I’d picked up a jelly donut for Carter this morning just so I could watch him eat it, and I hadnotbeen disappointed by the filling spilling down his chin, the way he licked and sucked on his fingers, or the happy noises he made while he ate.
He’d been sticking close to me all day, and since there was nothing on the schedule until tonight—Hallie’s bachelorette party—we’d hidden ourselves away in a corner of the hotel coffee shop, Carter catching up on work, me with a sketchbook out.
I was on my third sketch of the little forest friend I’d made yesterday with Carter’s dad when he looked over, our shoulders brushing together.
“Wow,” he murmured. “I guess I knew you were good, but…”
“These are just sketches,” I said. “I’d take more time with a finished piece. Although, the first client I had who asked for a deer, I’d never eventriedto draw one before. Took me a week to come up with something I was comfortable showing them.”
“Aweek?” Carter asked.
“I would’ve liked two,” I said. “But it was a small, stylized piece and she loved it. Still comes back to me. There are people in the world whoonlyhave my work on them.”
“You know. It’s just occurred to me that you don’t do yourowntattoos,” Carter said. “Sorry, maybe that’s slow of me.”
“You’ve never thought about it,” I said, laughing. “I designed some of them, but most of them are other people’s. A few of them are freehand, and I amnotbrave enough to do that on other people yet. I like my stencils, they make me happy and sure my client won’t hate me later.”
“I guess it’s a huge responsibility,” Carter said. “If you mess up…”
“It’s as permanent as anything ever is, yeah,” I agreed. “Expensive to remove and more painful than getting it done in the first place, I’ve heard. Have had to correct a few, uh. Less than perfect jobs in my time, though.”
“You said you do scars, too?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, sipping the coffee I’d been neglecting for the past twenty minutes and finding it still drinkably warm. “There’s a lot of crying doing that. The clientandme. It’s a big emotional thing for a lot of people. But when they look in the mirror when I’m done, I can see a weight lifting off their shoulders. I see that a lot, actually, even if there’s no visible scar.”
Was this too personal? Did Carter want to hear it? I knew it was okay to talk about with other tattoo artists, people who’d seen the same thing, that magical moment when a person reallyownedtheir own body, maybe for the first time.
“That sounds incredible,” Carter said, eyes so soft and warm I couldn’t breathe for a moment.
I was never particularly out to impress anyone, but I liked that Carter was impressed with me. When I’d been young and stupid, I’d wanted his approval more than anything—even if I’d gone the wrong way about it.
Now, I was starting to think I had it.
“There you are!” Carter’s mom called out across the coffee shop, striding over to the two of us with purpose.
I clapped my sketchbook shut, suddenly anxious about letting her see anything in it. The more time I spent with her this week—and the more I saw the damage she’d done to Carter and his dad—the less comfortable I was around her.
Even now, my stomach was clenching in anticipation of whatever she was about to do.
“I need your help decorating for the party tonight,” she said, looking right past me as though I wasn’t even there. “I’m neither young enough nor tall enough to do it myself.”
“Uh.” Carter glanced at me. Was he hoping for a rescue?
I wasn’t leaving him alone this time. Hallie had never done me any harm and I didn’t mind doing something to help her out.
“We’d love to help,” I said, offering his mom my brightest, most cheerful smile.
If all I could do for Carter was take the heat from his mom for him, then I planned on doing it.
* * *
The barin town where Hallie was having her bachelorette party turned out to be cozy and expensive looking, the kind of place I wouldn’t normally have gone into voluntarily. If I was going into a bar at all, I liked my feet to stick to the floor a little.
It was to Hallie’s taste, though, and that was what mattered. Especially since she was having a joint party with Damien and his friends, treating it more like a mixer than a last night of freedom. I liked that idea. The whole point of a wedding was to join two families together.
“You ever getting married?” Carter asked, passing a length of bunting up to me. Standing on the ladder was my job, because I hadn’t gone pale the moment it was pulled out.
Carter, it turned out, didn’t cope well with heights.
