“Instagram. You’re a tattoo artist, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said, stupidly reassured by his friendliness. “Thanks for the tequila.”
“On the house.” He put his hands on the back of the chair opposite hers, leaning forward. “You meeting some guy here?”
Tabby felt a low tingle of… not attraction, exactly. More relief that she mustn’t look like complete dogshit despite her grown-out hair and jizz-dress. Not if this hot dude was pushing up on her. “Just grabbing a quick one.”
“How quick? I finish in a couple of hours.”
Tabby felt a flash of guilt and shoved it aside. “Pretty quick. But that’s not to say I couldn’t come back…?”
The guy grinned, revealing perfect white teeth. “I’ve gotta head back to the bar, but can I grab your number first?”
“Sure,” she said, as automatically as she’d turned into this place. “Why not?”
He pulled out his phone, and she recited her digits, her pulse racing like she was planning a heist.
The shiftiness she felt at giving this stranger a way to contact her was acute and fucking humiliating. Toby Tennant was publicly double-tagging blondes and hearting comments from Instagram models. Meanwhile, she’d been celibate for longer than she cared to remember. Unable to muster even the most moderate interest in the guys who came to Silver Daughters to meet the ‘hot tattoo chick.’ The fact she didn’t feel like the ‘hot tattoo chick’ anymore wasn’t the point. She was single, and she’d always been able to pull herself out of a funk with a little life-affirming menergy. So why not give it another go? She owed nothing to anyone, least of all Toby.
“Done,” the bartender said, tucking his phone away. “I’m Vince, by the by. Chat soon.”
“Sure thing, Vince.”
As he retreated, Tabby reached for her tequila and sipped. The tingly heat gave her a boost of reassurance, but then her phone buzzed—a message from Toby.
I’m waiting, Tabitha.
Lust and genuine excitement burst inside her like paintballs, and she scowled at her phone.
“Fuck you,” she said, taking a big drink and almost draining the tumbler. Stupid too much ice, making the drink look fuller than it was…
Behind the bar, Vince was chatting to a pretty blonde. She looked so much like one of Toby’s girls that Tabby had to squint to make sure itwasn’t. Vince winked a lot as he talked to the blonde, flexing his biceps as he pulled pints.
Tabby felt another low squirm of attraction and groaned. The dude might have just been flirting to catch her eye, but probably not. Dollars to doughnuts, he was a horny, fun-time dog—just like everyone she found hot.
It was such a cliché, liking bad boys. She could defend the tattoos and big shoulders, but not how they treated her. The way shelet themtreat her, Tabby corrected, because no one made her chase Jonah or Mika around.
Everyone joked about her being friends with all her exes, but that wasn’t strictly true. She liked everyone she’d slept with, but she’d only ever fallen—really fallen—for two guys. Jonah, the guitarist, when she was nineteen, and Mika, the artist, when she was twenty-two. In both cases, she and the guy in question had barely dated. She and Mika had only kissed twice. It didn’t matter. She’d obsessed over them for years, torturing herself with old messages, circular conversations, and tarot cards, trying to figure out whether or not they liked her when the answer was obvious—a bit, but not really, dipshit.Engaged but indifferent, that was her actual type. The same dude over and over.
She never talked to Sam or Nix about Jonah or Mika, pretending not to care while she hired literal internet witches to perform love spells that left her feeling beyond pathetic.
As tequila spiked through her blood, she admitted that Toby Tennant had long since joined those ranks. It was why she hated him so hard. It was why she was terrified to go to his house despite her hard work on the design and the promise of thirteen thousand dollars.
She wanted the money but didn’t know how to be around him any more than she’d known how to smile at Mika’s new girlfriend when he brought her to Silver Daughters Ink one day.
“Hey Tabs, is Sam around? Nori wants a tat.”
The difference was that neither Jonah nor Mika was a part of her life before or after they dated—leaving her free to nurse her feelings in secret. She and Toby had history. Too much history. So here she was, caught between a rock and a shit place. She had terrible taste in men, bad hair and bad ideas. And was already a tequila in on a Tuesday.
She thought of Jo, single at fifty-something, and wondered if that was what was coming for her. If she’d always be pretending not to care when the truth was that the men she went crazy for never seemed to care about her.
Unwilling to sit and watch Vince spread it around, Tabby picked up her bag and slipped through the door before he could spot her leaving. She needed to get moving, to Toby’s place, to Cartagena, and the future.
She needed this to start so it could finally be over.
6
Tabby made it to Toby’s house in under five minutes. It looked even bigger in real life, horror movie huge. She hovered at the front gate, letting her breathing return to normal. The alcohol had sunk in, and some of her nerves had burnt away. It felt like now or never. She shoved open the gate and stormed up his pebbled footpath like the Terminator. Get in, get it done, get out.
