by A. J. Thomas
“You do. And there’s nothing wrong with it. Lots of folks who come into the studio have definite expectations about who’s going to be working there. Fuck with their expectations, and they take it personally. But you didn’t do it with him. Much.”
“Okay, so I might with other people,” he begrudgingly admitted. “But not with him. Although I’m pretty sure he’s used to being the smartest kid in class. He tries to talk circles around people, and the times I’ve called him out for doing it, the look on his face was priceless. Like he was a little kid and I’d just proven I knew how to play his favorite game better than him.”
“So did he say he wasn’t interested, or did you freak out?”
“He’s not into me. He turned me down flat. But he wasn’t a dick about it or anything.”
“How can he not be interested?” she asked. “For four weeks, he’s been in the shop staring at you while Hawk worked on your tat. I’ve watched guys watch porn, and he had the same look on his face they did.”
“You’ve what?” he asked, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That’s bordering on too much information.”
“As if hearing about your love life isn’t?”
“I don’t have a love life,” he pointed out.
“So tell me exactly what happened?” she asked.
“I did the outline of the nautilus. I asked him if he wanted to go get a drink or something, and he… he tried to turn me down. I kissed him, and he said that even if he wanted to be with me, he couldn’t. I couldn’t. And he’s probably right. Even if I’m capable of having a physical relationship with someone, no one should have to deal with… what’s left of me. I’ve known it for months, and I was stupid to think that…. I was stupid.”
“Ouch. What’s he supposed to do for the other tattoo sessions?”
“What do you mean? I didn’t kick him out of the shop. I’m still going to finish his nautilus shell.”
She cringed. “Are you?”
“Why?” he demanded.
“He called about two hours ago,” she said. “He wanted to tell you the hearing was delayed until three o’clock because the case before it is taking a while, and he asked Hawk to recommend somebody else to finish the nautilus.”
Sean felt like he’d been sucker-punched. “He did?”
“I didn’t talk to him. But I know Hawk told him to make an appointment with Davey Richards over at Artistic Designs.”
Sean stared out the window. The city stretched away beneath them, a mass of buildings all the way to the edge of the bay. Artistic Designs was one of the few other tattoo studios in the city that was willing to offer ultraviolet ink, and even though Davey Richards was a new artist, all of his work Sean had seen had been amazing. If Nate had to go someplace other than Hawk’s, it was his best shot. “Couldn’t Hawk do it? Or hell, you’ve played with the UV ink on me, you could finish it.”
“I don’t know what he said to Hawk, but Hawk apologized and suggested he go someplace else.”
“That’s bullshit,” Sean swore, digging his phone out of his pocket. He called the shop’s number and cursed when the call went to voicemail. He hung up without leaving a message. “I admit I shouldn’t have kissed him, but Hawk can’t decide who I can and can’t work with. If I made Nate that uncomfortable, I can damn well apologize myself.”
“It wasn’t Hawk’s decision,” she said. “It seemed like it was his. Although this is why it’s studio policy not to get involved with clients….”
“Like you didn’t go after that chick who wanted the mermaid tattoos?”
“After they were finished, sweetie. After. And it was a good thing, because she was kind of nuts. Her being able to do amazing things with her tongue ring did not make up for her throwing my shit out into the hallway when I looked at a guy.”
“I didn’t get involved with him. I asked him out, he turned me down. That’s it.” He checked the time on his phone and tried to gauge how long it would take them to get to the courthouse through traffic. “Take the I-69 junction up ahead.”
“County courthouse, here we come,” she announced dramatically. She flipped on the turn signal and almost shoved her way across the highway to catch the ramp.
When they reached the courthouse, it seemed like a giant stone hive of busy men and women in nearly identical suits. “How is it he looks sexy in that getup, but the rest of them just look….”
“Not sexy?” Tonya suggested.
“Like they’re pretending,” he clarified.
