CHAPTER 8
Harper had been to Savannah eleven times in her life, but she had never done anything spontaneous there.
She had gone to Savannah for conferences, mostly, or client dinners, once for a long weekend with Jordan several years ago, where she’d spent half the time answering work emails from the bathroom of her hotel on East Bay Street while he sat on the balcony and read a novel, pretending not to notice.
She had walked the squares and eaten at good restaurants, and she had admired the architecture the way you look at a painting in a museum, from a respectful distance.
Today, she was getting a tattoo.
This was her pick for month five, and she had chosen it because it was the kind of thing Harper Ellis did not do. You see, Harper Ellis wore silk blouses and expensive heels that cost more than some people’s rent.
Harper Ellis signed contracts with a Montblanc pen.
Harper Ellis did not sit in a chair and allow an inked-up stranger to put a needle in her skin. She didn’t do permanent things to her body except for the occasional nip or tuck that needed to happen. That was just a necessity.
And this was exactly why she had to do it, because the whole point of this pact was to scare herself, and the thing that scared Harper most was not the pain or the needles, not even the permanence.
It was the loss of control.
It was the idea of marking her body with something she could not take back, could not negotiate, and could not delete from her calendar.
Something permanent from a woman who kept everyone at arm’s length so she’d never have to commit to anything she couldn’t walk away from.
She kept that particular insight to herself.
They had driven down together, two hours from Beaufort, taking the back roads through the Lowcountry because Claire said they were prettier, and they were. The Lowcountry was one of the most beautiful places on earth as far as Harper was concerned, and she’d been just about everywhere.
The longer drive was also because they needed the extra time for Nina to talk herself into this, which she eventually did.
The March air, warm through the open windows, carried the decaying smell of the marsh in early spring. It was a smell that was hard to describe to others and very specific to the Lowcountry.
The live oaks along Highway 17 made a tunnel of green and shadow that felt like driving through a cathedral.
“Savannah makes me want to sit on a bench and do nothing for hours,” Nina said.
“Yep, that’s the Savannah effect,” Claire said. “It slows you down whether you want it to or not.”
“Well, I suppose I could use some slowing down,” Harper said, surprising all three of them, because Harper had never expressed a desire to move at any speed below the maximum in her life.
The parlor was on a side street near Chippewa Square in a narrow brick building with a green door, and it was named Tidewater Ink.
It looked less like a tattoo shop and more like a bookstore that had changed its mind, which is probably why Harper had chosen it.
She had spent hours reading reviews, comparing portfolios, and even evaluating the cleanliness ratings of seven different tattoo parlors before choosing this one, because even if Harper was being spontaneous, she was going to be thorough about it.
Inside, the walls were exposed brick covered in framed flash art and photographs of finished work. The floors were old hardwood, scuffed but clean. Music played from a speaker behind the counter. It was something acoustic.
The air smelled like clean soap and the faintest trace of cigar smoke from the smoke shop next door. The whole place had a calm, steady energy that felt more like a doctor’s office than a den of reckless decisions.
A woman appeared from behind a curtain. She looked like she was probably around forty, with short silver hair and full sleeves of floral tattoos on both arms.
“Harper?” she asked.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“I’m Wren. We talked on the phone.”
She looked at Claire and Nina.
