’d lash out, first with my mouth, then with my fists. After getting suspended repeatedly, and a few arrests for smashing windows and swiping stuff from bodegas resulting in a stint in juvie for six months, my foster family put me in art therapy as a last-ditch effort. My doctor was friends with Carlos Reyes, one of the top tattoo artists in the city, and had invited him to look at my sketches. He’d offered me a summer job in his shop, where he taught me everything about the business. I’d worked for him after school and every summer until I graduated from high school. That had been almost twenty years ago. Learning the art of tattooing—and meeting Carlos—had saved my life.
Funnily enough, I wasn’t covered with tattoos like Ambrose. I had a small heart on the inside of one wrist, with the inscription “Me” inside it, and the word “TRUE” in script like a braceleton the other. I’d gotten them on my eighteenth birthday, to celebrate leaving the foster care system. I was finally free. The silhouettes of two doves with an infinity symbol and the date of Carlos’s death underneath were on my left biceps. A rising sun on my right.
I’d taken over Inktastic after Carlos passed and left me as his sole benefactor. He’d been my first lover, taking care to not even talk to me about sex until I was sixteen. It was from Carlos that I’d learned about using protection and the dangers of the club scene. Whom to trust and whom to keep away from. He needn’t have worried—I was crazy about him but too afraid to make a move on a man twenty years older than me. On my eighteenth birthday I kissed him, right here in the shop and I’d known I wouldn’t need to look for anyone else. Worried I might be missing out on dating guys my own age, Carlos made us wait two years to make sure I was ready to be with him. No one had ever treated me with such respect and kindness. Carlos had helped me with my anger and kept me out of the system and on the right path.
We’d only had ten years together before some punk put a bullet in Carlos when he left to make a bank drop of the day’s take. His death left a hole in my heart and in my life I didn’t intend to ever fill again. Sex was sex and there for the taking, but I wasn’t about anything permanent anymore. A kid like me, bounced from home to home since I was born, should’ve known better than to think about believing inforever. That was for fairy tales. Same as happily ever afters.
The one exception was my brother. Accepting I had someone who gave a damn about me besides Carlos had taken some time, but Grady became the one person I truly trusted. He had no other motive to be with me aside from love.
The day sped by with some quickies and an intricate design I’d started a few weeks earlier—a woman wanting to honor her firefighter husband who’d died from complications due to working on the pile in the aftermath of 9/11. Wendy had been to the shop for other ink and loved to talk while I worked. She liked to think she knew me because of that, but I’d perfected the art of listening and not sharing anything personal.
