by E M Lindsey
Chapter Four
Something about the flower shop lingered, even long after they’d returned to the studio and Derek had passed May over to Katherine for the rest of the afternoon. He was in his station prepping for his first appointment, but his mind kept drifting over to the open door, to the woman smiling at the kids and signing, and the smell drifting on the breeze that had been so much like Basil.
It wasn’t exactly a far stretch to assume Basil either worked there or was related to the woman who had introduced herself as Ama. She spoke to them and understood without an issue, but she wore hearing aids and her accent gave her away as deaf. In a town this small, he let himself assume. It also didn’t hurt that she looked like Basil in the way that siblings often resembled each other. The same nose, same dark curls, though hers fell long down her back. Mostly though, it was her eyes, intense and piercing like she could see everything.
He had that same feeling when the lights had gone up and he could see Basil for the first time. Right before he walked out. In fact, it had taken nearly every ounce of his self-control not to ask her if she knew the guy. The last thing Derek wanted to do was stalk some stranger who hadn’t offered to keep in touch. He may have been somewhat infatuated, but he wasn’t a creep.
“Dude,” a voice to his right said, and Derek’s head whipped over to see James smirking at him, toying with his septum piercing with the tip of his finger. “You’ve been wiping that same spot for like ten minutes. Did someone fuck your actual brains out last night?”
Derek felt the back of his neck flush. “No. Not that I’d tell you if I did get lucky. I’m just tired. Rough night last night.”
James’ face fell a little and he leaned forward in his chair. “Want to talk about it?”
The truth was, no, he didn’t. He was sick to death of having to explain every low mood—even when there was a reason for it. He did appreciate that these guys were his family and would do anything for him, but he also wanted to be treated like a person and not some fragile mess prone to falling apart any time one little thing went wrong.
He’d had PTSD for most of his formative years, and well into adulthood. He’d survived being homeless, and every single day since then. He could survive a little panic attack and the emotional hang-over that came with it the next day.
“I’m good,” he finally said, moving on to wrap his table with the big roll of cling wrap he’d stolen from Mat’s station. “Are you on tonight?”
“I’m doing the shading on my mermaid at nine tonight, and Mat’s going to finish carving my left leg up during his downtime,” he said, leaning back in his chair and stretching his legs in front of him. Carving him up was essentially Mat’s pet-project. James was a double-amputee, both legs just below the knee, and more often than not he wore prosthetics that were just a titanium rod which ended with his shoe, but Mat had gotten a wild-hair to do some steampunk design in James’ cover which was made out of some type of flesh-colored foam Mat found intensely satisfying to carve up. His left leg was nearly done, and the design on the right was already being sketched out to match.
“Are you going to help out with walk-ins?” Derek asked as he started fishing through his bottles, mentally chiding himself for how damn disorganized his drawer was.
James snorted. “Dude, it’s a Wednesday. We’ll get maybe—maybe—some stoned sorority chicks who looked us up on yelp and decided to drive out. I’m not dealing with that nonsense. If I have to tattoo one more infinity symbol on the side of someone’s finger…”
Derek grinned, shaking his head even as he all-but buried his face in his ink drawer. “Come on man, it doesn’t hurt to take one or two. Coffee cash, you know?”
“I want steak and lobster dinner cash, asshole. Infinity symbols don’t pay my rent.”
Which, true. They didn’t. They were the sixty buck shop minimum walk-ins, but then again, no one in the shop made less than one-fifty an hour for their standard work apart from the two apprenticing, so it’s not like any of them had room to complain. Derek hadn’t stressed about bill paying in years, even when shit like government shutdowns threatened to choke all their business to death. But he also understood how annoying it was to have to swirl a lemniscate on a nineteen-year-old who was terrified of needles and trying to find some deeper meaning in a symbol that didn’t have any significance outside of coding these days.
