Inked Armor

by Helena Hunting

  HAYDEN

  Five days. That was how long the sleepover boycott lasted. Yet even with Tenley in my bed, I couldn’t shake the nightmares. They were worse than ever, but at least with her next to me the content of the dreams didn’t include her.

  Something in me had snapped. The wall I’d erected had come crumbling down, and I couldn’t get it back up. All the things I never wanted to remember about my parents’ deaths were resurfacing with a clarity that woke me in the night, leaving me sweaty and shaking.

  It was six in the morning. Tenley was asleep in my bed. I should have been there, too, but it was pointless when all I did was toss and turn. Instead, I sat on my couch in the living room. The Christmas tree Tenley and I had put up earlier in the week blinked cheerily from across the room. We’d decorated it together with the ornaments she brought over, and the predawn glow of the flashing white lights was a bitter counterpoint to my somber mood. My laptop was open on the coffee table. I’d been scanning the same articles over and over, looking for some seed of information. Anything to help make sense of the memories I couldn’t reshelve in the Do Not Enter section of my brain.

  I couldn’t ignore them anymore; the memories had holes I wanted to fill. So much about that time was vague, except for the week prior to my parents’ murder. My actions then set the wheels in motion.

  My mom knocked on the door to my bedroom. I shoved the porn mag under my covers and touched the mouse on my laptop. The banal essay I’d finished three days earlier for my Man and Society class popped up on the screen.

  “You can come in.”

  She poked her head in the door. “We’re on our way out.”

  “Okay, cool. You look nice.” I said it not just to suck up, but because she did. She was wearing a red dress. Her dark hair was pulled up, away from the delicate features of her face.

  “You don’t think it’s too much?”

  “Did Dad say something?” Leave it to him to make her second-guess her choice minutes before they had to leave.

  “No, no. I just wondered if I should have gone with black.”

  “Red is better. Makes more of a statement.”

  I grinned, and a genuine smile lit up her face as she smoothed her hands over the skirt. She was soft around the edges, the way a mom should be. Not like those over-liposuctioned Stepford types she’d be with tonight. Guaranteed they would all be in black, or some animal-print monstrosity. Thank Christ I was too old to be dragged out to those boring events.

  “Are you guys gonna be late?”

  “We’ll be back around midnight. No friends in the house while we’re gone.”

  “Sure thing, Mom.”

  “I’m serious, Hayden. No friends. Your father will sell that car, and you’ll be taking the bus until you can afford to buy your own.”

  “Okay. No friends in the house. Promise,” I said to fend off the coming lecture.

  “If you’re going out, lock the doors and be home by ten thirty. No later.”

  “Sure. Have fun.” I hit a couple of keys on my laptop to make it look as if I needed to get back to work.

  She glanced around my room. “I’d tell you to clean your room, but that would be pointless.”

  Dad called for her from the bottom of the stairs, and her heels clipped on the hardwood floor as she turned to leave.

  “Hayden?”

  I looked up.

  “I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. Of course. I love you, too, Mom.”

  My father called for her again, impatient this time.

  I waited until the car pulled out of the driveway before I called Damen to pick me up. I’d lost the keys to my car two weeks ago when some chick I picked up puked all over the backseat. The keys would be mine again when I coughed up the cash for the detail job. While I waited for Damen to arrive, I downed half the mickey of vodka a girl from my part-time job had bought for me.

  My dad had long ago locked up his liquor cabinet due to the number of times I’d raided it. I checked my wallet. I’d already burned through my paycheck and was down to my last ten bucks. I headed to my parents’ room and lifted the painting from the wall to access the safe hidden behind it.

  I punched in the code and smiled as the release latch gave way. My mom’s best jewelry and my dad’s rainy-day money were stashed inside, along with some bank shit. I lifted a couple of twenties, shoved them in my wallet, and locked the safe. I only felt a little bad about taking the money. I’d put it back when I got paid at the end of the week.

  “Look at you, Mission: Impossible,” Damen said from the doorway.

