And someone else…
had just made the first move.
1
24 hours ago…
Morning came soft through the curtains, pale light stretching across the bedroom floor like it didn’t want to wake her either.
Rebecca had always preferred mornings.
They asked less of her.
No one expected smiles before noon. No one asked heavy questions while the world was still quiet.
She lay on her side for a moment, staring at the wall, mind already moving before her body did — a habit from childhood. In a house that loud, you learned to wake up alert. Ready to step around moods, arguments, whatever energy filled the air that day.
Some things never leave you.
She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand.
A notification from the shop’s booking app.
Her stomach dropped before she even opened it.
Cancellation.
Third one this week.
No explanation.
Just gone.
She closed her eyes.
There had been a time when that sound meant something else. Excitement. New client. New story. Someone trusting her hands with something permanent.
Tattooing hadn’t been a plan.
It had been survival.
Art was the only quiet she’d had growing up — sketchbook on her knees while the apartment buzzed with voices, television noise, doors slamming. Drawing was the one place no one interrupted her, no one needed her, no one expected her to fix anything.
When she discovered tattooing, it felt like finding a language she’d already known how to speak.
Pain turned into beauty.
Loss turned into ink.
Stories carried on skin instead of sitting heavy in the chest.
People cried in her chair. Laughed. Told her secrets they didn’t tell their partners.
She held space for all of it.
That was her gift.