Derek did his best not to judge people’s decisions though. That wasn’t his job, even if he did occasionally pull a face when some obnoxious, popped-collar asshole strolled in and asked for a camel on his big toe. His job was to just provide the ink to the best of his abilities—which was worth his one-seventy an hour—and to pocket his cash and move on with his life. He liked his regulars, and he liked his family there, and there wasn’t too much to complain about.
“Yo,” came a voice from the front. Mat and Sage walked in holding a couple of pizza boxes and Derek wanted to groan because Sage always got fucking anchovies which would make everything smell like fish ass for half the night. “Do you want to eat before your client gets in?” Sage asked Derek.
“Nah.” Derek glanced at the clock and saw his client would be walking in within the next ten minutes. “I don’t want to get all nasty before I get working. Besides your nasty fish juice probably leaked on everything.”
“Ha,” Sage said, leaning down to grin in his face, “joke’s on you, I got artichoke hearts and feta this time.”
Not that it sounded any better, but at least it might smell less. “I’m still good. I’ll probably order Thai or something later. Last night kind of killed all sense of appetite.” That was nothing new, and no one really reacted apart from a couple of careful looks which he purposefully ignored.
“Okay, well I’m going to eat and get a few of my drawings done for next week. Let me know if anyone comes in.” Sage gave his brother a long look before taking the pizzas back into their make-shift breakroom.
Derek sagged back in his chair and rubbed both hands over his face. When he looked up again, James and Mat were giving him a tentative stare. “Can you please not?”
“You know we just worry,” Mat replied quietly.
Derek waved him off. “I know, but that’s not necessary. It’s…it’s not even the stupid panic attack, okay? I got over that sometime around midnight.”
James frowned. “So what has your panties all twisted?” He grunted when Mat dragged his leg over a little harder than normal—punishment for the panties comment which Derek appreciated. They didn’t do gender-role shaming there. Ever.
“I met a guy,” he finally said, knowing that the moment Sam got back, he’d blab anyway so he might as well head it off. “He was stuck in the little ATM kiosk thing with me and helped me through it. And I’m a fucking moron and I can’t stop thinking about him.”
The two idiots across from him lit up like a house on fire, and before he could head them off, Mat looked like he was ready to start planning a wedding. “Are you going to see him again? What was his name? Did you have some gross-ass romantic kiss in the rain after you were rescued?”
Derek fought off the urge to rip open his package of needles and stab Mat in the neck with the tight-liner he was about to prep. “First of all, fuck you, this isn’t a Disney rom-com. Second of all, we didn’t exchange numbers or anything. He just helped me out and then we moved on with our lives.”
“Well,” James said with a small grin, “one of you did.”
Mat smacked him at the same time as Derek flipped him off and said, “It was a rough night and I’m not used to strangers being nice for no reason, okay? I’ll get over it.”
The pair of them looked like they didn’t want him to get over it, and frankly if he thought he had a chance with Basil, he wouldn’t want to get over it either. But it was what it was. He set the needle package down just as his phone buzzed, and he saw it was an email from his online shop alerting him that a sale had been officially processed.
It had been a while since he’d sold anyth
ing from his gallery, so he quickly opened the page and his heart leapt into his throat when he realized what it was. He couldn’t stop himself from glancing up at the wall in front of him, where the octopus sketch had been hanging for nearly two years. He hadn’t ever intended to keep it, of course. He didn’t create to keep, he created to share with the world, but something in him felt a little bereft at the thought of packing it up and shipping it off.
“Dude, are you about to cry?” Mat asked, interrupting Derek’s thought spiral. His tone wasn’t mocking, it was concerned, and it shook Derek right out of his head.
“No,” he said quickly. “No, someone just bought…” He nodded his head at the octopus and James’ eyes went wide.
“Someone bought Kevin?”
Derek sighed. “His name isn’t Kevin, dude.”
“It is,” James argued. “I named him, and it’s not like you ever picked anything else. Plus, it suits him. Shit, dude, if I knew you were really going to sell him, I’d have bought it.”