  I dropped the painting on the floor. The corner of the frame dented the hardwood. “You scared the shit out of me! How the fuck did you get in here?”

  “The front door. I knocked first.”

  I frowned. My parents usually locked up when they went out. I hung the painting on the wall, tapping the edge until it was perfectly aligned. A scuff mark marred the edge of the frame that hit the floor. I rubbed at it, but the mark remained. Hopefully my dad wouldn’t notice.

  “What the hell is that supposed to be, an angel of death?” Damen asked, eyeing the painting. It was an angel rendered in shades of red.

  “Shut it. My mom painted it.”

  “It’s pretty fucking weird.” He picked up a diamond earring my mom had left on the dresser, rolling it between his fingers.

  I grabbed it out of his hand and put it back. “Don’t touch anything. My dad will notice if something’s been moved.”

  “You need to chill out. Come on, the bitches are in the car.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I scanned the room to make sure nothing else was out of place. “Who’d you bring this time?”

  “Some randoms. Don’t worry, there’s one for you.”

  I grinned. “Let’s roll.”

  Damen grabbed the mickey from my hand and polished it off as we booked it down the stairs. I locked the door and checked the planter for the spare key before I followed him to the SUV parked down the street.

  Damen was a few years older than me. He ran a tattoo shop call Art Addicts downtown where I got my eyebrow pierced. I’d gone back a few times with friends and discovered he had a side business of the less-than-legal persuasion. He had hookups and seemed to know a lot of skanky girls. Those traits made him an appealing acquaintance.

  Some loser I didn’t know was sitting in the front seat, staring out the windshield. I opened the back door and a cloud of smoke poured out. Two guys who looked vaguely familiar were in the middle with a chick I’d seen at the tattoo shop squeezed between them. She looked at me and then over her shoulder at the two girls in the very back. I didn’t recognize either one. They both had on too much eye makeup. The fake blonde was busy hauling on a joint. The real blonde was putting on lip gloss. I climbed back between them.

  “One of those is for me,” Damen said as he pulled away from the curb.

  “Is that right?” I put an arm around both of them. “Which one is mine?”

  “Me,” they said at the same time.

  “I’ll just keep them entertained until you’re ready then, yeah?” I called up to the front.

  “Not too entertained. I’m not into sloppy seconds.”

  Music blared through the speaker system, making further conversation impossible. Not that talk was necessary.

  It was twelve thirty by the time I got home. I was wasted. And high as a kite. My parents’ car wasn’t in the driveway so I assumed they weren’t home. I was wrong. They’d parked in the garage. My dad was sitting on the stairs when I came in, his tie loose around his neck, his shirt untucked, the top two buttons undone. He was calm. Which meant he was really fucking mad.

  I heard the soft tread of feet coming down the hall from upstairs. “Is he home?”

  My mom came into view at the top of the landing, her eyes red-rimmed. She’d been crying. She pulled her pale blue satin robe tight around her and came down the stairs, skirting my father, who still hadn’t moved.
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  “Oh, thank God! You have no idea how worried I was. I told you ten thirty. I was very explicit about that.” Her voice cracked.

  It made me feel like shit, which was precisely the point. “I’m sorry, Mom. I lost track of time.”

  “It’s after midnight! You have school in the morning! Where have you been? What happened to your neck?”

  She was much shorter than me, especially without her heels, and she had to lift her head to meet my eyes. I couldn’t focus well; the combination of weed and booze made me logy and uncoordinated. She grabbed me by the chin and forced my head to the side. “Are those hickeys? What kind of girl are you spending your time with? You smell like a bar! I have had it, Hayden. What’s it going to take?” Her anger gave way to more tears and I just stood there, feeling like the asshole teenager I was.

  “All right, Eleanor, I’ll take it from here.” Dad rose from the stairs and gently settled his hand on her shoulder.

