Elias chuckled, shaking his head as he finished getting the stencil ready.
“You remember that when you start shopping for this trip,” Javier said.
“I didn’t say you didn’t pay for them, I said you ask questions, and if I want it and it makes me happy, I don’t see why you need to say anything other than okay and give me the money.”
“She has a point,” Elias threw in, and Javier cut his eyes at him. Before the other man could respond, the door opened, and Elias’ client walked in.
Over the next three hours, he did his last two tattoos of the day. As he was clearing up after his final one, someone came in to schedule an appointment with him for one of the days they would be on vacation. Elias checked his schedule, and they set the appointment for two weeks after their vacation instead, which was his earliest open time slot.
He went down the hall to see his cousin before he left. Marco’s last client had left an hour ago, and the other man hadn’t come to tell them he was leaving, so Elias knew he was in his office. He knocked on the door before pushing it open.
“You good?” Elias asked, taking a seat across from him.
“Yeah, I’m just looking at all the candidates that applied to the job post. I didn’t think there would be so many this quickly.”
Marco had finally decided to hire a piercer and a part-time tattoo artist. Ideally, one person who could do both. There was a free station in the main area, and they would turn the storage room they didn’t use into a place for private piercings.
Elias wasn’t surprised that so many people had applied in the seventy-two hours since the post. Eri had made a graphic that was eye-catching and interactive.
“If you want, I’ll help you look through the submitted portfolios.”
“Yeah, we can do it this weekend,” Marco agreed.
“Alright. I’m headed out. I’ll see you Friday,” he informed. Elias didn’t have any tattoo clients tomorrow and would put the finishing touches on the motorcycles for the siblings.
He exited the office, said goodbye to Javier and Nesiah, and left the shop, headed home. Once there, he went into the kitchen and started making dinner. His phone went off a few times with notifications, and it was only when he finished cooking and was seated in the living room with his food and television on that he checked them.
They were message requests on social media, and it reminded him he hadn’t checked them in a couple of days. He read through them. Accepting the ones with tattoo questions or consultation requests. He also checked his email before putting the phone aside and tuning into whatever was on the television as he finished eating.
After finishing dinner, he took his plate into the kitchen and washed the dishes, then grabbed his tablet off the floating shelf in the living room to work on a bike sketch he’d been toying with for the past few days.
He worked on it for a while before putting it aside and going into his bedroom. Elias put his phone on the charger, then wentinto the en suite and started the shower. He stripped out of his clothes as the water heated and then stepped inside.
After his shower, he put on a pair of boxers and moisturized before getting into bed and turning on the television to watch a movie while he waited for the goodnight call he knew he would get from Eri. He still had an hour before she usually called.
Elias was over halfway through the movie when his phone rang at a quarter after ten o’clock like clockwork.
“Hey, Amate.”
“Hey, baby. What are you doing?”
“Watching a movie and waiting for you to call. How did flight searching go?” he asked.
“It was okay. I found three different flights. I’m trying to decide between them,” she responded. “I should know by tomorrow. I don’t want to wait too long to let everyone know and have us book flights at the last minute.”
“I’m sure if you take a little longer to decide, it’ll be fine,” he replied. “Oh, that graphic you made for the job at the shop caught a lot of people’s attention. There’s been a large number of submissions already.”
He hadn’t asked Marco how many, but knew it was far more than his cousin had expected, and that he’d taken Elias up on his offer to go through them with him meant it was a good amount.
“That’s good. A bigger candidate pool means he’s more likely to find exactly what he’s looking for. He wants one person, right?”
“Ideally, but he isn’t opposed to two if he needs to fill the position that way. I’m going to help him look through portfolios this weekend.”
They continued to converse until Eri yawned, and Elias knew it wouldn’t be long before she fell asleep and started talking about an engine he wanted to build for a small bike. Whenfifteen minutes had gone by, and she’d stopped giving him answering noises, he knew she’d fallen asleep.
“Good night, Amate. I love you.”
He hung up, turned off whatever movie had come on after the other finished, and settled into bed. He had a few errands he needed to run tomorrow before going to his garage.