That made Derek’s stomach twist a little, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing. He hated selling to his friends, mostly because they felt like pity buys, even if he knew his work was good. He wanted strangers to own those pieces of him, wanted to know that bits of his soul were scattered around the country—maybe the world.
“Where’s it going?” Mat asked as he pulled out his scalpel to get to work on James’ leg.
With a frown, Derek bent over his phone and scrolled to the shipping address. “Wallflowers Florist, C/O Amaranth Shevach,” he said. “That’s here.”
“That’s the chick who gave May a rose,” Sage said, coming up from behind Derek. “She bought your painting?”
No, Derek thought, because it wasn’t her. It was Basil. Basil had saved the gallery on his phone and had bought the painting because Derek had lamented that no one wanted it in spite of it being his favorite. And it probably was a pity buy, but more than that, it meant Basil had thought about him. Basil was asking to keep a piece of him, even if he didn’t want anything more.
He looked back at the octopus and let out a tiny sigh. “Someone at their shop bought the painting,” he finally corrected.
Sage raised a brow. “Don’t you have like…an entire series of floral work? Why would they by a fucking octopus, dude?”
Derek bristled, though he knew his brother wasn’t trying to be cruel. “I don’t know, and I can’t say I’m supposed to give a shit. People buy something, I send it. Simple as that.”
“Testy,” Sage complained as he flopped down into an empty chair on the edge of Derek’s stall. He moved to kick one foot up on the bench, but Derek knocked him away.
“My client’s about to walk in and I’m not going to goddamn start this whole thing over,” he snapped.
Sage raised his hands in defense. “My bad.”
Rolling his eyes, Derek spun away from his brother, then startled a little when his phone rang. He glanced at the screen and saw Sam’s name, quickly answering. “Hey, man. How’d it go?”
“Do you want to come over tonight and chill? Alice is out of town for the next few days and being in the car this long fucked me up. I’m spasming and I need to get in the bath. I can bribe you with beer and take-out.”
Derek smiled to himself as he reached for the stencil he’d drawn out and set it on the table. “You don’t need to bribe me, also I’ve eaten out both meals so why don’t I cook?”
“You’re a god amongst men, you know that?” Sam said with a breath of relief. “May’s going to stay over with Kat tonight so I can get my back to calm down, so it’s just the two of us.”
“I’ll stop over at Wild’s and get something to cook up,” Derek told him. “What time will you be back?”
“God only knows. I’m on a half hour break, then I have another hour or two. Then she wants me to meet with the rehab specialist regarding the class they’re making me take.” He sounded exhausted and run down, and it made Derek want to get in his car and haul Sam’s ass far away from this mess. “I’m guessing after seven.”
Derek glanced up at the clock. “I can be there around then. My last appointment’s at four, but it’s probably only a two-hour job. Sage and Mat can handle any of the walk ins. And James is here letting Mat carve on his leg, so we’re staffed.”
“Thanks, man,” Sam said, then yawned loudly. “Fuck me. Okay. I gotta hit the head before I get back into this shit, so I’ll see you when I get home.”
“You got it.” Derek hung up, but before he could explain anything, the little bell on the front door sounded and his client walked in. Derek wanted nothing more than to talk about Sam’s shit, and to contemplate why Basil had bought the painting, but instead he put on his best customer service face and cracked his knuckles, ready to get started.
It was half six when he finally got his station sanitized and his shit put away. He wrote himself a note to stock his needles and to organize his ink, then he stared at the octopus painting a few minutes more.
“You really gonna throw that in the mail?” Mat asked, leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his head.
The shop was dead, and the only booking they had was the nine o’clock, and there hadn’t been a single walk-in all evening. James had gotten a call with a request for an emergency car repair job which he immediately snatched up, and Wyatt had come in to work on some of his pig skin since he had his first booking that weekend and he was feeling all the nerves.
Derek shrugged. “I mean, I kind of have to, don’t I? Wouldn’t it be weird if I walked it down to the flower shop?”
