It’s like exposure therapy. We never actually go anywhere, we usually drive around aimlessly before he drops me back off at my parents.
We do a lot of talking, and through all that talking, we’ve learned a lot about one another.
He’s told me about his childhood, and the reason why he hates Nathan so much. I had no idea the things Nathan was doing to him at school. My brother and I went to a private school, so we never actually got to see that side of him.
His dad was a piece of shit, all the stories he has of watching his mom cover her bruises with makeup make me want to puke. I can’t believe he had to watch all that at such a young age.
He told me all about how he and Claire got together, including the moment when he realized he was falling in love with her.
Their story is messy, but there are parts to it that are ridiculously cute.
He took her stargazing for gods sake.
Lucas opened up, and because he showed me his scars, I showed him mine.
He knows things about me that most people don’t.
I told him the story behind my rose tattoo on my shoulder.
No one other than Jurian knows about that.
Well, except for Lucas.
Two weeks ago
“I’ve been thinking about getting a tattoo,” Lucas tells me, turning off my street.
“What would you get?”
He shrugs, “no idea yet.”
These drives have been nice, I never feel like there’s any pressure to talk about anything. There’s been a couple times when neither of us feel like talking at all, so we don’t. We drive in complete silence.
“Are there any of your tattoos that you regret?” He asks, running a hand through his sandy blond hair.
I lean against the door, pulling my legs up into the seat so I can face him. “Not regret, but I definitely have ones that I wish I didn’t have to get.”
He looks at me curiously, “what do you meanhaveto?”
Closing my eyes, I remember the day I got my shoulder done. “I can’t really remember a time in my life when I wasn’t in the background. I grew up feeling invisible, and by the time I got to high school, I realized that I actually was. No one remembered me. I was like a stranger no matter how many times I would introduce myself to people, and I started to feel really lonely because of it.”
Friends were hard to come by, so I clung to Jurian and Nathan like my life depended on it.
“I wanted to be seen, wanted to feel like I was important, so I started getting tattoos. For a little while, someone had to be wholly focused on me, they had to see me.”
Lucas frowns, “that sounds really sad.”
“It was.”
After a while, I started to think that if I looked scary enough —covered myself in tattoos— that people would either have to see me, or I could convince myself that the reason why no one wanted to be near me was because I looked intimidating.
I was eighteen when I thought that.
Flowers and pretty little daggers aren’t exactly intimidating.
But I was a kid. Let a kid think what a kid wants to think.
“I got my rose tattoo,” god, I can’t believe I’m telling someone this, “because that summer I was supposed to go and work at a summer camp, I was so excited to work with little kids, but when I showed up… the coordinators had no idea who I was. They actually forgot about one of their councillors and gave the job to someone else.”