  She spun around and pointed a finger in his face. “Don’t! Don’t treat me like I’m too fragile to handle this. I birthed him.” She turned back to me. “I can deal with the holes in your face Hayden, but this”—she gestured to my neck—“I have a real problem with you spending time with girls who think this is appropriate. What if you get her pregnant? Then what are we going to do? I’m too young to be a grandmother! Not to mention the drinking and the drugs. And don’t try and deny it, Hayden. I’m not stupid. I know what that smell is!”

  I shoved my hands in my pockets, weaving on my feet, and slurred, “I don’t think you’re stupid, Mom.”

  My father shot me a look that should have made paint peel off the walls. “Eleanor, I agree. You have every right to be upset with him. However, this conversation would be better served in the morning, when he’s coherent.”

  She seemed to realize he was right. With a graceful flourish, she lifted the hem of her robe and went back upstairs. Mischief, our black-and-white cat, who loathed me, wailed in my direction and followed her.

  When the door to my parents’ bedroom slammed shut, my dad turned around. His arms hung loosely at his sides, but his fingers flexed and clenched repeatedly; his disappointment and exhaustion were obvious. I was wearing him out. He didn’t yell. He didn’t swear. He didn’t kick me out of the house. Any of that would have been preferable to what he said next.

  “You better take a good long look at what you’re doing with your life, Son. The decisions you make now will have a direct impact on your future. If you’re not careful, you’re going to put your mother in an early grave. And if it’s just you and me? Well, I’m not sure either one of us will survive that.”

  Less than a week later, they were dead.

  “Hayden? What are you doing up so early?”

  Tenley stood in the middle of the living room. Her hair was a tousled mess. She wore one of my long-sleeved, black shirts with shorts underneath. We still hadn’t had sex since she first came home. In the past eight days, the only thing we’d done was kiss. It was driving me fucking insane. And times like this, when I needed a distraction from the shit going on in my head, I wanted to say screw it and, well, screw her.

  “I was just checking out some articles.”

  “At seven in the morning? How long have you been up?”

  “An hour maybe?”

  Tenley crossed the room and dropped down beside me. She glanced at my open laptop on the coffee table. “Do you mind if I read it?”

  “Go ahead.” I wanted her closer, so I moved her into my lap while she scanned the article. I wondered what the content looked like from her point of view. She clicked on the links I’d bookmarked. The related articles petered out when the case went cold.

  “You’ve been looking at these a lot lately.”

  “Yeah. But it doesn’t go anywhere, as you can see. I keep looking for something because there are things that just don’t fit, you know? There were problems with the evidence, but the articles don’t say anything about it.”

  She tucked my hair behind my ear. I needed to get it cut.

  “The lack of closure must be so horrible.”

  I took her hands in mine and kissed her knuckles. “I want answers. I want it to make sense. There are images . . .” I shook my head against the memories. “And the smell—I think that was the worst part. For a long time I kept thinking it would fade, but it hasn’t. There’s so much I can’t remember very well. The night it happened is mostly a haze, up until I came home. Then it’s so fucking clear, it’s in hi def.”

  Tenley’s smile was sad. “I know what you mean about the smells. Some parts of the crash are black holes, but others . . .” Goose bumps rose along her arms. “Scents trigger the worst memories.”

  That was it exactly. Violent death had a distinctive odor. The residue was like a black smear on my life I couldn’t clear away, no matter how much time passed.

  After a minute of silence when we were both wrapped up in shitty memories, Tenley kissed my temple. “I know talking about it is hard, but have you ever considered—”

  “If you’re going to say therapy, you can stop right there. Nate’s been up my ass about it for years.”

  She looked utterly taken aback. “You’ve never talked to anyone about this?”

  “I’m talking to you.”

  “I mean a professional.”

  “What’s the point? I already know why I’m fucked up. I don’t need someone to tell me that for a hundred bucks an hour.”

  “You’re not fucked up, Hayden.” I raised an eyebrow and she sighed. “It’s not about the why. It’s about finding ways to deal with what you went through, so it doesn’t rule your life. That’s the reason I’ve decided to attend a grief-counseling group.”

