“No,” I said, shaking my head and moving toward the hallway closet. I reached in, grabbing the two metal cases and bringing them to where she was standing next to my dining room table.
“What's in there?” she asked, eyeing the boxes.
“My guns,” I said.
“Your... guns?” she asked, taking a small step backward, her eyes going wide.
“Oh,” I said, smiling. It was easy to forget sometimes that the word meant something else. “not those kinds of guns,” I said, clicking open the cases and pulling the trays out. “Tattoo guns,” I clarified.
“You're a tattoo artist?” she asked, sounding surprised and pleased at the same time. I had seen one tattoo on her: the one on her thigh. The tree with the ax and quote. It had been well done. She had obviously done her research and picked a good artist.
“Yep,” I said, holding out my arms. “I obviously have an appreciation for ink.”
“I noticed,” she said, her eyes looking down to inspect the pictures. “How long have you been doing it?”
“I started when I was eighteen, but I didn't start doing it as a career until maybe eight years ago. And even then, very part time. I had other work to do.”
“Are you working at a place here, or just... like... going to people's houses?”
“I have a place I work at part time. I'll occasionally do private sessions. Parties even but not as often.”
“Can I see some of your work?” she asked, looking down at the gun with a look I recognized. The look of someone who wanted another tattoo.
I nodded, going back to the closet and dragging out my black portfolio and handing it to her. She pulled out a chair and sat down, opening the book and looking down at the pages. “You do a lot of color,” she said, running her hand over a picture of flowers: daisies and lilacs.
“I do black and gray too. But the color really pops. Sometimes black and gray can look really muddy. Especially over time.”
“Did you go to art school?” she asked, not looking up.
I smiled, rocking back on my heels. “Do I look like someone who went to art school?” I asked and she laughed.
“I guess not. But you're really good at drawing.”
“Just something I was always good at I guess.” I totally didn't spend hours pouring over drawing manuals when I was a kid. I didn't go through a sketchpad a week trying to perfect the same images over and over.
“Alright, stick it in me,” she said, a sly smile on her face.
I felt my mouth fall open slightly. “What?” I asked.
“Get your mind out of the gutter, Fourteen,” she teased, pointing to the tattoo gun.
“Oh,” I said, shaking my head. Of course she meant the needle. “Hey, with a mouth like yours, you cant blame me for thinking you meant something more...”
“Lascivious?” she supplied.
“Exactly. So... where am I sticking it?” I asked, my voice low and sexual.
She giggled. Actually giggled. The hardass chick who lived next door and ran a phone sex business actually giggled. “I was thinking the back of my neck,” she said, shrugging.
“Okay,” I said, walking up behind her and lifting her hair out of the way. “What do you want to get?”
“Surprise me,” she said.
I dropped her hair, moving to squat down next to her. “Don't you know better than to give a tattoo artist free reign? You could end up with my name tattooed across your face.”
She gave me a small smile. “I trust you,” she said and the certainty in her voice nearly made me fall on my ass. She trusted me. If only she knew how stupid that was. “I don't know... give me something that you think... fits me.”
“You're sure?” I asked, already knowing what I wanted to know. Knowing it was her to a T, but worried slightly that she might find it offensive.
“Positive,” she said, grabbing her hair and tying it up higher on her head.
“I can do color?”
“I'm sorry,” she said, leaning forward and resting her head on her hands on the tabletop. “I am a canvas. I don't talk.”
I got up to my feet, smiling as I pulled out my guns and inks. I shaved the back of her neck then grabbed a felt tip maker, drawing an outline on her skin. “How do you sit?” I asked, hoping she wasn't a squirmer.
“Like a rock,” she said, sounding almost sleepy. “I have a pretty high pain tolerance.”
No shit. With the marks she carved into herself, I doubted a few needle pricks would bother her. An image of last night flashed into my mind and a I squinted about it. I was trying not to think about it.
About those god-awful, painful screams that woke me out of a dead sleep and had me running before I was even awake, had me slamming through her front door and through her apartment. Only to find her in a puddle of blood on her bathroom floor. There was a razor blade on the ground next to her next to her antiseptic supplies.
And she was asleep. She wasn't screaming about the pain she carved into herself. She was screaming about some other pain... pain that was likely the reason she cut into herself in the first place. To forget. To cope.
She had barely flinched when I had cleaned her up. She would sit pretty for me. “Alright,” I said, stepping back and setting up a spread next to her on the table. “Ready?” I asked, turning the machine on and feeling the comforting buzzing in my hand.
“Ready,” she agree, shifting slightly to give me the best access, her forehead on her hands.
I worked with painstaking precision. I wanted it to be absolutely perfect.
In the end, I stepped back, wiping away the extra dye and blood and surveyed the finished result.
It was a heart locket tattoo. Special. Like her. I made the heart fucking beautiful. Pink. Feminine. With intricate black and gray filigree around the edges and the antique key hole in the center. Then I wrapped the whole thing with a chain. And put a pretty bow sitting on the top of the heart to the left.
To me, that was Fiona. She was beautiful. Perfect really. With locks, and walls, and chain link fences. To keep anyone from finding out how amazing she was.