Mat gave him a careful look. “Why would that be weird? Unless they paid a shitload for shipping.”
Derek bit his bottom lip, considering his options. Refunding the eight bucks he charged for shipping wasn’t a big deal. But he didn’t know if Basil would appreciate him just showing up. It seemed presumptuous and a little creepy, if he was being honest. “I don’t know.”
“I bet they’d be happier if you walked it over,” Mat said thoughtfully. “I mean, no risk of it getting all fucked up in the mail. They’re like two blocks away, dude.”
It was a good point, but not one Derek wanted to explore right then. “I got a couple days, I’ll figure it out. Anyway, I’m off to Sam’s for the night, so if you guys get slammed, just call me.”
Mat offered him a mock-salute, then turned back to his drawing table and Derek took the opportunity to slip out without being dragged into further conversation. As he headed to his car, he heard footsteps and turned to see his brother jogging after him.
“Hey,” Sage said, trying to catch his breath, “I wanted to grab you before you head out.”
Derek stopped, raising a brow. “What’s up?”
“This weekend,” Sage said, as though Derek really did have that fake-ass twin ESP people always assumed they did. “I…it’s four years now and I just…uh. Could use the company.”
Derek felt his entire body sag with remorse because how the hell could he have forgotten that this weekend was the anniversary of Sage’s fiancé’s death? Granted, it had been getting easier, enough that no one really thought about Ted on the day-to-day, but Derek had been more attuned to the loss since it was Sage suffering, and he didn’t want to let himself get complacent.
“I have no plans,” Derek said. “Come home with me Friday after we close up.”
Sage looked somewhat relieved. “Thanks. I kind of have a proposition for you anyway, but I want to talk after you’ve been able to unwind.”
Derek bristled a little at that. Frankly, Sage’s ideas were kind of the worst, especially when his emotions were high. But right now, this weekend? He wasn’t going to turn down anything. “Yeah, of course.”
Sage gave him a cautious smile, and maybe once upon a time, this would have been a moment they hugged, but neither of them had really sought comfort with each other like that in years. Not since they lay huddled together in a rundown, squatter’s paradise with no heat and a sing
le sleeping bag as they fought to get by night by night.
Too long since then had passed, but there were moments Derek couldn’t help but miss being able to take that small comfort when he needed it. For now, though, the smile his brother offered was enough, and they quickly parted ways.
The drive to Wild’s was short, and though Derek hated browsing aisles that smelled overwhelmingly of ground wheat and patchouli, he was able to load up and check out in only a handful of minutes. He loaded the bags into the back of his car, then parked next to Sam’s truck which was still making the faint clicking noise as the engine cooled from the long drive.
He slung the bags over his arm, using his free hand to grab the case of beer and lock up the truck, then let himself in the front door and went straight for the kitchen. Most of the lights were still off which probably meant Sam was in his bedroom, so Derek threw everything together in the dutch oven, covered it with a little water, the lid, then wandered off.
He found his friend on the floor with his legs propped up on his exercise ball. Derek could see the vicious tremors in his muscles, and the way Sam’s face was contorted in pain. “How bad?”
“Maybe like a six,” Sam told him, which in Sam-ese meant he was probably at an eleven. “I just got in and I figured I’d let my legs work themselves out a little before I try to balance in the tub.
“Want me to start it?” Derek asked.
Sam waved his hand toward the bathroom. “There’s some of that citrus salt under the cupboard, the one Tony always gives me shit about smelling like the farmer’s market. Throw a couple cups in there for me.”
Derek was old hat at this. Sam and Tony had grown up together, had been like brothers, but for whatever reason, Derek was better at all this shit. Maybe it was the fact that he’d seen things most people hadn’t which left him unbothered by all that Sam required to get by, but there had never been any awkwardness about it. Sam had a carer who usually helped out, but one winter a handful of years back, her sister had gone into early labor and she’d flown across the country for two weeks to help out.