by Ranae Rose
He did neither. Instead, he reclined the driver’s seat all the way and closed his eyes, shutting out the glare of streetlight.
Sleep didn’t come easily. In fact, it didn’t come at all. His muscles ached from construction work and his stomach felt pinched from hunger. It was hard to imagine making it through two weeks of living in his car during a Pittsburgh November, but he didn’t have much of a choice. It’d be at least that long before he’d have the money to put down a deposit on an apartment, and he didn’t have enough to stay at a motel meanwhile.
If only things had lasted longer with Chelsea. He’d met her a couple months ago at a party. At first, she’d liked him enough to let him stay with her at her apartment. Still, she’d kicked him out quick the day before when her old boyfriend had come back around.
James had barely had time to gather up his few belongings. She hadn’t cared that he started a new job the next day, that it paid a little higher than his last gig. He’d offered to give her all the extra pay to put toward household expenses, but she hadn’t cared about that, either.
“It’s been fun,” she’d said to him, “but I need you to get out before Sean gets here. No offense.”
He couldn’t say he missed her, but he sure as hell missed her cramped studio apartment, even if the roof had leaked when it rained.
After an hour of lying still inside his piece of shit car, James’ will snapped. He turned the key in the ignition and flipped the heat on. Just for a minute or two, until he was warm enough to sleep…
He held his hands up in front of the heating vents, but only cold air came out. He let the vehicle run longer, but the air never warmed up.
“Fuck,” he said, striking the dash with one fist. “Fuck it.” He climbed out of the car and slammed the door shut before turning on his heel and striding down the sidewalk.
He stopped when he reached a particular hole in the wall, a place where he knew no one would bother to check his ID and see that he wasn’t quite 21. The heavy stubble on his jaw and shadows under his eyes made him look older than he really was – not that anyone here would give a shit if they knew his real age, anyway.
He shoved the money he’d been clutching in his fist deep into a jeans pocket, resigned to spending it. Maybe only some of it, if he found the right woman and laid it on thick enough to leave the bar within the next hour. Inside, he knew he’d be able to find someone – some place – to stay with, even if it was just for the night. A stranger’s bed would offer cold comfort that’d be better than freezing his ass off in his car. He might even get a little sleep.
CHAPTER 8
Arianna’s heart leapt when someone knocked on the door. It had a way of doing that lately, even though as she glanced at the clock, she realized it was way too early for it to be James. It was eight thirty in the morning; she’d only been up for about fifteen minutes. Hot Ink wasn’t even open this early.
“Coming,” she called, abandoning her half-finished coffee. No, it wouldn’t be him at the door, but she did know who was knocking. And she couldn’t help but be disappointed.
She hadn’t stopped thinking about James since the day before – not for a single moment. Their night together had been burnt into the pleasure-receiving center of her brain; spending the previous night alone had seemed incredibly lame, in comparison. She’d almost asked him to stay again, but it’d been early evening when he’d come to pick up Emily after work, and the supplies of diapers and formula in his bag had nearly been depleted anyway.
Arianna opened the door, nodding to her sister. “Hey, Selena.”
Selena wore her brunette hair in a high knot and stood with a toddler balanced on one hip and a diaper bag slung over her shoulder.
“Hey.” She stepped inside without hesitating. “Thanks for agreeing to watch Maya an extra day for me. Upper management asked my immediate supervisor to come in today and give me a mini training session on how to handle her job while she’s gone. I’m kind of excited – I mean, you never know, it could eventually turn into something permanent.”
“You’re welcome.” Selena’s excitement didn’t lift Arianna’s restless mood.
Maya’s big brown eyes did, though. She blinked at Arianna, even cuter than the last time she’d seen her.
“Hey, Maya.” She flashed the toddler a smile – hopefully Maya remembered her. “Selena, do you want a cup of coffee or something before you head to work?”
Selena shook her head and pressed Maya into Arianna’s arms. “No thanks, I’ve really gotta go. I’ll barely make it there on time as is. Everything you need should be in this bag.”
Selena left the diaper bag by the door and was gone seconds later.
“Guess it’s just you and me for now, Maya.” Arianna locked the door behind Selena. “You’ll have a little playmate here in a couple hours, though.”
As it turned out, Arianna heard from James before eleven thirty, when he usually dropped off Emily. He called her around ten.
The sight of his name on the screen filled her with instant heat. Her fingertip tingled as she swiped it across the screen, answering his call.
“Hey, I just wanted to let you know that I got Emily set up with a day care center,” he said.
“Day care?” The warm feeling began to fade right away.
“Yeah. I know it wasn’t fair of me to keep sticking her with you. I appreciate you putting up with me, but I couldn’t keep asking you to do that. She’s starting at the day care place today.”
“I really didn’t mind watching her.”
“It’s only right,” he said. “It was tough to find a place that didn’t have a waiting list, but it’s for the best.”
