Last Call (Bad Habits Book 3)

by Staci Hart

  “Perks are never bad.” I picked up my grip and inspected my needles.

  “Well, not these kinds, anyway. Yeah, the show was great. Shep and Ramona came too, and Ramona brought some chick to set me up with. Tara, I think. No … Tina.” He still didn’t look sure of himself.

  “You bang her?”

  Joel snorted. “Of course I did. I’m alive, aren’t I?” He eyed me, still smirking. “So, what are you doing Thursday night?”

  I gave him a flat look. “I don’t have any plans.”

  “Great. We’ll go to Habits for your birthday, ‘cause you know I didn’t forget.”

  “Of course you didn’t.” I said as I bent the needle I’d use for the line work and fed it through the grip.

  “Perfect. Glad you agree that it’s a good plan. See? Now, that didn’t hurt, did it?”

  “Only my soul, Joel. Only my soul.”

  He laughed, and it was a big, comforting sound, full of amusement at my discomfort. “Invite West and everybody, and make sure Rose is off so she can hang out with you.” He waggled his brows.

  I grabbed a couple of rubber bands and wrapped them around my machine before covering it in plastic. “You’re just as bad as West and Lily, you know that? Bunch of shitty matchmakers you are.”

  “You still sneaking in to sleep over there?”

  I sighed as I set down my machine and started filling the plastic ink cups. “Yeah, but the jig is up. She busted me this morning.”

  He sucked in a breath through his teeth dramatically. “She put you out?”

  “Not yet. She wanted the day to think about it, so we’ll see tonight. I mean, it’s not like I don’t have somewhere to go. Like my own place.”

  “You can always crash with me, if you need a place to stay,” he said, suddenly a little more serious.

  “I know. Thanks, man. But you’ve done enough for me over the years.”

  “Psh, letting you surf my couch for a couple of years isn’t exactly worth sainthood.”

  I met his eyes. “No, but saving me from myself is.”

  He shrugged, looking away. “You would have done the same. Anyway, here’s to hoping Rosie sees the light and lets you stay. God know the two of you just need to lock yourselves in a room until you make up.” His brows raised. “Hey, new birthday plans.”

  I laughed.

  The bell over the door rang, and Penny, Ramona, and Veronica walked in, laughing. Another thing our parlor was known for — the three hot chicks who pierced and tattooed there. All three of them had been featured in tattoo magazines and calendars. They were roommates and best friends — Penny, whose hair was shamrock green this month, Ramona, tall and blond, and Veronica, the raven of the three.

  “Morning, ladies,” Shep called from behind the register.

  “Hey, Shep,” they answered in unison, then broke out laughing.

  The girls dispersed, Penny making her way back to her piercing booth as Ramona strutted over to Shep.

  He leaned down and tapped his cheek. “Knock me one right here, gorgeous.”

  She smiled wide and obliged. When she turned, she hung a hand on her hip. “Hey, Joel, are you gonna call Tricia after last night?”

  His face lit up like a light bulb, and he snapped his fingers. “Tricia. That was it. And no, probably not.”

  She rolled her eyes. “This is why we can’t have nice things, Joel.”

  He shrugged.

  Veronica walked past us and into the booth behind mine, and Joel and I watched her like a couple of cats. She was gorgeous — pitch black hair pulled back in a twist that looked straight out of an old movie, green eyes always lined and winged. Her pretty little nose was pierced with thin gold rings, twice in one nostril and her septum, with another in the center of her bottom lip, right at the swell. She had sleeved arms and smaller tattoos behind her ear, along her collarbone, down her thighs, visible through her ripped up tights she wore under her shorts.

  Like I said. Gorgeous. Somehow hard and soft, her body modded to make her look like walking art. Too bad I wasn’t even remotely interested in her. Even worse — I’d dragged her into the mess with Rose, knowing full well that I wasn’t really into her.

  Don’t look at me that way. I really thought I knew what I was doing.

  She smiled at us as she set her bag down. “What’s up, Tricky? Joel? You two are looking good.”