She pulled around to the nearest parking lot and helped Sean out of the car, sticking out her tongue at him when he glared at her. “You can be as macho as you want when you’re not whimpering every time you move.”
“I’m….” He winced when he had to use his exhausted right leg and his shoulders to catch himself as he transferred into the chair. “Yeah, okay.”
It took them a few minutes to find a ramp into the courthouse and then the tiny elevator hidden among the half-dozen stairways. By the time they made it to the courtroom, the door was closed tight and two bailiffs stood in front of it like statues.
“You sure it’s the right room?” Tonya asked.
Sean stared at two men he remembered from the navigation crew who’d always hated him. They were sitting on one of the benches set against the walls of a large rotunda. Bruce was sitting near them, dressed in a light suit and staring at his phone. When he noticed them, he lowered the phone and glared at Sean. “Sean?” Cory waved to him from another bench. “Hey, can we talk?”
“I’d rather not,” he admitted. “My answer hasn’t changed.”
“But I need to apologize,” Cory said with a bright smile.
An apology was more than he’d gotten from anyone else associated with CPG, but no one else at CPG had tried to profit from the accident, either. “Okay, you apologized. I’d still rather not discuss it.”
“Yeah, okay,” Cory said, looking dejected.
A massive hand settled on Cory’s shoulder, pulling him backward. Jeff Hendricks, captain of the Republic Sea, had been in charge of all of the normal ship operations. Technically, his job was just to safely transport the pump assembly from one oil rig to the next, but he’d spent so many years on a well-stimulating ship that he’d done a fair bit of the work when members of the engineering crew couldn’t.
He glared down at Sean, not even trying to avoid looming over him. “Alden, you should be over here with us. Wilkinson is the reason we’re all in this mess.”
“I take it you’ve rehearsed that line so often you’ve started to believe it,” Sean said bluntly.
Cory shook his head. “Sean, that’s not—”
“Shut up, Alden. You get to go to a nice cushy job wherever you want when this is done. Me and the guys are sailors, plain and simple. The company’s going to pawn the blame for the maintenance shit off on us, so do you think anyone is going to hire us after this? And since we’re stuck here for every single one of this little fairy’s court dates, our normal bonuses aren’t happening. What the hell are we supposed to live off once this little sideshow of yours is done, Wilkinson?”
“I’m not the one keeping you in port, Hendricks,” Sean insisted. “You and Bruce have milked CPG’s productivity bonuses nonstop for the last six years. That’s the reason we’re all in this mess.”
“Gentlemen,” Bruce growled. “Knock it the hell off and sit down.”
As Cory and Jeff returned to their seats, Sean met Bruce’s look with an angry expression, silently challenging him to say anything at all.
Bruce, never one to back down from a challenge, came over. He swept his gaze up and down Sean’s body, lingering on the tentacles winding down his arms before jumping to the thick section of ink that showed above his tank top’s low neckline. “You’re really taking this ‘never going to work again’ thing as far as you can, I see.”
“Just because the company has a no-visible-tattoos policy doesn’t mean that every other job in the world is the same,” Sean pointe
d out.
“Every job that’s worth a damn requires people to make a good impression. Obviously, with the company you’re keeping, things like that don’t seem important to you at the moment.” The open look of disgust on his face as he glared at Tonya was infuriating.
“Tonya’s family, Bruce.”
“And his octopus is awesome,” Tonya insisted, folding her arms across her chest. She had done more than a few sections of his tattoo, even though Hawk had done the majority of the work himself. “It might not be a professional look for an engineer, but in our line of work, not having any ink worth showing off doesn’t do much to build a client’s confidence.”
“Your line of work?”
Tonya glanced between them, smirking. “Sean has been a professional tattoo artist for eight years now.”
“Not quite eight,” Sean corrected her. “It’ll be eight years in January.”
“I was unaware of that,” Bruce said simply.
