It had been a while since he’d sold anything from his gallery, so he quickly opened the page and his heart leapt into his throat when he realized what it was. He couldn’t stop himself from glancing up at the wall in front of him, where the octopus sketch had been hanging for nearly two years. He hadn’t ever intended to keep it, of course. He didn’t create to keep, he created to share with the world, but something in him felt a little bereft at the thought of packing it up and shipping it off.
“Dude, are you about to cry?” Mat asked, interrupting Derek’s thought spiral. His tone wasn’t mocking, it was concerned, and it shook Derek right out of his head.
“No,” he said quickly. “No, someone just bought…” He nodded his head at the octopus and James’ eyes went wide.
“Someone bought Kevin?”
Derek sighed. “His name isn’t Kevin, dude.”
“It is,” James argued. “I named him, and it’s not like you everpicked anything else. Plus, it suits him. Shit, dude, if I knew you were really going to sell him, I’d have bought it.”
That made Derek’s stomach twist a little, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing. He hated selling to his friends, mostly because they felt like pity buys, even if he knew his work was good. He wanted strangers to own those pieces of him, wanted to know that bits of his soul were scattered around the country—maybe the world.
“Where’s it going?” Mat asked as he pulled out his scalpel to get to work on James’ leg.
With a frown, Derek bent over his phone and scrolled to the shipping address. “Wallflowers Florist, C/O Amaranth Shevach,” he said. “That’s here.”
“That’s the chick who gave May a rose,” Sage said, coming up from behind Derek. “She bought your painting?”
No, Derek thought, because it wasn’t her. It was Basil. Basil had saved the gallery on his phone and had bought the painting because Derek had lamented that no one wanted it in spite of it being his favorite. And it probably was a pity buy, but more than that, it meant Basil had thought about him. Basil was asking to keep a piece of him, even if he didn’t want anything more.
He looked back at the octopus and let out a tiny sigh. “Someone at their shop bought the painting,” he finally corrected.
Sage raised a brow. “Don’t you have like…an entire series of floral work? Why would they buy a fucking octopus, dude?”
Derek bristled, though he knew his brother wasn’t trying to be cruel. “I don’t know, and I can’t say I’m supposed to give a shit. People buy something, I send it. Simple as that.”
“Testy,” Sage complained as he flopped down into an empty chair on the edge of Derek’s stall. He moved to kick one foot up on the bench, but Derek knocked him away.
“My client’s about to walk in and I’m not going to goddamn start this whole thing over,” he snapped.
Sage raised his hands in defense. “My bad.”
Rolling his eyes, Derek spun away from his brother, then startled a little when his phone rang. He glanced at the screen and saw Sam’s name, quickly answering. “Hey, man. How’d it go?”
“Do you want to come over tonight and chill? Alice is out of town for the next few days and being in the car this long fucked me up. I’m spasming and I need to get in the bath. I can bribe you with beer and take-out.”
Derek smiled to himself as he reached for the stencil he’d drawn out and set it on the table. “You don’t need to bribe me, also I’ve eaten out both meals so why don’t I cook?”
“You’re a god amongst men, you know that?” Sam said with a breath of relief. “May’s going to stay over with Kat tonight so I can get my back to calm down, so it’s just the two of us.”
“I’ll stop over at Wild’s and get something to cook up,” Derek told him. “What time will you be back?”
“God only knows. I’m on a half hour break, then I have another hour or two. Then she wants me to meet with the rehab specialist regarding the class they’re making me take.” He sounded exhausted and run down, and it made Derek want to get in his car and haul Sam’s ass far away from this mess. “I’m guessing after seven.”
Derek glanced up at the clock. “I can be there around then. My last appointment’s at four, but it’s probably only a two-hour job. Sage and Mat can handle any of the walk ins. And James is here letting Mat carve on his leg, so we’re staffed.”
“Thanks, man,” Sam said, then yawned loudly. “Fuck me. Okay. I gotta hit the head before I get back into this shit, so I’ll see you when I get home.”
“You got it.” Derek hung up, but before he could explain anything, the little bell on the front door sounded and his client walked in. Derek wanted nothing more than to talk about Sam’s shit, and to contemplate why Basil had bought the painting, but instead he put on his best customer service face and cracked his knuckles, ready to get started.
It was halfsix when he finally got his station sanitized and his shit put away. He wrote himself a note to stock his needles and to organize his ink, then he stared at the octopus painting a few minutes more.
“You really gonna throw that in the mail?” Mat asked, leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his head.
The shop was dead, and the only booking they had was the nine o’clock, and there hadn’t been a single walk-in all evening. James had gotten a call with a request for an emergency car repair job which he immediately snatched up, and Wyatt had come in to work on some of his pig skin since he had his first booking that weekend and he was feeling all the nerves.
Derek shrugged. “I mean, I kind of have to, don’t I? Wouldn’t it be weird if I walked it down to the flower shop?”