  Joel nodded at her. “Not looking so bad yourself, Ronnie.” He pushed off from the counter and stepped into the middle of the room. “Listen up, everybody,” he announced.

  Drew, Max, and Eli, the other artists, walked out from the back, and everyone turned their attention to Joel.

  “So, Tricky’s birthday is in a couple of days, and he told me the one thing he really wants is a party. One where everyone is there just for little old him. Preferably one where we all sing him Happy Birthday in public.”

  Everyone whooped and laughed, and I shook my head, smiling.

  “Let’s all go to Habits to celebrate. If you all embarrass him properly, I’ll buy lunch for the shop the next day. Deal?”

  Everyone chimed, “Deal.”

  He smiled at me like a bastard and walked to his station, which was right in front of mine, just inside the window so people could see him work from the street. Everyone dispersed again as a couple of clients walked in, making their way to Shep at the counter.

  Veronica was busy covering her tray in plastic wrap, but she glanced over at me as she worked. “So, Habits, huh?”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “Didn’t have much say?”

  “Do I ever?” We shared a look, and she chuckled.

  “Classic Joel.” She eyed me a little warily. “So, I’m guessing Rose will be there?”

  I nodded and rolled back to my desk, hanging my elbows on the surface. “Probably.”

  “Because I haven’t seen her since …”

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said, hoping it was the truth. “She’s cool.”

  She chuffed. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  I raised an eyebrow, and she raised one right back.

  “What?” She reached for the paper towels and began to tear and fold pieces, stacking them in the corner of her tray. “I guess I can’t I blame her for being frosty to me when we met. You should have told me what was going on before you took me there that night.”

  Regret. There it was again, rising to the surface unbidden, with no warning. “Yeah, well, there are a lot of things I should have done.”

  Her face softened. “They say that’s how we learn. But what the fuck do ‘they’ know, anyway?”

  I chuckled.

  “So, what do you want for your birthday?” She slipped her machine cord through a plastic tube and hung it on the edge of her tray.

  I crossed my ankles with a sigh. “I guess ‘to be left alone’ is out.”

  “If Joel has anything to do with it, yeah.”

  I thought it over, and a simple answer dawned on me. “How about your favorite book?”

  She smiled as she gathered supplies and lined them up on her tray. “You’re a big reader? Who knew?”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t live with a Lit student for four years and not learn to love it.”

  She tsked and shook her head. “Tricky Evans, full of surprises.”

  The bell over the door rang, and I turned to find my first client walking in. I applied the stencil and laid her down in my chair, pressed my hands against her skin, machine in my hand as I drew and shaded the lines and dots, slow and steady. Needles and blood, raw flesh and ink, all to the steady buzz of the machine in my hand, making my mark in a way that would last as long as the body under my hand.

  SAUSAGE STACK

  Rose

  TO SAY MY DAY WAS long would have been an understatement.

  I sat for hours in very uncomfortable clothes in a very stiff chair, which stood packed into a very quiet, very full room. My only armor against boredom was my book, except I couldn’t conce
ntrate on the freaking book on account of Patrick.

  I tried not to think about his naked chest, or the swell of his lips as he asked me to stay, or his eyes that burned a hole in my resolve, just like they always did. But I was Rosie: Extinguisher of Flames. Particularly Patrick flames. I’d become a pro over the months. Ice Queen, extraordinare. Cool as fuck. What happened between us was water under the bridge. In the past. He asked me to stay, and I’d think about it logically.

  I could be logical and reasonable and leave all my feelings out of it. Probably.

  Then I remembered that his naked chest had been sleeping twenty feet away from me for a month, right there, right across the hall, which sent me from logical to totally-not-logical-ever-because-fuck-him.

  Of course, he wasn’t the only one to blame for the sneaky fuckery going on. Lily gave him permission without talking to me. She let my ex sleep in my apartment without my knowledge, which was creepy and shitty and not okay. I couldn’t figure out what would have convinced her to sanction that. I’d get to the bottom of it, but first, I’d make her sweat. I hadn’t messaged her, and I knew she knew I knew, and I also knew she knew I was pissed.

