by London Casey
“I could,” she said.
I inched closer to her. “Since you seem to want my picture so bad…I can really give you something to look at tonight.”
I leaned in on her. Shit, I wasn’t sure if I was serious or not, but I had the urge to plant a kiss on those small lips of hers and snap a picture.
Hazel with the green eyes then made her own move, stepping back. She grabbed her camera away from my hands and turned to face the building.
“It’s never been taken care of.”
“What?” I asked.
Is she talking about herself? She’s never been taken care of? What the hell does that mean?
“Look at this,” she said. “The front of the building is perfect. Sidewalks all nice. Windows are clean. The neon signs. The allure of the tattoos and stuff. It reminds me of a music video. You know, like, the old ones? Like, picture a hair metal band music video. And there’s St. Skin in the background.”
“Well, that’s Tate,” I said.
“But the back of the building. Neglected. Cigarette butts everywhere.”
Hazel with the green eyes glanced at me.
“They’re not all mine, sugar,” I said.
“There’s rust. There’s water spots. Something faded on the building of what used to be here. That’s what I’m trying to capture.”
I looked at the building. I’d never looked at it the way Hazel with green eyes did. I crossed my arms and watched as she crouched a little, trying to get the shot I had messed up. When she did, the back of her shirt pulled up just enough to show me a sliver of skin. But that wasn’t it. I saw something on the right side of her hip.
Was that a tattoo?
I gritted my teeth. This woman was on my nerves, yet she had my interest.
She took the picture of the building. When she looked at the picture I saw the way her face lit up. The curve of her smile. The way her eyes opened a little wider.
She definitely took pride in her work.
“Can I see?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said.
She showed me the picture.
It was actually really awesome. A perspective of the back of the building I would have never thought in my life. It was dirty, sloppy, grungy. If the front of St. Skin was from a hair metal band, then the back was from a post-hair one.
“Nice,” I said.
I walked to the door.
“Maddox?” she asked.
I looked back. “I have an appointment.”
I don’t know why I just said that.
“Right,” Hazel with the green eyes said.
“You look like you have something else to say.”
Hazel with the green eyes swallowed hard.
I wasn’t going to play nice with her. Even if her pictures were good. Even if she was getting paid to be in my damn way.
“If you miss me, sugar, just remember…you have a picture of my ass…feel free to kiss it anytime you want.”
4
HAZEL
PRESENT DAY
Maddox left his door open. I was in the business of taking pictures, not listening to stories. But I wanted to understand everything. It all intrigued me so much. I had one measly tattoo on me, and that came with a really dark story.
I took a handful more pictures and stood at Maddox’s open door, listening to the buzz of the needle, knowing he was tattooing a woman. There was a brief second where I felt my nerves stinging with jealousy. His hands all over that woman. Touching. Tattooing. Talking. Wanting to be near her, with her, sharing his art with her.
I was just annoying to Maddox. Like a fly. But that was my job. Remember, Tate told me to make more enemies than friends.
“I like the idea of the black lines,” the woman’s voice said.
“Me too,” Maddox said. “I’m good with covering things up, but I think you should build on that stuff. I’ve had some really nasty tattoos come through here and worked with them, no problem.”
“Well, these marks aren’t tattoos,” she said. “They were me trying…I don’t know what I was trying. Those days are almost hard to bring back into my mind.”
“It’s cool,” Maddox said. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. I’m just here to help. I want you look down at your arm and see strength. See survival. See your path. And fuck anyone that doesn’t get it.”
The woman laughed.
My heart gushed, but it was quickly replaced by that nerve-stinging jealousy again.
Hearing Maddox talk was something. Hearing his honesty.
I looked down at my camera.
Something about the camera scared him.
Was it the exposure? Was it the idea that a picture could last forever? Or maybe that a picture captured the truth, no matter what you did to cover it up.
I heard the buzz of the needle again.
Then I felt a hand slither against the back of my neck, making me shiver.
“Caught you,” a voice whispered.
I began to panic—he’d found me.
“Whoa, whoa, Jesus, hey!”
My back against the wall, the whole room pulsing. The music swirling together. Voices smashing off the walls, my head, my body. My heart pounding. Really pounding. My knees ready to give out. Every joint in my body feeling rubbery, like I was some kids toy.
My lips quivered.
He stood across from me.
I blinked.
He disappeared.
He was replaced by someone else.
A guy with a pierced lip. Jet-black hair. A clean-cut face with a wicked jawline. Really striking features. A memorable face.
“Shit,” he said. “I’ve scared plenty of women before, but it’s usually once I take my pants off and they see my huge-”
“Prick.”
I turned my head.
Maddox was there now.
“What the hell are you doing?” Maddox growling.
I thought he was yelling at me.
But he was yelling at the other guy. At Prick.
Prick?
