by Sophia Henry
“I assumed you knew. Then you started calling me HR and stuff, and I was like—really? Did my fucking brother tell you I was HR?” I laugh. “It’s totally something he’d do.”
It feels good to clear the air between us before we get to New York, my hometown—as if I needed to confess my sins and ask for forgiveness before setting foot on the promised land. I’ve made enough mistakes in this city, no reason to fly in with all the shit with Emily still resting on my shoulders.
She gives me side-eye with a grin on her face as if just figuring out something. “He knows he’s in your phone as Jackweed, doesn’t he?”
“Oh, hell yeah!” I nod enthusiastically. “He might have been the one who changed it to that.”
She lets go of my hand to brush hair out of her eyes. It’s pulled into a side braid, with strands coming down framing her face. She always looks beautiful, but I love it when her hair is pulled back because I get to see her entire face.
“Sounds like you and Louis have a great relationship.”
“It’s the best. We fuck with each other all the time, but the bond is strong. I know he’ll always have my back and I’ll have his. He’s the one who got me out of my funk after I stopped playing soccer.”
“How long did you play?” she asks.
We’re veering into territory I don’t like to talk about, but Emily makes me comfortable, and I know she’d never tell anyone my business. “Professionally? Three years. But, I started playing soccer when I was five or six. Believe it or not, I was the black sheep of my family.”
“Oh, I believe it,” Emily says with a straight face. After a few seconds, she drops her head and laughs. “Actually, I’m lying. You’re Mr. Perfect. How the hell were you the black sheep?”
“That’s exactly how,” I say. “I come from a family of artists.”
“Really?” Her eyes light up.
Thinking about my family makes me smile. “They always supported me and anything I wanted to pursue, but they were definitely out of their element at my soccer games. Picture Bob Ross and Phoebe Buffett, trying to fit in.”
Emily laughs out loud, then covers her mouth.
“Every family is different, ya know? I’m the athletic kid who’s good at math. Louis is the eccentric artist with a big personality—and a bigger mouth,” I joke. “I’m pretty sure my parents like him more because they connect with him better.”
“That’s not true! Your family loves you no matter what. Even if your talents are in a different area than theirs.” As soon as she says it, she casts her eyes downward, and starts spinning her ring around her index finger.
It’s one of those moments where you don’t realize how much something hurts until you say it out loud. The comment must hit her hard because her parents don’t approve of her career or respect her art.
I let her have a minute before I reach out and rub her back, letting her know I’m here for support. Startled, she lifts her eyes to me and wraps her leopard-print cardigan around her. “What are you going to do this week?” she asks.
“Well, I was supposed to visit my parents, but they’re in Charlotte because Louis’ wife is about to have the babies. He told you she was pregnant, right?”
“That’s right!” She slaps her hand on my thigh—and leaves it there. “Oh my gosh! You’re going to be an uncle. Are you so excited?”
“Absolutely,” I nod. If I’m this excited to be an uncle, I can’t even imagine how Louis is feeling. Probably scared shitless now that the eternal child will have to grow up.
“You guys are from New York, right?”
“Brooklyn born and raised.” I haven’t acknowledged her hand because I don’t want her to move it. We shouldn’t be engaging in all the flirting and touching, but it feels right, so while I’m treading lightly, I’m not going to cut it completely.
“You don’t have an accent. Louis has a slight accent,” she says, holding up her index and thumb an inch apart. “but you don’t.”
She notices the most random things. The difference in our accents isn’t something I’ve ever thought about it. Then again, I’m around him all the time, so I don’t even notice.
“My parents are from the Midwest originally. They both went to NYU and stayed in the city after. They never picked up an accent, and I guess I didn’t either. I never wanted to sound like an extra on The Sopranos.”
EmVee snorts.
I continue, “You were raised in a proper Southern family, and you don’t have an accent either. Sometimes you throw out a y’all, but other than that, I’d never guess you were from the South.”
“Yeah, that’s on purpose.” She pinches my jeans and starts rubbing the fabric. I cast my eyes downward, and she stops, pulling her hand away quickly. “Sorry. Oh my gosh! That was so creepy, wasn’t it?”
“I didn’t mind.” I shrug.
“I have a thing with textures.” She reaches out tentatively before rubbing her palm over my leg. “Your jeans are so soft!”
“I know, but your hand is making other things hard,” I say in a low voice.
“Zayne!” She leans her forehead on my shoulder and laughs. When she sits up again, her cheeks are perfectly pink.
“You have two sisters? Is that right?” I change the subject before I start thinking about asking her if she wants to join the mile-high club. It sounds cooler than it is. I can barely fit in that tiny bathroom myself.
“Yeah, my oldest sister, Liz, is in her residency to be a doctor. She wants to work with people who live in low-income communities and can’t afford care. My other sister, Maddie is fucking around in Prague.”
“Wait, she’s fucking around in a foreign country?” I ask. “I thought you were the black sheep of the family?”
“Well, technically she’s still the Vice President of makeup and shit at my parents’ store, but all she posts on Instagram are restaurants they eat at or places they visit in Europe. So I figure she’s mostly roaming and doing some work on the side.”
