I’m in love with my best friend, and it’s terrifying. My stomach tightens when I think about what that means. I don’t want to be in a relationship. I don’t want to change for anyone else. But I do want to be with Alexander. I want to take him in my arms and tell him that I’ll spend the rest of my life loving him.
“Rafael?”
Joey’s voice pulls me from my thoughts. I’m at the front of the shop, hanging with a few of the artists. Joey is sketching something at the desk, and I’m sipping a coffee across from him.
When I look up, his eyes direct me to Caesar. I hadn’t seen him come in, but he’s standing in the rear. He’s got a denim jacket on, even though it must be in the eighties outside, and a pair of black sunglasses that hide his eyes.
Caesar gestures for me to follow, and I stand.
Shit, it’s finally happening.
I hurry back and find him in his room as he tosses his jacket to a chair. All the pictures that are framed on the wall look aged and gray. Caesar is a big guy, tall and strong and with a mess of silver hair, and he seems even bigger in the small space. When he looks at me, his eyes are like steel, and they lock me in place.
He’s a widely respected artist, probably thirty years older than me. I wonder what a man like that could possibly think when he looks at a weirdo like me.
“Can you work hard?” he asks me, jumping straight into business.
My mouth is dry. His tone makes it clear that there would be no point in lying. He’ll find out anyway. “I can work hard,” I say and try to believe in myself, like Alexander believes in me.
“Good.” Caesar’s voice is rough and gravelly. He’s tough, but the tattoos on his arm are surprisingly bright, colorful and animated in a way that distracts my eye.
He clears his throat, and I drag my gaze from his ink and back up to his eyes. “Why do you want to do this?” he asks.
The question catches me off guard. There are a million things I could say, things that would probably sound a lot smarter than my actual answer, but I blurt out the truth anyway.
“I started thinking about tattooing, and now I can’t stop.”
Caesar grunts. His mouth turns up in a half smile as he leans back on the counter. “Funny kid,” he says.
I’m not sure what that means, so I just kind of smile. “Yeah.”
“I can teach you,” he continues, “but I’m not patient. I won’t repeat myself, and if you fuck up, you’re out. You understand that? You’re not going to waste my time?”
As though there wasn’t already enough weight on my shoulders. “No, I won’t.”
He sighs. “Used to have a guy here. He did work like in your illustrations.” He turns his arm toward me, revealing a spaceship, kind of like a flying saucer, beaming light rays down into a forest. It’s got a very fifties science-fiction style to it that I immediately love. “He did this,” Caesar says, then immediately pulls his arm, like I haven’t earned more than a glimpse yet.
I look down. I happen to be wearing my alien head T-shirt again. “That’s amazing,” I say. “I love that.”
He grunts and crosses his burly arms over his chest. I think he’s about to say something more; then he shakes his head. “Let’s start with the basics,” Caesar tells me, back to business. “I want to see how you handle a machine.”
For an hour that afternoon, I sit there silently while Caesar schools me on the basics of tattooing. I left my sketchpad up front so I can’t even take notes or anything, but it doesn’t matter. I’m listening to an incredibly talented artist talk about his work, and I suck it all up like a sponge.
By the time we’re done, Caesar welcomes a long appointment back to his room, and I’m left in a stupor. It happens to be the night that a few of the artists go out for beer, and I join them for the first time, pulled into the group like I’m one of them, although I know I’m still only a lowly apprentice. Joey and Stone are there, as well as Billie, Stone’s old mentor. She’s ripped, with big biceps covered in floral tattoos, and she happily buys us all a round to celebrate Caesar finally talking to me.
“To Rafael,” Billie says, lifting her beer. “Now he gets to deal with Caesar’s ornery ass, too.”
“Welcome to the gang, kid,” Joey grunts.
“Yeah,” Billie laughs. “Congratulations and sorry.”
Everyone breaks out laughing, and a grin fills my face. It’s hard to say why it feels so good that they all include me. I’m new to the shop, and they haven’t really seen what I can do as a tattoo artist. I haven’t, either, and I don’t exactly have a history of success to lean on. I could really easily still mess this all up, but all of the other artists are so laid back. They take the work seriously, but they’re also able to joke around about their fuckups. No one is expected to be perfect, just to accept each other and support each other, and I love that.
Even the satisfaction of being included doesn’t distract me from Alexander. Still, I’m thinking about him all day, right up until I leave the bar and finally get to head home, where I know he’ll be waiting.
I’m in love with him, and maybe that doesn’t have to be a disaster, either.
Maybe I can actually stand on my own for once. Pay my bills on time, make a steady income with an art that I love. Then I could turn to Alexander and tell him how I feel.