That was his name?
“I…”
“Back off, man,” Maddox said.
He peeled black rubber gloves off his hands and threw them behind him. He then grabbed Prick by the arm and pulled him away.
“Easy,” Prick said.
“Let her fucking breathe,” Maddox said. “What did you do to her?”
“I just touched her…”
I touched my neck and let out a sigh.
I saw rage climbing across Maddox’s face. “You grabbed her by the neck?”
“I touched her neck,” Prick said.
I thought Maddox was going to punch Prick.
“It’s okay,” I finally said. “It’s fine. He just touched my neck. That’s all. He scared me.” I forced a smile. “Scared the hell out of me.”
“You don’t do that shit,” Maddox growled.
He put his hand flat to Prick’s chest. Prick put his hands up.
I bit my lip.
I grabbed my camera and took a picture.
Maddox being so big…tall, wide, overpowering. Prick just…submitting to him, showing his hands.
The second I took the picture, Maddox looked back. “Really?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
Maddox shook his head.
Then he moved away. He turned to face me. “Take your party somewhere else. I’m with someone.”
“Maddox,” I said. “Thanks.”
He didn’t say a thing. He didn’t nod. He was stoic.
Then he disappeared back into his room and shut the door this time.
I looked at Prick.
“I would never do anything…”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’m jumpy.”
“And I’m Prick,” he said with a wink.
He had game, I guess.
But I wasn’t buying it.
Why?
Because he wasn’t Maddox.
The tea kettle whistled as I sat with
my face too close to the computer screen. I jumped and let out a yelp.
In the small kitchen, I poured a cup of tea. I added some milk. Then I added more sugar than I should have, but that was one of the perks of being an adult. I took my tea back to my cluttered desk in the corner of what should have been a dining room. I had to face it though, any dining I did was either at my desk, the couch, or at some cafe. I had no reason to have a proper dining room even though I had a dining room table with four chairs that I bought at a secondhand store when I moved into the apartment.
I had taken a lot of pictures for one day of work.
My plan was to figure out how to organize them into folders. Ones that were perfect for the business. Ones that had nothing to do with the business. And then a folder for each individual person that worked at St. Skin.
Of course, that meant typing Maddox as I created his folder.
The first picture I took of him. Standing there, flicking the cigarette, looking like a total badass. He looked gritty and dirty, yet in his own way, he was sexy. Like, really sexy. A kind of sexy that never got to me before.
And it wasn’t going to get to me now.
I clicked to the next picture of Maddox.
Him throwing the finger. It was a bold move to give your boss the middle finger.
But that wasn’t the best picture that I had of him.
That was the one next.
Him showing his bare ass.
He’d caught me sneaking in on him, and he’d dropped his pants.
I took a few seconds to study that ass.
A nice ass.
But there was a tattoo on it.
A set of lips.
Bright red lips.
That tattoo did not fit the rest of his personality, and it stuck with me. It was a story I really wanted to hear. How a badass like Maddox ended up with a set of red lips tattooed right on his ass.
I finished organizing the rest of the pictures, finished my tea, and decided to call it a night.
I hit the couch with a blanket.
Totally pathetic.
It had been a weird day, for sure. But the check that came with it was nice.
The work was nice.
I looked to the window and swallowed hard.
Everything looked nice, but was far from it.
I stopped being afraid of the dark a long time ago. If there was one thing about my life that I could take benefit from it was that all the dumb childhood fears were never allowed in my life. Monsters under the bed. The dark. Bad dreams. Clowns. Scary movies. None of that bothered me. Because I grew up where monsters were real, the dark was comfort, bad dreams were reality, clowns were just stupid, and my life was a scary movie.
I clutched my blanket and licked my lips.
I shut my eyes and started to breathe. That was the key. To just breathe. Forget about St. Skin. Forget about Maddox. Forget about what Prick did. That poor guy. He thought he was just being flirty, touching my neck. But he had no idea what a trigger that was for me.
I swallowed hard, my throat feeling like it was going to close up on me.
Reaching for my phone, it was my comfort.
Even though I really had nobody to call.
Life had spun me into a place where being alone was normal.
I forced my head to a pillow.
I kept my phone close.
Right then in that moment I wished Donna was still around.
I hadn’t thought about her in years.
Donna…the one person who tried to save me…
5
HAZEL
PRESENT DAY
Donna touched my eye, and I winced. I grabbed the edge of the bathtub, and my hand slipped because the edges were still damp from taking a shower. I was lucky to have Donna. Letting me crash with her when things got a little weird.
I felt her sigh as she dabbed more coverup on my face.
The first time I did it on my own, I looked almost spotted. These different shades of blotches on my skin. It was really noticeable, and I looked like a five-year-old girl that got into her mother’s makeup.
You’d think after years of watching my mother do this same thing herself, I’d have it all mastered.
