“I don’t.”
I wiggle my butt closer to him, then reach out and stroke his arm. “I don’t know about that.”
Caesar’s hand closes over my hand. He drags his thumb over my wrist, crossing my pulse, then takes my knee with his other hand and slides me to his lap. My butt presses to his thigh, and my legs dangle over the arm of the couch.
Caesar doesn’t release my arm. “You’re a smartass,” he grumps.
We’re joking in this weird way we’ve developed, but there’s something serious under the surface. I’m realizing that maybe Caesar isn’t just a loner type, but maybe he’s lonely, too. I understand him well enough to know that he’d rather show how he feels than talk about it, and tattooing is clearly the center of his world. Inviting the artists to work with him, asking his apprentice to tattoo him, that’s about as big of an endorsement as someone could get from Caesar.
But if he doesn’t say anything about that, how is anyone supposed to know?
My heart hurts, thinking about Caesar at work all day, caring about people who don’t know that he cares about them.
“You must be proud of the shop. Even if you don’t tell your employees enough that you love them.”
“I’m proud of the work,” he tells me. “That’s what matters.”
I sigh. “Sounds nice.”
“What?”
“Having work you feel so good about.”
“You don’t feel good about your work?”
“The stationary shop is my mom’s work, not mine. It’s honest, and I didn’t hate it or anything, but it definitely wasn’t my purpose. I guess restoring the machines is work, too, but that’s so silly.”
Caesar scoffs. “No worse than inking dragons and rocket ships onto people.”
“No,” I correct with a laugh. “Repairing arcade games is definitely sillier than tattooing is. And not nearly as cool. But thank you for trying.”
“Well, cool or not, now is your time, kid.”
He lets the old nickname slip, but it doesn’t bother me. Since he mainly calls me by my name now, it actually feels kind of nice.
“My time for what?”
“Making your own way. You going to sell that stationary store?”
I blink. It figures that Caesar shoots straight to the question I’ve been trying not to ask myself. “I’m not sure yet,” I answer. “It makes sense to sell it. But I feel kind of guilty, too. People love that place. My mom loved that place. And I promised her I would take care of the employees.”
Caesar scowls.
“What?” I ask.
“Trust me. You can’t make a promise like that.”
I tilt my head to the side. “Excuse me?”
He shakes his head. “You’ve already given a lot of years to other people, Drew.”
“It’s not like that,” I object, suddenly flustered. “I loved spending those years with my mom. Even when it was hard, we watched all of her favorite movies and baked her favorite foods, and…”
And she never told me the whole truth—that she knew who my father was, even though she knew it mattered to me.
But she was a hardworking woman who didn’t like talking about stuff like that. I loved her, and I miss her, and that makes being mad at her even harder.
A storm of emotions rises up. I tighten my fists, fighting it down. Caesar’s suddenly giving me advice I didn’t ask for, and I know I do the same thing to him, but it spins me around.