“What does the rest of your family do?”
“My grandfather is a real estate developer. Like, a huge developer—owns half the town. And my parents started a chain of department stores, ‘cuz—” She rolls her eyes. “everyone in my family is an overachiever.”
“You follow the same track.”
“Real estate developers, department store moguls, doctors and—a tattooer! Hell yeah, I fit right in!” She gives me two thumbs up.
It astonishes me that she truly doesn’t see herself as a successful person. If Emily charges $200-300 per hour, and she works at least forty hours a week, she’s pulling in $400,000 a year on the low end. I know for a fact doctors in their residency make shit for money, so she makes more than her oldest sister, and I’ll bet she makes more than her other sister as well. Not that I think she’s in a competition, it’s just fact.
Even if she doesn’t consider money a measurement of success, she already has long list of tattoo accomplishments. For the first time, I realize the reason she doesn’t see herself as successful is because she still measures herself by her parents’ standards. She may talk a big game about not caring what they think, but it’s so clear that she does when she talks about her family.
“A job title doesn’t make the human; neither does money.”
“I know, Zayne, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” She laughs. “My family is just a little bit extra. They are those one-percenters you hear about on the news and shit, ya know. The ones who rule the country. They pay to make things happen. Or get rid of people. Or shut people up.” She spits out the last sentence, and I know it’s a sore spot.
I’m the one who made a joke about the Sopranos earlier, but now I’m wondering what the hell kind of family she comes from.
“I feel like there’s a story behind that.”
“Multiple stories.” She swallows thickly. “My parents’ are snakes cloaked in expensive clothes.”
Talking about her family extinguished all the light and excitement that�
��s usually in her eyes, and it sends pain straight to my heart. I never want to see her like that again.
EmVee inches closer, her knees poke out of her ripped jeans and dig into my thighs. “When Liz started dating Austin, her current boyfriend, my parents were so pissed because they didn’t think he was good enough for her.”
“Why? What didn’t they like about him?”
“He’s a tatted-up musician who grew up,” she pauses and whispers, “middle class.”
“Whoa!” I grab my chest, feigning surprise.
“Lower middle class,” she says conspiratorially. If I weren’t so surprised, I’d laugh. Because she sounds like an stereotypical, gossipy, Southern lady at the beauty shop, which I’m sure is what she’s going for. “They offered his mom money to break them up.”
“That’s fucked up.”
She waives her hand as if to say, “water under the bridge” or “happens every day.” But shit like that doesn’t happen in my world. And between growing up in NYC and being in the professional sports and tattoo industries, I’ve lived in some crazy-ass worlds.
“And then they tried to get Maddie’s husband to accept a fake birth certificate so he could stay in the country without them getting married.”
“Well, you said ‘husband,’ so I’m guessing he didn’t accept,” I say as if I’m commenting on an ordinary conversation.
“No, he didn’t accept, but the marriage couldn’t keep him in the country either. That’s why they’re in Prague.”
“Your parents sound like—” How the hell do I finish this sentence?
“Assholes?” she offers.
“Yup.” I agree. “But here’s the thing we both know, Em. If they don’t see the way they do things as problematic, then they may never change. The only things you have control over are your reactions to it and how you let it affect you.” I touch her temple lightly. “You have so much hate for them, and it’s blocking you from true healing. You’ll have to make peace with the fact that you can’t change them and let go.”
“How can I let go when I know they try to fuck up the lives of everyone they come in contact with? How can I live with myself knowing I didn’t intervene?”
“What are you going to do? Take them down? Punish them? What good will that do? Revenge will only cause more hate in your heart and pain in your soul. It brings you to their level.”
Emily is silent. I know she wants to change the world. I know she wants to fix them. But she can only fix the way she sees the situation and how she interacts with them. She has to realize that before she can move on.
If her parents think less of her because they think she’s not making money, they really need to do the math. If they knew she was the most successful daughter—financially speaking—maybe they’d see her in a different light. It’s shitty that they would measure their love that way, but if that’s the type of people they are, then it may be a way earn their respect until they realize how impressive her art is.
I continue because I still have some wisdom to share. “There’s an Oscar Wilde quote that says something to the effect of, ‘children start out loving their parents; after that, they judge them, but rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.’”
“I didn’t see that coming.”
“What? I’m an encyclopedia of good wisdom.”
“No, I’ve gotten used to you interjecting your life advice on me all the time.” She dismisses the quote with a wave. “I didn’t see you as someone who would quote Oscar Wilde.”
“I went through a Morrissey phase,” I shrug. Without the singer’s influence, I would have never heard of Oscar Wilde. When I was in school, reading was the last thing I ever wanted to do. As an adult, I enjoy it more, but only because I get to choose what I want to read. It’s probably like that for a lot of people.
She bursts out laughing. “I love how you went straight to Morrissey. You didn’t even try to save face by saying the Smith’s.”
“I have no shame. Morrissey is a musical genius.”
“I agree,” she says. Then she wraps her arms around my bicep and rests her head on my shoulder. “I really like talking to you, Zayne. You make me feel better about myself and the choices I’ve made in my life.”
