“Right. Too bad I’m not…into women.”
The pause in her words feels loaded like a shotgun, and the silence stretching between us is thick as molasses.
Delilah isn’t into women…right?
She certainly is not into me.
Has my world just been flipped completely on its axis? Or am I just falling victim to twenty years of suppressing romantic feelings towards my best friend at the worst possible time?
I search my brain for something to say, something to break this spell of awkward uncertainty cast on me by one little sentence, but I come up short. Delilah slaps her hands on her knees and stands abruptly, and I come face to face with the slight bump protruding from her lower belly and stretching the confines of her lycra bike shorts. I want terribly to lean in and kiss that bump. Ordinarily, I would. Lilah and I have never shied away from physical affection. But right now, the thought of touching her feels like the beginnings of a shift I’m not ready for.
“Right. Steak under the car seats sounds good.The forty-year-old tuna should probably be shot into space, but we’ll keep it in our back pocket in case we need it. Artie’s wife might swing by the stand at the market this weekend. I’ll ask if she can rope him into doing our bidding in exchange for a couple of jars of jam and some of your famous HJs. I know that old man is always looking for a reason to knock Earl down a peg. Oh, and I read something online about putting cayenne pepper in someone’s lotion to burn their skin. We should look into that.”
And with that, Delilah glides out of the room, and I’m left sitting at the kitchen table I grew up at, wondering what the hell just happened.
And adding cayenne pepper to my online grocery cart, because that idea wasn’t half bad.
“Hey kid,how’s it going in here?”
“Just finishing up, old man. What do you think?” I ask Cliff as I wipe down the fresh ink on Olive Valentine’s wrist. The twenty-something school teacher booked an appointment with me last night for a small, smiling kitten holding a butcher knife from my flash sheet. She saw a post on my social media page and said she absolutely needed the feral little cat. Olive said it was exactly how she feltstanding in a room full of screaming, snotty kindergartners trying to teach them how to read. I was more than happy to fit her into my afternoon. I’ve been dying to tattoo my murder kitten for months. I love inking these goofy little doodles that often come to me in the middle of the night. They’re not as mentally stimulating as some of the more intricate work I do, but they’re certainly a good time. We added the words ‘everything is fine’ under the kitten’s paws, and I think it turned out wonderful.
“Cute,” Cliff says with a chuckle. The word sounds almost gruff coming out of his mouth, as if he were choking on it. Cliff is old-school as hell. He must be about a hundred and fifty years old, covered in faded American Traditional style tattoos, his voice raspy from a lifetime of chain-smoking cigarettes before switching to a vape five years ago. Cliff gave me my first start when I was too young to operate a tattoo gun, let me practice on unsuspecting Fox Hole tourists who had no idea a sixteen-year-old was permanently inking their Mandarin letters they think say ‘Dream’ but actually might say ‘Pork Fried Rice’.
Legal? Absolutely not. But it was damn good practice.
Cliff is the reason I was able to get a leg up in this industry at such a young age. He connected me with Mollie in Nashville, which led to me eventuallyopening up Lilith & Lace. I owe my career to the man, and I am eternally grateful.
“I love it. My mom is totally gonna kill me, but it’s worth it. The kids are going to think it’s so funny,” Olive beams at her new tattoo while I wrap it up. I’m impressed that she’s going to show it off in her classroom and not cover it up with long sleeves. I didn’t think teachers could have visible tattoos, but it seems even the folks here in Fox Hole are getting with the times enough to know that ink doesn’t make you unemployable.
“Being an adult is pretty damn great sometimes, isn’t it?” I wink. I get Olive settled with her care instructions and out the door, then head back to my station to clean up. Delilah will be here any minute with Sadie, so I can pierce her ears. We said she could pick any earrings she wants for her starter pair, but I already set aside a couple of purple gem sets I think my girl is going to go crazy for.
“How are you liking being back in town?” Cliff asks as I spray my chair with disinfectant.
“It’s been really fucking great, actually.”
The old man scoffs and I laugh.
“I’m serious. Everything is slower here, you know? It’s a relief not to have my books stuffed full with egotistical wannabe country stars asking me to draw them a unique spin on cowboy boots andacoustic guitars against a wooden fence. I like working through my flash sheets. I like only taking appointments when I feel like it. And I’ve been thinking about working on some pointillism stuff since I have the time. I want to expand beyond my usual neo-traditional style.”
“Hey, I’m not complaining. It’s just that the Ivy I knew couldn’t get out of Fox Hole fast enough. I think there are still skid marks in the back parking lot leftover from the day you graduated high school.”
He’s not wrong, but nothing changes a person like time.
“Yeah, well, the Ivy you knew was an eighteen-year-old kid who wanted to see the world. I’m an adult now, Clifford.”
“Call me Clifford again and I’ll sic my wife on you. She’ll rope you into a Monopoly tournament and you’ll never see the light of day again.” I laugh, even though I know Cliff is a hundred percent serious. His wife Rosalie is a board game czar and she refuses to lose. She worked the front desk here back in the day and I’ve found myself at the business end of a never ending game of Scrabble on more than one occasion. “So you’re not itching to get back to Nashville anytime soon?”
I shrug. “Not really. I think I’m kind of overNashville. Everyone has to come home at some point, right? What’s with the third degree, anyway?”
“I’m retiring.”
That stops me dead in my tracks. Cliff is The Inkwell. The two are synonymous, I didn’t think one could exist without the other.
“You’re not serious.”
“As a heart attack. My kid is having a kid, so Rosalie and I are moving to the Chicago ‘burbs to be closer to our family.”
Oh my god, Cliff is going to be the world’s cutest grandpa. I hope the kid calls him something like ‘Pee Paw’ or ‘Cheese Man’. But I keep that thought to myself for my own personal safety.
