I couldn’t argue with that. Just a few feet away there was a man with what looked like half his office spread over a table as he frantically worked on something. Based on the number of empty coffee cups next to him, he’d probably been there all day.
At least, I hoped so. If he’d drunk that much caffeine in a short amount of time he was probably about to have a heart attack.
Up at the front of the room, the barista called out the alias names that Kitt and I had given for our order. Telling Kitt to wait there, I went up to get our orders, though I felt the weight of his gaze on me the whole way.
The one requirement for hiding out at a coffee shop was that you actually had to order something. Unfortunately, I didn’t really like coffee, but the menu offered little else. I’d eventually settled on an iced latte confection with so much cream and sugar that it barely tasted of coffee at all. In contrast, Kitt had ordered a very straightforward coffee, with no additives or sweeteners. The two drinks looked completely mismatched when the barista handed them to me, to the point that she even paused for a moment, wondering if she’d mixed something up.
“Thanks,” I said with a grin as I took the drinks from her tattooed hands. The designs caught my eye. Whoever had done her tattoo work was a talented artist. Her arms were almost completely covered and flowed together so that it was impossible to tell if it had been done all at once or a little bit at a time. At first, it looked like a traditional mural, like somethingyou’d find in a renaissance painting, but when I looked closer, I noticed that the figures were actually a bunch of popular characters from shows and video games.
The image of those tattoos stayed in my mind. Even after I’d returned to Kitt and handed him his drink, I continued to sneak looks at the barista. Along with the tattoos, she also wore equally bold jewelry. Her clothing was bland since she was currently sporting the coffee shop’s uniform, but I had a feeling that her own clothing would be just as unique.
She’d painted herself with her interests, wearing her personality on her literal sleeves for all to see.
“Do you think I’d look good with a tattoo?”
The question slipped out of my mouth before my brain had even finished putting the words together.
Kitt put down the newspaper that he wasn’t even reading and took a sip of his coffee. I could feel him studying me over the lip of his cup, but I was too busy watching the barista to care.
“Whether or not I think they look nice doesn’t matter,” he eventually said. “You shouldn’t change yourself based on what I like.”
Letting out a groan, I let my head thunk down on the table hard enough that both of our drinks rattled. “Why does no one ever want to answer that question? Clay said the same thing when I asked about dying my hair a different color. Look, can you just... can you just humor me?”
My face was smashed into the table, so I couldn’t see Kitt, but his voice still came through loud and clear.
“Okay,” he said in a way that clearly meant nothing was okay at all. “I haven’t really thought about tattoos, so I don’t have much of an opinion on them. Is there any reason you suddenly want to start changing yourself?”
I groaned again, but the sound lost effect when it was muffled against the wood of the table. “Every time I bring up somedrastic alteration, people always talk about changing myself. As if I know who “myself” even is. Maybe some people are born with a clear idea of themselves, but I’m not one of them. It’s like...”
I made vague gestures with my hand in the air above my head as I tried to grasp the right metaphor to finally make myself understood. Before coming to the coffee shop, we’d stopped at a cheap clothing store, so I wasn’t running around half naked anymore. I hadn’t bothered to put much thought into the clothes, just grabbing the first thing that fit, and the nylon jacket made an unpleasant sound when it moved. Looking back at it now, I would have chosen something else.
It was a regrettable decision made in haste, but it did give me a good idea.
“It’s like picking out a new outfit. You go into the store and try things on. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don’t. But you have to entertain the idea to figure out what you like and what you don’t like. So, when I ask if you think I’d look good with tattoos, or any other random thing, I’m not trying to change myself for you. I’m just looking for advice from people I care about. Does that make sense?”
Kitt gave a brief hum, that sounded like he agreed, but he didn’t actually say anything for a while.
Maybe that was the best I could hope for.
What was I expecting? That Kitt would solve my identity crisis for me?
No, that uncertainty was all on me to figure out.
However, just as I was about to forget the topic entirely, he suddenly spoke up.
“I don’t think a tattoo would really be your style.”
My head sprang off of the table so quickly I nearly gave myself whiplash.
“Really?”
I had a style?
Kitt studied the barista for a moment, managing to do so in a way that was much more subtle and hid the fact that he was staring.
“Yeah. You seem like someone who enjoys trying out new things, but tattoos are permanent. Once you have it, you can’t change it. Jewelry, like a piercing or something, might suit you better. Still a bold statement, but you can swap it out for different styles.”
Reaching out, he tugged on a lock of my hair so that it fell into my eyes.