But I didn’t.
“There,” Donna whispered. “I think that’s good.”
I stood up and looked at myself in the mirror.
It was perfect.
You couldn’t tell anything happened. No bruise. Nothing.
“You’re so good at this,” I said. “You should go to school for it.”
“Covering up…marks?”
I looked in the mirror and saw the annoyance on Donna’s face.
“It’s not…”
“Yes it is,” she said. She touched my shoulder. “You don’t get to play that game with me. You don’t get to tell me that you accidentally fell down the stairs. Or that you’re a klutz and tripped. Whatever else you tell people. I’m your goddamn best friend in the world, Hazel. You better tell me the truth.”
I blinked fast.
I didn’t want to cry. But I couldn’t help it. I didn’t like when Donna got upset. I didn’t like when she was mad. I didn’t like when she cried, which she started to do. I didn’t like that she didn’t get what I was going through.
But she was there for me.
A tear pulled at the fresh makeup, and the bruise started to show through.
“Damn,” I whispered. “I’m messing up your hard work.”
“It’s just makeup,” Donna said. “I’m worried, Hazel…what happens when it goes too far?”
I shook my head. I looked down. “That won’t happen.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know,” I said.
“But how? Tell me, Hazel. Make me understand.”
“I just fucking know!” I snapped.
I stormed out of the bathroom. I hurried to the living room and grabbed my bag off the chair. I grabbed a few pieces of stray clothing and threw them into the bag. I zipped it up.
“Hazel,” Donna said. “What are you doing?”
I turned and looked at her. She was scared. Scared for me.
I was embarrassed but too afraid to admit that embarrassment. I was trapped in a cycle of a little here, a little there. That’s all it was.
A little here, a little there.
Nothing I couldn’t manage, unless something happened, and then I went to Donna’s.
But she was overwhelmed.
She didn’t know what to do.
“Hazel,” Donna said. “Please. You took a shower. You’re in your PJ’s. Just stay. We’ll order pizza. Drink wine. Watch stupid movies. Just for tonight.”
“No,” I said. “No. I have to go. Right now.”
“Where are you going?”
“It doesn’t matter. I won’t lie to you. Right?”
“Hazel, that’s not what I meant,” Donna said.
I hurried to the door. She chased after me. She got her hand to the door.
My best friend, facing me. Tears in her eyes. Anger on her face.
My body shaking with a fear that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
“Stay,” she whispered. “Show me some of your pictures.”
“I haven’t taken any in a while.”
“Why?”
“I just haven’t.”
“What he’s doing to you…it’s not right.”
“I didn’t say it was,” I said.
“Then…” Donna shook her head.
“What?”
“I don’t know what to say,” Donna said. She moved her hand. “I don’t know what the hell to tell you. I’ve been researching this, Hazel. The right things to say. The wrong things to say. My heart is screaming for you. To tell you to just walk away. But I know you can’t do that. I know you’re afraid. I know you feel isolated. But you’re not. I’m not supposed to tell you that though. It’s supposed to be about you. But I’m right here for you.”
“So, I’m your problem now,” I said
.
“No,” Donna said, her voice cracking. “No. Not at all. You’re not a problem. You’re my best friend. I want to help you.”
I sucked in a breath and swallowed down the tears. I touched my eye, smearing the makeup, hoping it was good enough that he wouldn’t see the bruise, because that too would be my fault.
“You did help,” I said. “Now I’m leaving.”
“I can’t do this anymore!” Donna flipped.
I broke her.
I broke my best friend.
She started to weep.
Her hands in her face.
“Donna…”
“Why shouldn't I call the police?” she asked. Tears running down her cheeks. “Why? Huh?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” I said softly. “I’m sorry.”
I opened the door and slipped away.
I heard Donna hit the door as she cried again.
I was so used to crying that it didn’t bother me. And I really didn’t cry that much, either. It never got me anywhere.
With my bag on my shoulder, I left the apartment building and got into my car.
There was only one thing for me to do.
Make the call.
So I did.
Donna would have wished it to be the police.
But, like I told her, it doesn’t work that way.
He answered on the second ring. “Where the fuck did you run off to?”
“I’m sorry…I’m on my way home…” To you…where I belong…
6
MADDOX
YEARS AGO
I walked through the woods. I gave up the dirt bike and bought booze. A lot of booze. And I went through it night after night, committing myself to becoming a grieving alcoholic. Before going to bed, I’d fill a cup with some ice and pour vodka over it. By morning, the ice would melt, the vodka would stay, and that would be my version of a cup of coffee.
I’d brush my teeth so hard you’d never know I was already half in the bag. I’d eat breakfast, go to work at the local junkyard, fuck around, drink, then come back home.
There was no making sense of what happened.
There was no making peace with it, either.