Mia pressed her lips together and looked away. “That’s different. When Sam asked me for a ride, I told him to take his bike. He said it would rain, and I told him... I told him to fuck off.” She whimpered, blinking back tears. “That’s the last thing I said to him.”
Kitty leaned her head onto Mia’s shoulder, and neither girl resisted me when I pulled them into a hug. I stroked Mia’s hair as she dissolved into sobs. The two of them were nearly as tall as I was. And though Mia was right on the cusp of adulthood, as she cried on my shoulder, she was that little girl who used to lay her head in my lap again.
“We all say things we don’t mean,” I said. “You can’t blame yourself, Mia. I blamed myself for a long time, and it was a mistake. I stopped talking to people. I didn’t sleep or eat... I had no one, except your mom. And she told me the same thing I’m going to tell you. It didn’t fix anything, but it helped me start to forgive myself.”
“What did she say?” Mia asked.
“You couldn’t have known, Mia,” I whispered. “It’s not your fault, and Samson would tell you that himself if he could. It was an accident, a horrible accident.” I was crying now, too, as I held Mia and her guilt and Kitty and her sadness in my arms. “Samson knew you loved him. I know I don’t talk about it, but I miss him too. And if you stay, we can talk about it. I want to talk about it. Please, stay.”
The three of us stood there, crying in each other’s arms for a long time, but if people were staring, I didn’t notice. I didn’t care. When the girls finally pulled away, Mia looked around at the terminal in a daze. Her eyes landed on the gate for their flight, and she let out a hiccupping laugh. The flight was closed. The plane had already pushed back.
“Guess we don’t really have a...” Mia paused, a look of horror crossing her face. “Our suitcases! They’re on the plane! No offense, Jo, but there’s no way I’m wearing your clothes for three weeks.”
“Come on,” I said, pulling them to my sides. “We’ll pick a few things up from Target and go home. I’ll call the airline when we get there.”
Mia hesitated. For a moment I thought she’d changed her mind, but then I caught the hint of a smile.
“I believe you promised us a trip to the tattoo shop first,” she said.
“I was hoping you’d forget about that.”
“Not in a million years.”
Twenty-One
An hour later I sat on a cushioned chair in a tattoo shop and tried not to throw up.
“Are we sure I need to do this right now?” Mia and Kitty glared at me from the spinning stools they perched on nearby. “Fine, fine. I’m doing it.”
“It’s not so bad,” the tattoo artist, a woman around my age with electric-green hair and gorgeous floral tattoo sleeves, said.
I looked over at the tattoo machine. “Needles make me queasy.”
Mia nudged a wastebasket closer to me with her foot.
Alex, Nina, and Greyson remained at the front of the tattoo shop, giving me and the girls some privacy. From what I could hear of their conversation, it seemed they were arguing over Greyson getting a cartilage piercing.
When we’d arrived, Mia, Kitty, and I flipped through a binder of colorful designs, but I’d already known what I wanted. The truth was I’d known it all along, ever since I’d returned home from charter season and stood in my garden.
The tattoo artist sketched out the design and placed it above thecrease in my right arm. I stepped over to the mirror and held my breath, moving from side to side, examining it from every angle.
“Do you like it?” Mia asked.
My eyes met theirs in the mirror. “Yeah. Do you?”
The girls nodded, and for once I didn’t get a snarky remark.
I let out a breath and turned to the tattoo artist. “All right. Let’s do this.”
I lowered myself into the chair again and squeezed Kitty’s hand, gritting my teeth as the tattoo artist leaned forward. The needle buzzed to life and bit into my skin, but the sting was more bearable than I’d imagined, and my grip on Kitty loosened.
“You know what they say, Jo,” Mia said.
“What do they say?”
“It only takes one tattoo to get addicted.”
“Have you ever seen a yacht stewardess covered in tattoos?”
