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John had also recently moved back home from North Carolina, where he’d been apprenticing with another tattoo artist, and had just signed the lease on the shop. We’d gone for a beer or two. About three in, he confessed he was worried about carrying the lease on his own.
Within an hour, we decided to join forces and open N&J’s Tattoo Emporium.
We figured “emporium” sounded more civilized than “parlor,” and that the more civilized we sounded, the better. In a small, sleepy bedroom town like Bliss River, a tattoo shop is going to have to keep it classy if it wants to survive.
“I came to check supplies before I called it a night.” John slaps me on the back before moving toward his station on the opposite side of the room. “I’m heading to Atlanta tomorrow. You need anything? Gloves? Ink?”
“No, I’m good. I ordered gloves online, and I’m set for ink.”
I do all the shopping I can online. I hate going to the tattoo supply store in Atlanta. The chances are too good that I’ll run into Wyatt or Nelson, fellow tattoo artists and my old roommates, the ones who kicked me out of our shared apartment when I was drunk and disorderly for a few too many weeks in a row after the last sweet, Southern girl I dated dumped me to go back to her ex-boyfriend.
Sarah Beth.
Just thinking her name is enough to make my jaw clench.
I knew we were wrong for each other from the start—I’m a night owl; Sarah Beth gets up at five thirty every morning to Zumba. I haven’t darkened a church door since I was eighteen; Sarah’s in a pew every time her church opens its doors. My idea of a good time is a day of rock climbing followed by beers at a bar where they play the music too loud; Sarah Beth enjoys antiquing and wine tasting.
I knew better, but I let Sarah Beth convince me that our differences didn’t matter, that a mutual love of kettle chips and being naked together was enough to start something real. I let my guard down and started to enjoy Sunday afternoons at the park with Sarah and her roommates, rainy mornings lying in bed watching movies before I went to work and she went to class, and coming back to her place and eating supper at a decent hour for the first time since I left my mom and dad’s place years ago.
Sarah Beth took care of me. She brought some much-needed stability to my life and made me wonder if I might be the settling down type after all. Six months in, I’d asked her to be exclusive, and she’d agreed. Two days later, we got in a fight about whether there was room for my favorite chair in her living room, and she dumped me to get back together with her ex, a loser she’d known since high school who was already developing a middle-aged paunch at the age of twenty-one.
I know that for a fact. I stalked “Trevor” on social media for an entire drunken evening, verifying he was the human personification of soggy Wonder bread. I was dumped for a cheesy-looking bastard with a gut and thinning brown hair, who wore pleated khaki pants. Pleated.
What’s worse, I was jealous of that guy.
Jealous of a douchebag named “Trevor.”
The shame of it still makes my gut feel full of acid, even two months later. I’m over Sarah Beth—turns out I loved how easy it was to be with her more than I loved Sarah, herself—but I’m not over the sting of rejection.
I’ve never been rejected before, and it’s safe to say I’m not a fan.
That’s why, from here on out, I’m sticking with safe girls—wild, fun-loving, free-spirited girls who couldn’t care less if I ever settle down. Those girls know how to keep things light and simple. Those girls never make you wake up in the morning and feel like someone is punching you in the gut from the inside.
“You ready to hit it?” John asks, flipping off the lights.
“Yup.” I cross to my station and snag my keys. “You parked out back?”
“Yeah, but I was thinking about swinging into The Horse,” John says. “I could go for a beer. You want to join me?”
Normally, I’d say yes or even hell yes.
Nothing helps me loosen up after a long day spent hunched over a tattoo table like a beer and some good music.
But Melody March is in The Horse and Rider, and no matter what that sexy dress and her impulsive behavior tonight might lead the untutored to believe, I know she’s the opposite of the kind of girl I want in my life.
Melody is a Sarah Beth, but worse.
Melody has a killer sense of humor I’ve witnessed in action with her sisters, Melody is brave enough to stand up to disorderly wedding guests when they try to reclaim their keys from the drunk hat, and Melody has a body that won’t stop, a face like an angel, and kisses like…
