“I am not,” he replied.
“Oh, come on. Would it help if I said I missed you?”
Elias snorted. “Nope.”
“Don’t be that way. I need you,” Amanda tried.
“You should have thought of that before you cheated on me with my cousin,” he countered.
“What did you expect me to do? You weren’t taking tattoo appointments for a month, and I needed to get it done. Marco was available, and I just kept going to him.”
“And now that he’s booked out for the next few months, you’ve come crawling back,” he jested. “But this begging is amusing.”
“I’m sure you’d make me grovel if you thought you could,” Amanda said.
“It would be pointless to make you, considering I still can’t do whatever tattoo you want. My time slots for the next few weeks are booked, and I’m starting a new bike next week. Why don’t you ask Nesiah or Javier?”
Amanda sighed. “I guess I could, but you and Marco have similar styles, and I wanted all of my ink to look the same.”
Elias didn’t respond. He and Marco didn’t have similar styles. They happened to be good at mimicking one another. Elias, because his cousin had practically taught him how to tattoo before he’d even completed the course, and Marco, because hewas just good at mimicking most styles if he had a reference for it.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Elias finally said. “My earliest availability is in like six weeks. Unless you want to wait that long, you might have to bite the bullet and let someone else do it.”
“Patience has never been my virtue when I want new ink, but put me down for your soonest appointment.”
“Alright. I’ll text you the day and time, but this is the only time I’ll let you come crawling back to me,” he teased.
Amanda laughed. “Fair.”
She’d been one of his regulars a few years ago until she called to make an appointment while he was in the middle of building a bike. It was when he’d just started making custom motorcycles and wanted to focus on it uninterrupted. Amanda hadn’t wanted to wait, and Marco had done the tattoo for her. From there, she’d continue to make appointments with his cousin, contacting him when Marco was booked out like he was now. Elias didn’t mind; he only enjoyed giving her a hard time about it.
“Tell your husband he owes me money. My team wiped the floor with his,” Elias told her.
Amanda laughed. “That man sucks at betting and continues to do it. I’ll let him know.”
They ended the call, and he turned his attention back to the sketch. He knew the perfect design for the side of it and began working on it. Once he finished it, he’d move on to the commissioned piece.
Elias sat on his couch later that evening, watching some random movie, when he looked at the time and decided to call Eri. He grabbed his phone off the table and went to her contact.
“Hi, Elias,” she greeted.
“Hey, Amate. Did you miss me?” he teased, knowing that she would deflect and not answer him.
“If that helps you sleep tonight,” she responded, and he chuckled because she always went out of her way not to tell him yes when he asked her something, but she never told him no either.
“How was class?”
“It was okay. One of my professors gave us an extra project for the semester that was not on the syllabus, and I’m sure he did it to be a jackass, but other than that, it was the usual.” Elias heard her shifting. “What did you do today? Tattoos or motorcycles?”
“Both. I had two tattoos today, and then I worked on a design.”
“For the second referral you were telling me about?” Eri asked.
“It was supposed to be, but it ended up being something else. I liked it and decided to keep it for a future project, but I got about halfway through the commissioned one after that. I might finish it tomorrow after two tattoo appointments.”
“What kind of pieces are they?”
“A cartoon piece on a wrist and an hourglass on a forearm,” he responded.