“Don't hate me,” I said, reaching into my box for a spare mirror.
She sat up slowly, rolling the tension out of her shoulders. “I'm sure it's great,” she said again with certainty. “Come on, I want to see.” She reached out and tugged at the hem of my shirt as she turned to walk down to the bathroom.
I followed her, turning on the light. “Alright,” I said, “turn around.”She did and I handed her the mirror. “Check it out.”
She lifted the mirror, backing up against the bathroom counter to get as close to the big mirror as possible. “Oh,” she said, her eyes going wide, her mouth falling open slightly. That was it though. Just... oh. And I couldn't make out if it was a good “oh” or a bad “oh” and she was just standing there staring at it.
I shuffled my feet. “Fee,” I said, needing an answer. Needing her to end the torment.
“This is what you think of when you see me?” she asked, her voice low, her eyes still on the mirror.
“Yeah,” I said. Because it was true.
Her head turned suddenly, her eyes finding mine. “You see right through me,” she said, shrugging a shoulder. “I love it.”
I couldn't keep the smile off my face. The big, goofy, high school cheerleader smile. “I'm glad you like it.”
Her smile matched mine for a second, before it slipped slowly away. Something else rose up on her face, making her emerald eyes look glassy and bright. “Hey Hunter...”
“Yeah?” I asked, sure that she was just going to thank me. But then...
“Take me to bed.”
Fifteen
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wished I could suck them back in. Hit rewind, slap myself really hard across the face, and say something... anything other than that. It wasn't that I didn't want him to take me to bed. Of course I did. It was all I had b
een thinking about while he was working on me.
And then seeing what he had done... well... that just pushed me over the edge. Not just because it was good. Every woman was turned on by talent and he was very talented. Every line was clean, the saturation was perfect. But it wasn't the skill. It was what he had chosen to do.
I swore those light eyes of his saw right down into my soul and the tattoo was proof that he did. Because he saw past the bitch persona. Saw past the seemingly extroverted phone sex operator. He saw what it all really was: fear. Someone who was afraid to let herself feel anything so she kept it all under lock.
The only problem was, I lost the key.
I looked back at Hunter who looked as stunned as I felt. How hard would it be to take it back? Tell him I was joking. Tell him I misspoke. That I was just riding a high from all the endorphins that stabbing me repeatedly with a needle had caused to flood my system.
The only problem was... I didn't want to take it back. I didn't want to lie. I didn't have to have to keep denying myself the first thing I had really wanted in a long, long time.
“Hunter...” I started.
“It's alright,” he said, shrugging a shoulder.
“What's alright?” I asked, confused.
“If you want to take that back.” He shook his head at me. “Fee you looked freaked the fuck out when you said that. So if you need to take it back...”
“I don't,” I said, looking down at my feet. “I don't want to take it back. I want you. Like...” I said, looking up at him. “really want you.”
“I really want you too, baby,” he said, making my belly feel all fluttery again. How was he able to do that so easily? “But I want you to be ready.” He paused for a second, looking pained. “If something has happened to you that has made sex... difficult...” he trailed off.
“What do you think happened to me?” I asked, not sure where his mind was going. Feeling a tightness in my chest at the idea that he might have had a clue.
He ran a hand over his eyes. “Did someone... rape you, Fee?”
I felt the word fall heavy against me. Rape. It was one of those words that made every woman tense. Even women who hadn't lived through it, even women who had never been anywhere close to it. You felt it. Somewhere deep in you stomach, right behind your bellybutton. Like a hole had opened up and was sucking energy in. Strong and strange, but somehow familiar.
I felt sick at thinking it, but I almost felt like that would be easier. That would be so much easier to explain.
But that wasn't it and I couldn't let him think that.
“No,” I said, shaking my head, taking a deep breath. “No.”
“Okay,” he said, reaching out toward me, taking my hand and holding it. “Well, whatever it is, Fee, you can tell me.”
“I know,” I said. I could. I knew I could. He wouldn't judge. He wouldn't think less of me. It was just hard to find those words. What words could ever explain it?
They couldn't.
I squeezed his hand once before letting it drop, reaching for the bottom of my shirt and pulling it up.
“What are you doing?” he asked, moving back a step, eyeing me like I had lost my mind.
“I need to show you... something,” I said, praying he didn't ask. Because I was already a mass of panic. I just needed to get it over with.
“Okay,” he said, leaning back against the doorjamb.
I reached behind my back and unclasped my bra, pulling the material off in one quick motion and tossing it to the floor. I saw him look for a second, not seeing. Then his eyes squinted, looking closer and his face went to mine. And there was a question there.
“I didn't do it,” I told him. “to myself. I didn't do this.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding.
I swallowed hard past the tightness in my throat and reached for my pants. I slipped my thumbs underneath the band of my tights and panties and pulled downward.
“Fee...”
“Please just... please,” I said, shaking my head.
“Alright,” he said, sounding tense.
But not one one-millionth as tense as I felt. This was the first time. The first time I had ever actually taken all my clothes off in front of someone. In the past... the two times I had tried to be intimate with someone, I had kept my skirt on. It had been easier that way. And they hadn't even stopped to wonder why we weren't getting naked. But they still found out.