  Sometimes the best way to say what you feel is silence.

  I put my book away and replaced it with my notebook and pen. First I doodled a variety of images to depict my mood: a hand flipping the bird, a gun shooting a flag that said No, cartoon flames, and a brontosaurus with its head in a tub of popcorn. I glanced at the clock. It had been fifteen minutes.

  So I turned the page and stared at the blue lines until they were blurry.

  I would see Patrick tonight, and I had to give him an answer. There wouldn’t be time for a conversation with Lily. I had to decide on my own.

  I wrote two word in the top margin: PROS and CONS.

  Then I chewed on the end of my pen for a really long time.

  Personally, the pros were few. Maybe more naked chest. I wouldn’t really have to see him, if he kept up the sneaking like he had been. He wasn’t really hurting anything. Not really.

  There was really only one con, but it was too real.

  I don’t trust myself around him.

  As much as I liked to pretend that I was completely over Patrick, the truth was that I missed him. I missed my friend. I missed the man who’d woken me with a kiss and left me with a smile. I missed his touch. His words. His presence.

  But I wasn’t allowed to miss him. Not after he dumped me and brought the hottest girl I’d ever seen to my bar when I was working. And then he tried to backpedal. He was sorry, he’d said. He begged me to see that he’d made a mistake.

  The hurt was indescribable. He was right. He’d made a mistake, but there was no way I’d open myself up to him again, and that’s exactly what I told him, just before I told him to get out.

  We’d never spoken of it again.

  It was weeks before I even made eye contact with him.

  Why so cold, you ask? Isn’t he so damaged and beautiful and sorry? And the answer is yes, he is. But he hurt me deeply enough that I knew there was no way I’d let it go. There was no way to fix us, not with that amount of baggage on both sides.

  See, I don’t do a lot of third chances. You read that right. You want a do-over, you get one and only one. If Patrick had come back to me before Veronica and changed his mind, I would have welcomed him with open arms. Granted, I would have been more wary the second time, but I would have taken him back in a heartbeat. In fact, I felt deep down that he’d come back to me. But then he paraded a girl in front of me not twenty-four hours after we’d broken up.

  There are things I’ll forgive, but that humiliation is not one of them. And being cold was the only way to insulate my broken heart.

  I glanced back over my list, realizing that I didn’t have a single reason to say no, nothing that I could stand up on, at least. It wasn’t my room. It wasn’t my bed. So I could put my feelings in the backseat and be a grown up about it, rather than saying no just because he made me itchy.

  I closed my notebook with a sigh, feeling better only because I’d made a decision. The decision itself was another thing entirely, but my mind was quiet enough that I was able to pick up my book again, throwing myself into the escape of the story. At least that would have a happy ending.

  Mercifully, I wasn’t chosen for the jury, and I made my way home through rush hour traffic, grateful that I didn’t have a normal job. Bodies packed into the train, wall to wall, some fortunate enough to have a seat, the rest of us doomed to stand next to each other, in a space that smelled of metal and people, avoiding eye contact at all costs. The doors opened and closed at each stop, and streams of people poured in and out before we’d move again.

  By the time I was climbing the stairs of my building, my mood had reached an epically sour, smelly state. I had an hour before Patrick would be over, so I could at least change and maybe have a drink before I had that conversation. I felt a little better at the thought, though I still grumbled as I unlocked my door and dropped my purse, closing the door a little harder than I meant to.

  Patrick popped off the couch, and my hand flew to my chest, eyes wide. “Jesus, Tricky!”

  He yawned and rubbed his smooth jaw, seemingly unaffected. “Sorry. You said you wanted to talk, so here I am.”

  I fumed as I kicked off my shoes, taking a deep breath to vent the heat. “I thought you said you were off at six?”

  “My last appointment canceled.” He looked apologetic. And gorgeous. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “It’s fine.”