“It wasn’t exactly relevant to my position,” Sean muttered. There was no point in saying he’d been too afraid to mention it when they were together, too convinced that Bruce would look at him with nothing but disdain. The way he was looking at him now.
“I suppose everyone needs spending money during college,” Bruce grumbled.
Tonya gaped at Bruce, then at him. She was one of the only people he’d ever talked to about Bruce, and she knew just how crazy about him Sean had been. “Spending money? With tuition, bills, and not starving to death, I don’t recall him ever bringing in enough cash to have spending money.”
Sean saw the moment understanding dawned in Bruce’s eyes. He turned toward Sean, both eyebrows raised, demanding an explanation for all the lies without saying a word.
Sean wasn’t about to say a thing. All too often people equated being poor with being greedy, and he had had too many nightmares about Bruce standing up in court and accusing him of orchestrating the accident just to rake in a fortune. He wasn’t going to do anything to compromise this case.
“Tonya, why don’t we wait over here?” Sean said, turning away from Bruce and heading for a bench farther along the wall, well out of earshot. Tonya sat down on the edge of the seat and glared at Bruce.
Since she could only sit still for a few moments at the best of times, she stood up and paced around him. “What did you ever see in him?”
“You don’t actually want me to answer that. Unless you want me to ramble about how hot his ass is. He was charming,” Sean admitted.
Tonya rolled her eyes and continued pacing. “How long do these things usually take?”
“I’ve got no idea. Nate made it sound like a pretty big deal, so it could be a while. You want to draw?” he asked, waving his sketchbook.
Her glare softened to an endearing smile. “You’re sweet, but no. If you’re stuck out here with your charming ex for too much longer, you’re going to need it more than me.”
“I’m okay,” he said, offering the sketchbook again. “After two tramadol, I don’t think I could be anxious even if the building caught on fire.”
“Oh, fine.” She took the sketchbook and mechanical pencil and sat down on the bench, her legs crossed on the bench in front of her.
Sean sighed and glanced at Bruce, who was still brooding.
“God, I hope this forces them to make a decent offer. I want this to be done,” he muttered.
“We’re managing, now that you and Hawk are both back at work,” Tonya insisted. “You shouldn’t make a hasty decision because your ex is an ass.”
“I need to do more than manage. I need to get enough money to pay Hawk back. I owe him. I’ve been nothing but a burden on him for the last ten years, and he had no obligation to take care of me. None now, either.”
“Has he ever asked you for a dime?” she challenged. “He’s glad you’re sticking around. You’re not a burden, Sean, he loves you.”
“Yeah, I’m sure his joy at being stuck with me is why he’s going to three AA meetings a week instead of one.”
“Nope. A petite little redhead named Marci is why he’s going to three AA meetings a week,” Tonya announced with an evil grin. “She picked him up this afternoon. He said to go ahead and lock up tonight and not worry about waiting up.”
“Hawk has a date?” Sean asked, more shocked than he would ever admit out loud.
“Papa Hawk’s got more than a date, sweetie—he’s got a girlfriend.”
“And from AA? Oh thank God. I was worried dealing with this shit had pushed him over the edge.”
“Sean,” Tonya said, staring at the sketchbook. She was quiet for a long moment. “This isn’t colored pencil,” she said at last. “Or pen.”
Sean glanced at the hummingbird on the page. It was a bright mess of blooming color. “Watercolor,” he explained “I’ve seen a few watercolor-style tats in magazines, and they’re… I don’t want to say well done, but they’re a clever idea. I can do it better, but I figured it needed to be based off the real thing. It turns out it’s really difficult.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s a mess. Keep going,” he said, nodding at the notebook.
Ten more pages of hummingbirds later, she found his final design. “Wow. Is this a commission?”
“No, just something to do to avoid going nuts over the weekend.”
“Can I have it? On my neck?”
“The same side as your cricket?” he asked, not quite sure how the contrasting greens would look but willing to try all the same.