  “What? When are you doing that?”

  “There’s a group starting in January on campus. It’s been a year—it’s time.”

  I smoothed my hands down her arms. “But you already dealt with things. Isn’t that what going back to Arden Hills was about?”

  “It was the first step of many. The memorial service, while awful at the time, helped in some ways, and the estate has been taken care of. But the rest of it . . . I still harbor a lot of guilt. It’s going to take time for me to let go of that.”

  The guilt I understood. That lecture from my dad played out in a constant loop some nights. If I’d made different choices, they might still be alive. If my parents hadn’t been so concerned about my sneaking out, they would have stayed at their function longer the night they died. Instead they came home early and were shot to death in their bed. While I was out getting wasted with Damen.

  I regarded Tenley with skepticism. “Won’t talking about it just bring up all the crap?”

  “Probably, yes. But I can’t just keep it all inside and let it fester.”

  I didn’t comment. Seven years later I was still angry; still shut down in a lot of ways; still pushing boundaries.

  “Anyway, that wasn’t where I was going with this. I’m not sure how cases like your parents’ work, but shouldn’t there be a file or something you can access? Maybe there are public records?”

  “There might be. I’ve never looked into it.”

  “Wouldn’t the local police have information?”

  I scoffed. “Yeah, and they were superhelpful when all that shit went down. You’ve met that dick Cross. He’s the reason everything got fucked up in the first place.”

  “There must have been other officers working the case, though. Maybe it’s worth looking into. It might give you some peace.”

  Her argument made sense. Doing something proactive would be better than reading the same damn articles over and over, getting nowhere but deeper into my own head.

  “Can we drop the subject?” I asked.

  “Of course—I didn’t mean to push you. Do you want to talk about something else?”

  She had one arm draped around my shoulder, her fingers gliding up and down the back of my neck, into my hairline. It felt good. Better than good, actually.r />
  “I don’t feel like talking anymore.”

  “Oh. Okay. Do you want some space? I can go back to my place—”

  “No. I don’t want that, either.”

  I pulled her closer and she shifted a little, her ass settling in the dip between my legs. My cock swelled, sensing the proximity of the Promised Land. If she noticed, she didn’t say anything. Instead, the fingers of her free hand began tracing the ink on my arm. Starting at my wrist, she followed the vines to the bleeding heart into the bend of my elbow, where the flowers exploded into life.

  She made no attempt to go beyond where the short-sleeve shirt ended. After our conversation in the car—where I pretty much threw a shit fit over her leaving and laid all my cards on the table—she hadn’t pushed for anything. She was more than happy to sit around my place without so much as a make-out session.

  Even in bed she was all PG, wearing lots of clothing, avoiding positions that might encourage important-body-part contact. In the morning when I spooned with her and my stupid ass hard-on jabbed into her low back, or on the really great days when it nestled against the cleft of her ass, she didn’t press against it. It was driving me up the fucking wall. I had no idea where to draw the line, and the longer I waited, the more I wanted to tromp all over it. If she’d just start something, then I’d have the excuse I needed to keep going. That way I could have the connection I was desperate for, in the only way I knew how to get it.

  I pulled her in tighter, my hand moving down to her bare upper thigh. Then I shifted my hips up, a furtive attempt at a little friction. Tenley’s fingers stilled and her head lifted from my chest. I met her questioning gaze with a forlorn one of my own. I should have asked Lisa what the fucking time frame was supposed to be. I had no clue.

  Tenley’s fingers were on the move again. They drifted up my arm over my shoulder to my neck, skimming my jaw until they were no longer tracing tattoos, but the curve of my lip. I parted them and she took the invitation. Her thumb slipped inside my mouth. I bit down and sucked, feeling the smooth ridge of her nail and the warmth of her skin. Pulling free, she replaced her thumb with her lips, the softest brush of skin against skin. She kept coming back, kisses drawing out, becoming deeper.