The best? James honestly thought that dropping a month-old baby off at a facility where she’d be one of dozens of kids assigned to a handful of caretakers was better than leaving Emily with her? The thought had her biting her lip, resisting the urge to tell him otherwise.
“So I shouldn’t expect to see you at eleven thirty, then?”
“I’ve gotta drop her off at the day care place instead before I head in to work.”
“Right.” She couldn’t work up the courage to ask him when she could expect to see him next, then. The confidence their time together had instilled in her was too fresh to stand up to this, to old doubts that were much more deeply ingrained.
“Thanks again for helping me out,” he said. “I owe you.”
The familiar noise of Emily crying sounded in the background.
“Sounds like you’ve got your hands full,” she said. “I hope everything works out okay with the day care.” If that was really where he wanted his niece to spend her time while he was at work, it was none of her business. Even if she didn’t like it.
Moments later, they said goodbye and Arianna laid her phone back down on the counter. He hadn’t mentioned their last time together, or their next. She wasn’t sure which stung more: that fact, or that he’d rather leave Emily with strangers than with her.
* * * * *
James steeled himself as he stepped into Jed’s office / storage space in the back of Hot Ink. “Look, if this is about me being late today, I know that was lame.” He’d walked through the door a half hour late that afternoon and had found his client already waiting on the couch in the reception area. “I’m taking care of my niece and I dropped her off at day care for the first time this morning. When I got there they took me on this long-ass tour and made me fill out paperwork.”
Jed shook his head. “Today was the first time you’ve ever been late. I didn’t bring you back here to tear you a new one.”
“Then what did you want to talk about?”
Before Jed could reply, the door swung inward, and Karen stepped inside.
“James,” she said, beaming, “you’re here. Good.”
“It’s not easy to plan a wedding in just a few weeks,” Jed said. “Karen’s got to place the final order for tux rentals today. She needs your measurements.”
“So you need me to go to
the rental place or something?” He buried a tooth in his inner lip. How the hell was he supposed to fit that into his schedule when he had to pick up Emily immediately after work? He’d be arriving close to the day care facility’s closing time as it was.
“Actually, I need your measurements right now,” Karen said, pulling something out of her pocket. “Don’t worry – I looked up how to do this on the internet. I’ll just call the rental place here in a minute and give them the numbers.”
James stood still in the center of the room as Karen circled him with a measuring tape. He lifted his arms when she asked and didn’t mind her running the tape around his chest and up and down his arms to measure for the jacket, pausing periodically to jot down numbers. It was kind of hard to look Jed in the eye though when she bent at the waist to measure him from crotch to heel for the pants.
Likewise when she practically lassoed his ass with the measuring tape, explaining that it was for the “seat” measurement.
“To ensure a proper fit,” she said, casting a gaze over her shoulder at her fiancé, “you should be able to fit two fingers between the tape and, uh, James. Could you give me a hand?”
James silently thanked God that Karen hadn’t decided to do the test herself. Jed wasn’t exactly an overly-emotional guy, but James was pretty sure he wouldn’t be enthralled with his fiancée feeling up James’ ass in the name of ensuring a perfect fit for his tux.
On the other hand, he also looked reluctant to do it himself. James had seen Jed tattoo people anywhere and everywhere imaginable, but apparently things were different when there was no ink involved. Which made perfect fucking sense. Did Karen really need an ass measurement?
“I’ve got fingers of my own,” James said, shoving two of them between the tape and his hip.
“Perfect,” Karen said, and finally released him.
Jed shot James a grateful look.
“Sometimes I ask myself whether there’s some way I could limit her internet access,” Jed said after Karen strode out of the office, taking her measurements with her. “If I shut off service at the house though, she’d just go to her studio and get online there.”
No sooner had the words left his mouth than Karen burst back in, this time carrying a deep purple dress and a small bouquet of roses. “For the bridesmaids,” she said, waving the dress. “This one’s Mina’s. What do you two think of these colors?”
She dissected the bouquet, pulling out flowers one by one and holding them against the dress. There were three altogether, each a different color – white, peach and pink. “I picked up these sample flowers from the florist. Which color compliments the purple best?”
“They all look great to me,” Jed said.
James echoed his sentiment.
Karen’s eyebrows plunged into a deep V as she narrowed her eyes. “Come on, you guys are artists – I’m counting on your opinions on this.”
Several silent moments passed by.
“The peach looks nice,” James eventually said.
“Yeah,” Jed agreed. “I’d go with either that or the white. But choose whichever you want – I want you to be happy.”
“Okay. Peach it is then.” She draped the dress over her arm. “Thanks, guys.”
She started to leave, then turned. “Here, James, since you spoke up first – enjoy.” She thrust the roses at him. “I don’t need them anymore.”
“Thanks,” he said, taking the flowers. “I’ll, uh, use them to decorate my booth or something.” He could sit them on top of the half wall in a vase.
Only, he didn’t have a vase. So when he left Jed’s office, he put them in water inside an empty coffee cup instead. The recycled cardboard wasn’t exactly the most elegant container, but it worked.