Christ, how they reacted.
I remembered the first one. I was on his futon in his room, his mother asleep two rooms away. Eighteen. Brand new to the city. Curious. And such, such an innocent. I barely understood the concept of sex, let alone the feelings involved. He had quickly ripped my panties down, and shoved his bright blue condom-wrapped penis inside me without any pretense. I remember the pain like it was yesterday, sharp and burning at the same time. Then his hand had pushed up my skirt so he could watch and he sprang back like I had stabbed him.
“What the fuck?” he had exploded, looking at my sore and scarred vagina like it was the ugliest thing he had ever seen. I had been so humiliated that I got up and ran out without explaining, without grabbing my panties.
The next one had been a year later. And I liked him. I really liked him even though he was city-roughened and a nasty drunk. By then, a year and a half of living on the streets had given me quite an extensive knowledge about sex. Regardless of my traumatizing first time, my hormones were begging for me to try again.
“I have some... scars,” I had told him, feeling shy.
“Whatever,” he said, and shoved himself inside. It was quick, mostly painless, but wholly unsatisfying at the same time. Afterward, he reached down and lifted my skirt to look. He looked for so long that I felt a swell of hope that he wasn't repulsed. But then he had dropped my skirt, looked at me, and shook his head. “That's the ugliest pussy I've ever seen.”
I couldn't bring myself to ever face him again.
I shook my head, trying to clear it. That was the past. This was the here, the now. This was with Hunter. And I was going to face the issue head-on no matter how much I felt like throwing up all over my own feet.
I pushed the material down, stepping out of the legs and straightening.
His eyes stayed on mine for a long time and I could feel myself trying to project the need for him to look. Please, please look. I need to get this over with. I'm dying little by little.
His eyes finally started to trail downward, stopping slightly at my breasts then going down my belly. Stopping. I heard his breath exhale out sharply. I tensed against the sound, sure I knew what was going to follow. Revulsion.
Then he was moving, walking closer. Stopping right in front of me, he went down on his knees. His hand moved up the front of one of my thighs, reaching the spot where my leg met my hip, just an inch away from where his eyes were planted.
Where the word “wicked” was scrawled in huge, ugly, uppercase print across the triangle above my sex.
“Why do I get the feeling that this wasn't you trying to say you have a wicked cool snatch?” he asked, attempting levity.
The tension in that moment was as thick as honey when I didn't laugh. “I didn't do it,” I said again.
Maybe I should have just... owned up to it. Said that I did. I self-harmed all the time. It would be completely believable. But I had my hands full with my own depravity, I suddenly didn't want to claim his as my own anymore. At least not with Hunter.
“What happened to you, Fee?” he asked, his hand moving to cover the scars as he tilted his head back to look at me.
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes against the tears. I wasn't going to cry. Not because I was embarrassed to. Not because I was afraid to let Hunter see that side of me. I wasn't going to cry because my father didn't deserve that.
I swallowed and looked down at him. “I grew up in a very religious household,” I started, my words sounding robotic. “My father raised us in a shack with
no running water, no electronics. No... nothing. Even though he was from a rich family. We needed to know humility. I... wasn't even allowed to learn to read. But my mother taught me in secret. It was a rough life but we didn't really know any better.” I paused, taking a breath. Hunter's blue eyes were still on mine, patient. Expectant.
“I have an older brother. Isaiah. He's about two years older. We shared a room and when he was twelve... he started to... watch me change,” I said, watching Hunter wince slightly. Because it was gross. I couldn't blame him for thinking how disgusting that is. It totally was disgusting. “One night, my father came in and saw him watching me...”
“You don't have to tell me,” he said when I paused, when the words failed me. “If it's too much. You don't have to.”
“I want to,” I said, surprising myself. “He saw Isaiah watching me and he grabbed me. He dragged me through the house and threw me out into the snow. Naked. I was naked. And he was rambling on about the wickedness of Eve. Of women in general. He beat me. And then he... he got on top of me and he pulled out a knife and he did this,” I said, touching the scars under my breasts. “Then he did this,” I said, reaching down and touching his hand that was still covering the word. “He told me that I was dirty and wicked. That I was leading my brother into the temptations of the flesh. That I was evil. He told me that he would make me so ugly that no man would ever want me. So I couldn't lead another man to sin against God like I had with my brother.”
My heart was pounding in my ears and every inch of my skin felt hot, feverish.
Hunter ducked his head. “You were ten years old,” he said quietly.
“Yeah,” I agreed, trying to focus on breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
His hands moved, slipped around my hips and touched my ass, settling there softly. He leaned forward, planting a kiss on the center of the awful word. “You're not wicked,” he said, shaking his head and I felt his hair brush my thighs. “You're father was a sick fuck and your brother was warped,” he said, sounding angry.
“I know,” I said. I knew that. I did. I had known that for a long time. But it didn't take the sting away. It didn't take away the years of believing he was right about me. About how I was going to burn in hell for my sins. About how I was a punishment to my family. A penance that needed to be paid. So they could go to Heaven. While I rotted.
For A Good Time, Call... Page 10