April frowned, the simple question like a sudden electric shock. She took Daphne’s phone out of her bag, handed it back to her just for something to do with her hands. “My art is ink and needles and working off someone else’s vision.”
Daphne’s eyes scanned the flowering tree curling over April’s collarbones, the vibrant bloom of wisteria and irises on her inner forearm. “You’re a tattoo artist?”
April nodded, her eyes on the blurry-faced girl in the painting. She was proud of her work. People trusted her with their bodies, and she took that seriously. She already missed her clients, missed the collaboration, but as she looked at Daphne’s painting, she knew she wanted more too. Not evenmore, necessarily, because she loved tattooing, just…different. She wanted to create something she loved so much that it made her feel drunk. She hadn’t felt that in a long time. To be taken over by something inside her that didn’t even make sense except on the page. She wanted to create something for the Devon that changed her, altered her entire world. And she wanted Nicola to feel that too, feel it so much she had no choice but to put April in her show.
“Will you design a tattoo for me?” Daphne asked.
April lifted her brows. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I’m serious,” Daphne said. “Surprise me.”
“Surprise you?” April laughed. “With a tattoo.”
“Just the design. Then we’ll go from there.”
“You don’t strike me as someone who has many tattoos.”
Daphne frowned. “I don’t have any.”
“Exactly. You really want to mar that soft baby skin?”
Daphne’s frown stayed in place as she turned back toward her painting, but her eyes were suddenly distant and sad.
April felt a pinch of guilt. “Look, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine,” Daphne said. “I know I’m…” But she trailed off, shrugging and shaking her head.
April sighed, the silence between them thick and heavy. She wanted to thin it out, change it somehow. Offer Daphne something real.
“Iwasa tattoo artist,” she finally said. “I owned a tattoo shop. Wonderlust. Opened it when I was twenty-three, with some financial help from my parents. And a few weeks ago, I closed it for good.”
Daphne blinked at her. “You mean…”
April nodded. “Couldn’t do it. Even ten years in.”
Daphne let that settle between them for a second, and April was grateful for the beat of space.
“I’m sorry,” Daphne said.
“I haven’t even told my best friend yet,” April said, picking at her nail polish.
“Why not?”
April shrugged, stuffed her hands into her pockets. “She lives across the country right now. She’s busy. She’s…I don’t know. We’re barely talking these days.”
“That all sounds really hard.” Daphne shifted next to her, shoulder just an inch from April’s own. “But I don’t think any of that means you’re not still a tattoo artist. Or any kind of artist you want to be.”
Something in April’s chest went tight—honestly, she wasn’t sure what the hell she wanted to be. Who she was right now at thismoment in time. She felt adrift and angry about being adrift, and she had no place to direct her anger, no one to share it with.
No one but Daphne fucking Love.
She nearly laughed at the irony of the whole thing. She motioned toward the painting again. “This is really good. You should do more. Like a series.”
“More?” Daphne said. “This one nearly killed me.”
“Maybe,” April said, “that was the whole point.”
Chapter
