“Stay safe, baby.”
“Will do. See you later.”
The messages were short and to the point, which meant he was finishing whatever work he had lined up for the day. He’d started something yesterday and had said he’d finish it so he could let his mind and body relax after the long session.
I smiled. Bear was so excited for his first tattoo. At first he’d been sort of… ambivalent, maybe? He hadn’t wanted one, hadn’t really thought of getting one, but then he’d changed his mind. Why? I didn’t want to be the jerk who said it was because of me, but that’s what he’d implied.
I had my own lunch with Zain at the café and we talked shop like we always would. He was getting really good and I told him so.
Seeing him duck his head and be all shy was amusing.
“I know she liked the tattoo you did, but how was the date with… what’shername?”
Zain shrugged. “She loved the tattoo, but turns out she was a bit too boring in the end.” He quickly added, “And I don’t mean it in a ‘she was nerdy’ or ‘she didn’t want to party’ kind of way. There wasn’t anything super interesting about her. You know how my brain gets.”
I did know him by now, yes. He had one of those minds that latched onto things or people and if something that seemed good at first wasn’t stimulating enough for him, he lost interest. It was a feature, not a bug, but everyone who was close to him knew it annoyed him to no end sometimes.
“You will come across someone eventually that’s just right for you,” I told him as we started the walk back to the shop.
Chuckling, he nudged my arm with his own. “Like you did?”
I instinctively ducked my head and smiled widely. “Yeah, yeah I guess so.”
“Can I ask you something?”
I glanced at him. “Of course.”
“Is it different? From your husband?”
I hadn’t expected him to ask something like that, but I gave it thought anyway. “Yes. Because I’m a different person with a different perspective in life now.”
Grinning, Zain held the shop door open for me. “What you’re saying is, you old.”
I rolled my eyes, ducked inside, pushed his shoulder so he lost his grip of the door and then pulled the door closed. Then I flicked the lock on and turned the sign on the door to say we were closed.
“You do know there’s a back door, right, boss?” he said through the door.
Smirking, I turned on my heel and started toward the back, hearing him cuss as he likely sprinted toward the back door.
Sara cackled as I ran past them. I loved my crew.
I began to do a quadruple check on Bear’s sketch just in case and got a bit lost in the tiny changes I found I still wanted to make. That was an issue for me when I had all the time in the world to do it, to be honest. I tended to overthink my designs, and my mentor had tried to teach me out of it with some success. At least I didn’t do it anymore with other clients.
Sara peeked into my room. “Boss? Isn’t Bear supposed to be here already?”
As I glanced at the clock on the wall, something inside me seized. It was ten past one.
“Yeah, he should. Let me give him a call.” I dug out my phone and made the call.
He didn’t answer. He could’ve forgotten his phone home or had it on mute.
“Nothing?” they asked, and I shook my head.
“He was going to get a snack from the corner store by our place. Maybe there was a line.”
“Yeah. That’s possible.” Sara tried smiling, but there was something in their eyes that matched my gut feeling; something was wrong.
“I’ll give him fifteen more minutes before I allow myself to freak out.”
