“Not helpful.”
“She hates roses,” Alpha says from behind us.
Everyone looks at him.
He doesn’t glance away from Amour. “Don’t get a rose.”
“Look at him participating,” Magic says. “Love makes nerds brave.”
Alpha’s eyes cut. “Say love again and I will make your banking history public.”
“Too late,” I say, showing him the skulls and roses already inked on my arm.
Magic points at Vice. “He said tattoo.”
Vice runs this tattoo shop, but he ain’t currently sober enough to ink a straight line, so he drags in one of the shop artists from the back, a quiet woman named Ren who has seen too much of this club to be impressed. She looks at me, looks at Magic, looks at the bottle in my hand.
“No ribs,” she says. “No hands. No throat. He’s drunk.”
“I’m emotionally enhanced,” I say.
“You’re tequila with hair.”
We settle on the inside of my left forearm, above the wrist. Small. Black linework.
A crescent moon over a broken road.
Five tiny beat marks under it.
Two close together. Three spaced after.
Lady’s road.
Lady’s night.
Lady surviving because she turned fear into directions and music into a map.
Ren lifts a brow when I tell her.
“That’s actually romantic,” she says.
“Don’t sound surprised.”
“You look like romance means felony.”
“I’m a criminal. It usually does.”
The needle starts buzzing.
Pain cuts through the alcohol enough to clear my head for a minute. I watch the ink go in and think of Lady’s fingers against my cut, Lady’s mouth saying you cannot have me yet, Lady going cold because the whole world found a way into her bedroom.
Magic leans over my shoulder. “Aww. Our murder GPS got feelings.”
“I will stab you with this needle.”
Ren doesn’t look up. “No stabbing during the tattoo.”
“After?”
