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Chapter One
Elijah- present
I believed that we chose our level of maturity. Some lucky bastards were fortunate and could do whatever they wanted. They got the family and, God forbid, children. Then there was the rest of us. We made a life working and making bank—hell to the yeah. Some of us enjoyed what we did—fuck yeah. The lesser mortals got stuck in a career they hated—like making food to please folk—just to afford the shit they thought they needed. Some people embodied several of these types. I’d assume that if a person checked off yes to more than one—saying yes to the trappings of family, kids, and a dog—he or she was miserable. I saw the exhaustion dragging down their faces as they chased kids across a store. It was undeniable. No one could make me believe otherwise.
Me? I liked solitude, loved my job, and never grew tired of my routine. Personally, I couldn’t cook worth shit and didn’t want to learn. Why waste an hour cooking when I could use that time drawing or getting a graphic design out of the way before it was due? The fact was, I had all that I had because I only prioritized myself and my wants. Well, besides my ma but that was about the only person. I guess Hank could count too. He’d been like a father to me all my life and treated my ma with the respect she deserved. But that was it. Okay… Maybe the guys at both my shops made the last few years a bit better than total isolation but that was it. Really.
I owned two tattoo parlors—one I opened just six months ago. My ma is the reason for the new shop, Devil’s Lair. She begged me every day to come back to my rural hometown—Sassafras, Alabama—so that she could see me more. It took a couple years, searching for the perfect spot and building but I made it happen because of my priorities. My ma was the main one. Other changes included buying a house. She still complained, though, saying I took too long to get one.
Nonetheless, I was there. But Ma couldn’t understand the amount of work I did between painting and graphic designs. She didn’t even consider all of my customers at Devil’s Poke in Jeffrey—I wasn’t very creative naming my businesses—plus managing the shops. There wasn’t nearly enough time to do it all.
But still, I was there for her.
I sighed long and hard as I pulled my truck into park at a grocery store. I couldn’t fucking cook, but I sure as hell knew how to snack. You could call me the King Kong of snack food town. I blamed my inability on Ma. She shouldn’t have spent all those years feeding me. Now I didn’t plan to cook for the rest of my life since I was too lazy, ahem, busy.
My cell phone rang just as I shut off the engine. I yanked it off the charging cord and groaned as I saw the name on the screen. “Yeah?” I climbed out of the truck, locking it as I shut the door behind me.
“You didn’t say goodbye,” Lindsay said.
I stuffed my keys in my pocket. “Yeah?”
“Always the asshole,” she muttered through the phone. “Weren’t you going to ask me to move with you?”
I laughed. “Why would I do that?”
“Don’t be like this over something silly,” she hissed. “How was I supposed to know we were official when you never once said we were dating?”
Was that really her reasoning for the childish game?
“Oh, fuck, I don’t know, maybe all the times you were staying at my place, spreading your legs for me,” I spat, earning a nasty frown from an elderly lady as she wheeled herself on one of those motorized carts. “I wasn’t aware I seemed like a man that liked to share.”
“Oh my God! I didn’t cheat on you!” she yelled.
“That didn’t stop you from taking Chris’s number right in front of me.”
“You could have stepped in and said, ‘hey now, that’s my girl’, but you didn’t do that did you?” She exhaled. “Save it. I would have been all in if you had given me a sign that you were too.”
I ran my fingers through my hair which was rough from the drive here. “I know exactly what you were doing,” I muttered.
She laughed in my ear. “We can still try this, ya know? Let’s go all in.”
It was like talking to a brick wall.
Nope. I couldn’t make Lindsay a priority, not without listening to her complaints. She was a woman who enjoyed playing games while I refused to be anyone’s pawn.
I tried. I really did. The only reason I hung with her for so long was that she made it so damned easy. She came around every night without demands. I thought she only wanted the physical—just like me—until the night I caught her flirting with Chris. I wasn’t really jealous of the tattooist who worked for me at Devil’s Poke. It was all a game to her from the way she batted her eyes to the wicked smile she gave me as she passed Chris her phone. She wanted me to man up and claim her like some Neanderthal. When I didn’t, there was no saving whatever we had.
I didn’t want anything. I preferred solitude. I didn’t mind the company as long as she was fucking quiet while I worked. Lindsay was the only girl I’d met that knew that, so I made her a priority, but that chapter was over. She would never be anything more.
“You should call Chris,” I told her after a while.
“I’m going on a date with him this Saturday, actually. I just wanted to try one last time.”
I nodded. That didn’t surprise me. “Chris is a good kid. Don’t take advantage of him.” When her protests began, I disconnected the call. I looked both ways before walking across the road to the store. No need for a shopping cart. I only planned to get a few things to munch on. All I ever did when I was at home was snack. I always ate out.
I grabbed a gallon of chocolate milk first, but thought about it and put it back since I hadn’t even gotten to the house to hook anything up. I already had electric and water, and I had paid a few guys I knew to drive my stuff in the U-Haul. In the back of my truck were a few items, but everything was at the house, waiting for me to handle.
Ma better know how much I loved her. What other capable almost thirty-year-old male moved back to their hometown because his ma begged him to? It would take me all week to unpack, maybe longer since I already had appointments lined up at the shop tomorrow—a thigh and two back pieces to tattoo. That was if they showed up.