“The other side. There’s the little heart, but the colors are bright enough they should be able to cover it.”
He could already imagine the blues, greens, pinks, and oranges exploding from the hummingbird’s wings and wrapping around her neck to the base of her short hair. “I can see that. It’ll look fabulous, and it’ll match pretty much any hair color you want.”
“There’s that,” she said with a bright grin. “You know, I think there’s a snack bar or something down in the basement of this place, and I could use some coffee.”
“Coffee and a stone wall between you and my ex?” he guessed.
“Pretty much. You want to escape with me?”
“You go ahead,” Sean told her. “I don’t want to miss Nate when they’re done.”
“If he comes out before I get back, text me, okay? Otherwise I’ll bring you back a candy bar.”
With a wave and a grin, she handed him back his sketchbook and headed down the winding marble staircase. He flipped the book open to a new page and settled in to draw the line of the stairs and the courtroom door just because they were there. Bruce lingered in his field of vision, pulling at his tie a few times, before finally coming over. Bruce stared at Sean, staying quiet.
“What?” he asked, not looking up.
“You never said anything about being a tattoo artist.”
There was no point in arguing, he knew. “No, I didn’t.”
“Why? I insulted those stupid skulls of yours often enough, and you never said a word. Is that why you’re always drawing?”
“I’m not discussing this with you.”
Bruce clenched his hands into fists. Then with a deep breath and apparent effort, he relaxed again and sat down. “You’re good at not discussing things with me.”
“You offered to pay to have my skulls removed,” Sean snapped. “You have no idea what they meant to me—you didn’t even bother to ask. You just offered to get rid of them.”
“And you changed the subject.”
“When the person you’re falling in love with spends twenty minutes ranting about how tattoos are unprofessional and disgusting, it doesn’t seem like the best time to say ‘Hey, by the way, I grew up in a tattoo studio and I started slinging ink before I learned to drive.’ Those skulls were the equivalent of a coming-of-age gift from the man who raised me. How did it never occur to you that when someone gets something permanently etched on their skin it might be meaningful to them?”
Sean pulle
d the pencil to the side, tracing the shadow created by an ornamental stone column.
Bruce leaned forward, apparently studying what he could see of the tentacles around the straps of Sean’s tank. “If they were so special, why did you cover them up with that monstrosity, anyway?”
“Because my….” After all this time, he still didn’t have a label that he could conveniently apply to Hawk. “The same guy did most of my octopus, but Tonya did some too, and that makes it all the more meaningful. They’re my family. I could never be a part of your life, and we both knew it, so I didn’t see a reason to give up the only positive thing in my life for you.”
Bruce staggered back as if Sean had struck him. “The only… you should have told me.”
“What good would it have done?” Sean muttered. “Don’t pretend it would have changed anything. We both know better.”
“I thought we had something,” Bruce said.
“Sex,” Sean said, his voice a bit too loud because he was annoyed. The glares from the navigation crew grew more intense than ever. “We had sex. That was all we had,” he said, quieter.
“It wasn’t. Not for me. And I don’t think that’s all it was for you. Did you ever think that, well, maybe we could try again?”
“Are you serious? You’re planning on taking the stand and saying this was all my fault, because I did exactly what you told me to do. Do you really think we can build something out of this?”
“We’re good together, you and me, on the job and off.”
“Maybe we were,” Sean said sadly. Bruce’s lips turned up at the corner. He shifted his hand toward Sean’s knee, but Sean rolled back, putting enough distance between them to make things as clear as possible.
“I wish you had let me see the real you,” Bruce muttered.
“I wanted you to like me,” Sean said. “You never would have liked the real me.”
“They’ll settle if you sign their waiver,” Bruce muttered. “You know that, right? They’d pay what you’re asking, if it means they don’t have to worry about you suing them when they patent the pump assembly. So long as you keep being stubborn about admitting they own the entire system, they’ll fight this case to the end.”