“So is it all three of you?”
“All three of us,” Claire said, nervousness obvious in her voice. This wasn’t something Claire would’ve ever suggested.
Wren smiled. She had probably seen this a million times before.
Women of a certain age walking through her door with a mixture of determination and abject terror, about to do something they never thought they would do.
“First tattoos?”
“For me,” Claire said. “I’ve never even had my ears pierced twice.”
“I have a little one,” Nina said. “A tiny hummingbird on my shoulder blade. David drew it for me.” She said it very matter-of-factly, the way she had been saying David’s name more and more lately. With love, that didn’t sound like she was absolutely drowning.
Harper nodded her head.
“First.”
“Okay then,” Wren said. “Let’s talk about what you all want.”
They all agreed on matching tattoos, but not on what the matching tattoo should be.
This had been the constant subject of the group chat, spanning two weeks and fifty-three messages.
Claire had suggested they all get a magnolia because, well, she was Claire.
Harper said they needed something geometric and abstract because, well, she was Harper.
Nina said they needed a compass, and they’d almost gone with it until Claire pointed out that a compass implied you were lost, which, while arguably accurate, was not the message she wanted permanently etched on her body.
It was Nina who had finally settled it about three days ago with a text that arrived at almost midnight.
A wave, simple, small, signifies the ocean, signifies the Lowcountry, the way the water keeps moving even when everything else feels still. And then nobody argued with it.
Wren sketched it for them, a tiny, clean wave, no bigger than a quarter, delicate enough to be subtle yet distinct enough to be unmistakable.
She showed them the design on tracing paper, and all three of them leaned over the counter to look at it. Harper felt a tightness in her throat. She didn’t entirely understand it. It was just a wave, a tiny drawing of water.
It shouldn’t have made her emotional, and yet here she was, standing in a tattoo parlor in Savannah, looking at a drawing the size of a coin and feeling like she was about to do something that mattered so much in a way she simply couldn’t articulate.
“Where do you want it?” Wren asked.
Harper didn’t hesitate. “Inside of my wrist.”
Claire and Nina both looked at her. The wrist was very visible.
The wrist was where clients, colleagues, and even her mother would see it, but Harper was choosing it anyway.
“Ankle,” Claire said, “inside and near the bone.”
Hidden, of course, because Claire would choose hidden.
Nina wanted to say something, but she stopped and then looked at Wren.
“Can you add initials to mine, like tiny ones next to the wave?”
“Of course, what initials?”
“D-A-V. David Alejandro Vargas.”