“Hey, James.” Jed’s voice came from nearby.
James turned to find him standing on the other side of his booth’s wall. “Yeah?”
“What with my fiancée measuring your ass, I almost forgot to ask – what was that you were saying about taking care of your niece?”
“My sister dropped her kid off at my apartment,” James said, turning his gaze to some hand-drawn art – his work – hanging on the wall. “And by dropped off, I mean abandoned. Right on my doorstep, just like in a movie.”
Jed crossed his arms, frowning. “When did this happen?”
“About a week and a half ago.”
“You’ve been taking care of her this whole time – how old is she?”
“A month old. And yeah. I had some help.” He swallowed a knot of guilt that had slipped into his throat, forcing out a half truth. “From a friend. She watched my niece for me while I was at work. I got her set up with a day care center today, though.”
Jed swore, a crude phrase that echoed above the sounds of music and the humming noise coming from Tyler’s booth as he worked on a client. “Is your sister coming back for her kid?”
“I don’t know.” James had asked himself that a million times. “I don’t have any way of getting in touch with her. She could be on the other side of the world for all I know.” It wasn’t likely, but he’d considered about a million possible explanations for what Crystal had done.
None of them justified her actions.
“Shit.” Jed stood there, glowering.
James nodded. “Yeah. Shit.”
“Guess that’s why you look like you’ve been punched in the face, twice,” Jed added.
James looked in the mirror that took up most of one wall. Were the dark circles under his eyes really that bad?
“You need some help watching your niece?”
“I’ve got the day care now,” he said, “for while I’m at work.” How he’d afford it long-term, he didn’t have a fucking clue. He couldn’t afford to think long-term, though – it’d be enough to drive him crazy. He just had to make it work, one day at a time. Emily deserved that, at least.
“Yeah, but what about when you’re not? If you need a break, Karen and I could help you out – take her for an evening or something.”
“You sure about that?” James had known Jed for a long time, and it was hard to picture the guy with baby vomit splattered down the front of his black t-shirt.
“It wouldn’t be a big deal. Karen and I have watched Abby’s twins quite a few times. Karen likes to photograph them for some project of hers, and to thank Abby for letting her take the pictures, we do some babysitting. Karen thinks it’s fun. She’d probably love being around a newborn, especially if you let her photograph the kid.”
“If you really mean that, I’d appreciate the hell out of it.” Taking care of Emily 24/7 was hard, no doubt about it, but what really motivated him to accept Jed’s offer was the thought of Arianna. He’d do just about anything to get some time alone with her.
* * * * *
7 Years Ago
It was a shitty, rainy day. No surprise, since the entire week had been shitty and rainy so far. The springtime thunder storms were so bad that James’ construction job had been called off for days, now. Not having any work for a week had churned up a familiar sense of desperation, and it was that god-awful feeling that propelled him through the doors of a place called Hot Ink, even though common sense told him they wouldn’t want him.
He’d seen the ‘artist wanted’ sign in their window the week before, when he’d been walking by on his way to a construction site. He’d immediately thought of his sketchbook full of art – if he could even call it that – and an idea had taken root in his mind. A week of doubting himself hadn’t been enough to eradicate it completely.
It felt good to get inside, out of the rain, even if he did feel like a dumbass standing there, dripping on the linoleum.
“Welcome to Hot Ink. Do you have an appointment?” A woman behind a counter bearing a cash register greeted him. She was pretty, with a slight figure and brown hair trimmed in one of those pixie haircuts. Tattoos scrolled up and down her forearms.
“Uh, no.” James shook his head, casting a guilty look down at the puddle f
orming at his feet. “I saw your sign.” He tipped his head toward the window. “Are you still looking for someone?”
He braced himself for her rejection. She could probably tell just from looking at him that he didn’t know shit about tattooing. Why had he even thought that they might teach him, that being able to draw would mean anything?
She smiled at him. “You should talk to Jed.” She turned and peered down the aisle that bisected most of the shop, lined with booths on both sides. “Hey, Jed?”
“Yeah, Alice?” a deep voice called back to her.
“There’s an artist here to see you.”
He almost said something, almost admitted that he wasn’t an artist and didn’t have any business being there. Something held him in place though, gluing his feet to the floor as a huge guy covered in tattoos emerged from one of the booths.
The guy shook his hand. “I’m Jed.”
“James.”
Jed invited him to sit down on a leather couch in what looked like a waiting area. When they were both seated, he asked James about his experience.
James’ tongue felt like it was made of cement. What was he supposed to say – that he’d always been good at drawing, that he excelled at delighting his one-night stands by sketching their portraits and leaving the drawings on their nightstands when he left? That art had never really been much more than a hobby and a method of flirtation, an outlet and a party trick that earned him cheap praise… Something to leave behind, something that meant he just might be remembered.
He managed to get some bullshit about drawing out, about being interested in tattooing, wanting to learn.
Jed didn’t seem impressed. Then again, he didn’t kick James out of the shop either, and that was something.