Three chairs.
Three buzzing machines.
Three voices other than my own.
That's how the week started.
It's dead in here now, but worse, like a body after the soul's gone.
Twenty-four hours ago Teken Ink was the most in demand tattoo shop in Northern Washington, now it's nothing but a fucking shell.
I look up at the graffiti mural that covers most of the right side wall, snarling at it, I kill the lights and stand in the middle of the floor. Just me. Just my station highlighted in red and yellow from the neon lights of the Chinese restaurant across the street. I covered the other two chairs in sheets and shoved them against the wall in the back room because I couldn't stand them staring at me, reminding me that I'm the rock that has to hold everything together.
I don't get to throw a tantrum and disappear.
I don't get to make a slew of idiotic decisions and still walk away with the girl on my arm.
Eden—more like a brother than my own flesh and blood—helped me build this place from nothing. No help from our parents, just the two of us. He was always there. Always stable when I needed him to be. But the man's a runner, he's just never run away from me before. Though he's never walked in on his girlfriend with another man's dick in her mouth, either, I suppose.
Shawn and Reeze. Eden's girl and our own artist, the one we moved over from Hawaii. The one who makes us thousands of dollars every week, together in Eden's bed. Fucking behind all of our backs.
Eden arrived solo this morning with the news that Shawn was sick, then Reeze took off between clients. His bike remained at the shop, so we thought he was close by. Turns out Shawn had picked him up a few streets over while our heads were down.
I should have seen the signs but I've been so fucking busy pulling twelve-hour days, fitting as many clients in as I can before it's too much of a hassel to travel this far north to a beach town that shuts down every winter. It must have been the same for Eden. It had to be. For weeks he's been staying back after Shawn left for the night, but… so has Reeze. I scarcely recall a time when he hasn't been here with us.
If only Eden hadn't gone home on his lunch break.
If only he hadn't wanted to take Shawn some cold and flu tablets.
"You selfish asshole," I swear at myself, recalling the screeching tires of Eden's truck as he skidded into the lot behind the shop.
I take the keys from my pocket and unlock the back door.
Stepping outside my boots crunch over shards of headlight glass. It looks pretty glittering in the moonlight, but I grind it into the asphalt with my heel. Because fuck Eden and his lack of impulse control. Sure, he was wronged, but he didn't need to make it a thousand times worse.
I'd burst through the back door in time to see his steel-capped boot burst the headlight of Reeze's bike. Glass rained, then he threw it to the pavement, stomping on the gas tank and mirrors before his rage led him inside.
In front of my client, Eden tore Reeze's gear from the shop and flung it across the road. All his ink, needles, stencils, every last bit of his equipment, strewn across the main street of Broadrock.
Then Eden was gone.
No word.
No warning.
Like a giant fucking child he left me to pick up the pieces of yet another person's wreckage.
I pull down the roller that covers the back of the shop and the metal crashes against the ground. The air is damp with Pacific Northwest drizzle and Broadrock feels even smaller tonight than it usually does.
I turn the key to lock the roller, and I hear the distant wail of a siren. It's meant to be an alarm, but to me it's a mocking reminder that I have nothing waiting for me at home.
I breathe hard, trying to steady myself. Trying to stop the overwhelming emptiness from taking over.
I close my eyes and picture hands on me instead. Rough or soft, it doesn't matter, as long as there's heat against my skin to make me feel like I belong somewhere, even if just for an hour.
I don't want to be caring. I just need a simple, mindless reminder that I exist.
That I have a shape.