  He moved to the end of the couch, waiting for me to sit next to him, so I did, despite my crawling nerves and thumping heart. I caught a whiff of him, the clean smell of soap and laundry, and found myself leaning in to breathe him deeper.

  I course-corrected, turning so my back was against the armrest as I eyed that pretty bastard, wishing I wasn’t in this position. “All right. Here’s the deal.”

  He relaxed a hair, which irritated me for some reason.

  I tried not to scowl. “I can’t think of a single reason why you can’t stay here, so I feel like I should say yes.”

  He nodded, looking a little less comfortable at my phrasing.

  “Lily’s obviously fine with it, and it’s her bed and her room. I’ll agree to it, but I have three conditions.”

  Patrick shifted. “Let’s have it.”

  “Try to be gone or asleep while I’m here, okay? I don’t want to worry about whether or not I have a bra on, or if I’m going to walk in on you in the john.”

  He smirked. “All right.”

  “No moving your stuff in. You sleep here, that’s it. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “We’re not roommates, okay? So no —” I waved a hand as I thought about how to phrase it. “I don’t know. Bonding, or whatever. Just be a ghost.”

  He nodded. “Consider me invisible.”

  I sighed, hoping this wasn’t going to be a huge disaster. You can do this. It’s fine. Totally fine. Boundaries are defined. “So, that’s that. I’m meeting up with Lily in a bit and need to change. If I don’t get out of these clothes, I’m going to freak out.”

  He smirked, and my eyes narrowed.

  I pointed at him. “Don’t crack a bad joke, Tricky.”

  Patrick put up his hands. “Who, me? Never.” He smiled, and the urge to slap him crept in. Slap him and then kiss him for being charming when I wanted to hate him. “So, I know I’m invisible and all, but I hang out here for the cable regardless. Is that still allowed if we’re not,” he made a hand gesture like I had earlier, “bonding?”

  “Fine,” I answered, doing my best to not make it sound like one of those other F-words before standing to make my way to my room.

  “Rose?” he called after me.

  I turned. “Yeah?”

  His eyes burned hot on mine, blazing and intense. I don’t think he even knew he was doing it — he just existed in a constant state of smolder. “Thanks.”
<
br />   I smiled, hoping my knees weren’t about to buckle under the weight of his stare. And then I cranked up the freezer. “You’re welcome.”

  Getting out of that room became priority one. I tried not to hurry away, letting out another heavy breath as soon as my bedroom door was closed and there was sheetrock and timber between us.

  Priority two was getting the polyester off my body.

  Seriously — I never wanted to work in a profession where I had to keep the words “slacks” and “blouses” in my fashion vocabulary. I folded the dark pants and button down neatly. They were a little wrinkled — our closets are so small, there’s no way to hang anything up in there, not really. But there was no way in hell I would have ever been convinced to iron that morning.

  Lily and I were going to Habits, my home away from home, one of my favorite places to hang out, even though I worked there. Some people hate going to work when they’re not working, but Habits was never like that for me. Maybe it’s the vibe. Maybe there’s some magic about the bar that made me feel like I was somewhere I belonged. Either way, I never minded.

  I had no intention of dressing up for the occasion, especially since I knew I’d be peeling Lily’s grape. So I pulled on a pair of black leggings covered in what looked like bleach spots, a black V-neck, and my favorite flannel. Cotton. Glorious cotton and elastic waists as far as the eye could see.

  I sat at the foot of my bed and stuffed my feet into my combat boots, sighing as I pulled my hair back to get it off my neck.

  That’s better.

  I felt a little more like myself when I walked out of my room, beelining for my bag as I tried to avoid eye contact with Patrick.

  “Have fun,” he said, his voice deep and velvety.

  I grabbed my bag and pretended to look for something. “Don’t sit too close to the TV or you’ll ruin your eyes.”

  He chuckled.

  “See you later, Tricky,” I said politely and left the apartment before I made it any more awkward.

  Three steps down the hall, I remembered that I was pissed at Lily — I’d been too distracted by Patrick. In half a dozen more steps, I was banging on the door as a warning before opening it with a scowl on my face, ready to blow.