“Oh.” I climb onto a stool beside him. “I don’t know. I mean, I never met him.”
Caesar’s jaw tightens, drawing my eye to his silver stubble, which inches down his thick neck. “Fucker,” he grumbles. “He ditched your ma.”
I nod softly. “Yeah, I guess so. Something like that. I’m not really sure if he knew about me.”
Caesar gives me a sympathetic grunt. “I lost track of him years ago. Don’t know how much I can help you.” He swigs from his beer. “Your ma tell you much about him?”
“Nothing,” I admit. “She claimed she only had a fake name and only saw him once. All she would ever say was that he was a mistake and that he wasn’t the kind of mistake you make twice.”
Caesar barks out a laugh. “Well, that’s damn right.”
Frustration tightens my muscles. I’m tired of feeling like the only one who doesn’t know something. He’s my father, and for my entire life, he was hidden from me.
But I just breathe steadily. I take another drink from my beer, my head already buzzing a little from the shot. Caesar is my only lead, and even if he’s prickly as hell, he’s sitting here with me. That has to count for something.
“Can you tell me about him?” I ask.
Caesar rests his arm on the bar and turns to me. When he leans in, a waft of his scent hits my nose, like smoky wood and dirt.
Damn, that’s nice.
“I can try,” he finally answers. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything?” I tell him honestly. “I know he’s a tattoo artist, like you, but that’s about it.”
Caesar frowns. After another swig of his beer, he drags his eyes up and down my body. His stare is intense. He takes me in, like he’s considering every inch of me, making a decision.
He’s probably straight, I remind myself. He’s just looking at me so intensely because I’m his friend’s son.
“I’m not really a talker,” he says. “And I think the past is best left alone. But I can tell you a few things.”
I nod while he raises a couple fingers, and a moment later, two more shots appear before us.
Shit.
I force a smile, then raise my glass while Caesar does the same. “To Mack, that asshole. He never did make good.”
My mouth kind of falls open. “To Mack,” I manage to agree, then throw back the shot and cough only a little less than the first time.
I just called my dead father an asshole in a toast. It’s not at all what I expected from this afternoon, but I can’t lie that it feels kind of good.
He hurt my mom, and that does make him an asshole, at least in my book.
“Mack had a hell of a tattoo style,” Caesar says, gazing at the wall. “Deep lines, raw shading, work that you would feel for days after. He and I came up at a time when the old guard was having trouble stepping down, and I think your old man just wanted to piss them off and prove something. Show them he was built of different stuff.”
He shakes his head and turns his eyes to me again. “You anything like that?” he asks me. “You like to fight?”
I blink. “Uh, no. Not at all, actually.”
And it’s the truth. I’m a careful, intentional person. I take my responsibilities seriously, and I never try to piss other people off just for the hell of it. If anything, I’m too polite.
I’m not sure what I expected to find, but hearing my father was so different than me is… strange.
Caesar shakes his head. “I didn’t think so. Anyway, he and I were friends. Drinking buddies for a couple years. Then we started working together. I liked his bad boy shit. He liked my skill. When I took over the shop from my old man, Mack stepped in to run it with me. Then, not long after, he skipped town, and I never heard from him again.” He takes another swig of his beer. “Fucker owed me five grand, too,” he grunts, then wipes his hand over his mouth. “Sorry. Shouldn’t shit-talk the dead.”
I smile. The way Caesar cusses kind of tickles me. “No, it’s okay. I want to know who he really was, not some made-up version.”
He grunts. “That’s right.” It lands like an affirmation, and that makes me even more tingly inside.