“I like talking to you too, Emily. You make me feel alive again.” When she doesn’t say anything after a few minutes, I look down and realize she’s drifted off to sleep. Gently, I lift her head from my shoulder, wrap my arm around her, then set her cheek on my chest. Listening to her slow, steady breathing has the same effect as meditating, lulling me into peace and serenity.
Chapter Fifteen
Emily
New York City
The week in New York was such a whirlwind, it seems like it didn’t even happen. I was on my own most of the time because Zayne took a few days off to visit family and friends in the area. I was kinda bummed to hear he wasn’t going to be in the city with me because I really like spending time with him—which is not something I ever thought I’d say at the beginning of this trip. But he has a ton of family and friends around the area, so I understand.
I was super busy at the shop this week, and have a bunch of friends in New York. All the activity kept my mind off not getting to see Zayne.
Every time I’m in New York, I wonder why I haven’t moved here yet. I love the constant buzz of energy. I love all the people and how easy it is to get lost in the crowd. It’s probably the exact opposite of what other people who move to the city want. Usually, people move here to make it big, but I like the idea of being a small fish in a vast pond.
Charlotte is a big city with a small-town feel, and growing up there and being in two very different circles during the two distinct periods of my life—the circles are small. Everyone knows everyone. I feel like I could be a popular artist here but still have a private life.
The amazing week I had at the shop meant my longing to move got stronger. It would be a fresh start, and Zayne’s family is here—so maybe it could work. Except he and Louis just moved Ambassador to Charlotte, and I know he can’t move anytime soon. Technically, this week has proved that he can work remotely, but I know how stressful it is for him to be away from the office.
Zane just left New York for Charlotte, and now I want to leave Charlotte for New York. It would be a fresh start. I could get away from all the pressure of being in the Commons family. I wouldn’t have to think about any of my family drama. Maybe I was meant to start my career in Charlotte, but I wonder if staying there forever is the right decision for my career. New York is the place I should be to see if I have what it takes to make it in this industry.
Before I left for Philadelphia, I remember Fozzie saying I would never have continued tattooing if I would have been in a large, competitive market like New York, but I disagree. While I agree being in Charlotte and apprenticing under Stan was the best decision I ever made, I don’t agree that I would have quit had I been in New York. My passion for tattooing is in my blood—not a flash in the pan. I would have found a mentor as awesome as Stan to take me in. The competition would have made me push myself to work harder and be better—just like it did in Charlotte.
I haven’t thought of Fozzie since I called him wasted from Philadelphia. Diego, a good friend of his came to tattoo with me at The Vortex this week, so a lot of the conversation was about him and what’s going on with Drowned World. Usually, I have no problem talking about my best friend, but this time it was a little weird for me because of how we left things.
I think we’ll always be friends, but there’s definitely more distance between us. Though he let me down gently by saying he wasn’t ready to settle down, I know he meant that he didn’t want to be with me. If someone is into you—they want to be with you.
Like Zayne, who’s taken up every inch of free space in my head. Day and night—all my dreams have revolved around him. So much so, that when I went back to my sketchbook to look at the “random” faces I’ve been inspired to draw recently weren’t so random after all. It�
��s page after page of Zayne Vitale. How did I not see him in the images before?
We’re in this weird limbo where we touch, giggle, and hold hands like teenagers, but we haven’t taken it to another level. The excitement is there. The sexual tension. The lusting over him while getting myself off. But we haven’t even kissed.
He calls me every morning before I hit the shop, and every night before I go to bed and we text whenever we have a chance during the day. Having someone who thinks about me as much as I think about him is exciting.
The photo shoot with Ink Scene magazine was amazing. I always feel like such a tool when I do a photo shoot. I never know what kind of expression I should have, so I just stare into the camera with wide eyes, no smile, and a hint of an I-know-I’m-hot smirk. I don’t know I’m hot, nor do I think that about myself, but I don’t know how else to describe the look I give the camera. A tattoo artist who goes by Em Vicious can’t be cheesing it up for an article in the most well-known and respected magazine in the industry.
While it was the most important photo shoot of my life, it wasn’t my first one. I’ve done shoots for friends or artists who have inked me. And don’t get me started on the lame-ass photo shoots I had to do as a little girl for Commons catalogs. If those photos ever resurfaced, I’d never live it down. Not that I have some goth vibe, but I have tattoo lifestyle cred. And a department store catalog the tattoo industry version of being on a kids television show as a child.
“How was the photo shoot?” Zayne asks when he calls me later that night.
“It was awesome,” I tell him, holding back a yawn. I just crawled into bed after taking a shower and washing all the makeup and hair products out. They really lacquered me up for the shoot, but I know the photos will be brilliant.
“You sound exhausted, Em, Want me to let you go?”
“Never,” I tell him. “I want you to hold me for a thousand years.”
“Day one starts tomorrow.”
If the only way to get what you want is to ask for it, I’m all in. After a week without him, I realized how much I enjoy having him in my life—daily. There’s been an emptiness that’s only filled when I get a text or call from him.