“Anniversary of what?”Cujo asked.
Trent laughed.“Of the day I kissed her on a pavement outside a pool hall.”
“Yeah, well, on our anniversary, Drea’ll getmeas a gift, and that’s enough.Harper needs one of your paintings as consolation for ending up with you.”
“Asshole.”Trent shook his head.
Pixie watched as Trent and Cujo disappeared into the office.Thinking about how happy the two of them were hurt, but not as much as watching the New Music Press Awards on Sunday had, curled up on the sofa with her favorite ice cream.A pain akin to needles being driven into her eyes had tortured her as she watched Dred step out of his limo and walk the red carpet into the Staples Centre.But seeing him onstage with his mask firmly in place sucked the very life out of her.Beneath the frozen smile were flat eyes.To the average observer, the confusion of who was meant to speak could be attributed to the excitement of the moment.But Pixie knew different.The subtext between the band was there.Dred was off his game, and everyone else was covering.
It was nine days since she’d seen him.And each one of those nine days hurt.There was no lessening over time.Every morning she woke up thinking about what she’d lost, and it hurt all over again.She battled with the same questions.Would telling Dred the whole truth, with the risk of losing him anyway, be worse than the way she felt right now?She doubted it.
Pixie picked up her phone, tempted to break the silence between them.If she took the first step, made the first move toward reconciliation, what would he do?Ignore her, maybe?
But first she needed closure with Arnie, and so it all came full circle.He still had her trapped, he still had a measure of control over her life.And she hated it.He hadn’t been around since the incident and she was on tenterhooks, waiting to see if he would follow through on his threats to expose her.A naïve part of her wanted to believe Dred had scared Arnie away.Lord knew he’d been furious when he hit Arnie, but it was impossible to believe that her stepfather would walk away from an opportunity to extort serious money.
Trent and Cujo returned from the office.“You ready for your next lesson?”Cujo asked.
She’d circled around Trent and Cujo for days, dodging Cujo’s suggestion of going to see a lawyer because admitting to someone else that she killed a person was a step she wasn’t ready for.
There was one lie she could stop perpetuating though, and to ease her conscience she made a decision to solve it right now.“Can I talk to you guys for a minute?”
“Sure, Pix,” Trent said, slinging his jacket over the desk.“What’s up?”
Pixie took a deep breath.“I don’t want to be a tattoo artist.I’m sorry.I really don’t want to hurt your feelings after you’ve all tried so hard, but I don’t think—”
“We figured,” Cujo said, resting both hands on the counter.“We’d even said we’d talk to you about it after all this other stuff was over.”
“You did?”Pixie’s eyes pricked with tears born of relief.
“Yeah,” Trent said.“Your heart needs to be in tattooing.And yours isn’t.”
“But you guys wanted me to do it, and I didn’t want to let you down.I was useless at it.”
“Is that what you thought?”Cujo asked.“Because there was never any expectation on our part that you’d want to.We offered to teach you if you wanted to learn, and you said you did.”
“I wanted to be great at it,” she said with a sad shake of her head.“Like you guys are.”
“Listen,” Trent said, reaching across the counter to take her hand.“We’ll be here for you.No matter what you want to do with the rest of your life, or what you did before you came here, we aren’t going anywhere.Who you are right now is perfect, Pix.Don’t try to be something you’re not for us, or for any other asshole.”
“He’s not an asshole,” she said, knowing exactly whom Trent was referring to.
“He is, and I’m gonna tell him when I see him tomorrow.”
“Please don’t say—”
“He’s an asshole,” Cujo grumbled.“He needs to hear it.”
“There are days,” she said with a half smile, “when I wish you guys weren’t quite so brotherly.”
“Yeah, well.Tough luck on that one,” Trent said, pulling her into his arms for a hug.
But today his arms weren’t enough.
And that made her heart bleed a little more.
* * *
Dred yawned sleepily in the make-up chair.The triple-espresso shot in his coffee was not having the desired effect.He could do without a day of filming, because he really wasn’t in the mood to make nice with contestants or face Trent.It wasn’t that he was scared of having the conversation with him—it was a given it was going to happen, so there was no point dodging it.What scared him more was that Trent was going to be right about him.That he was a fuck-up.Because that was the conclusion Dred had come to in the small hours of the morning.And he needed to make things right with Pixie, or at least listen to her and figure out if he could deal with what she had to say.
