“I’m not giving you details, so don’t fucking bug me about it, but we’ve had a few… encounters.”
“Encounters,” Sean echoes, deadpan. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
“Jesus, this was a bad idea,” I mutter.
“I’m kidding,” he says, picking his machine back up and leaning over my arm. The small “XLVI” he’s inking onto my inner bicep is nearly finished. When Sean suggested we get tattoos to commemorate the success we’ve had so far with Immortal Ink, I figured, what’s one more? It was his idea to get the building number in roman numerals.
He opted for bigger, blockier letters on the side of his forearm. The new ink looks shiny under the layers of ointment and plastic protective wrap I’d put on him about an hour ago.
“If you like her, man, I say go for it,” Sean continues, raising his voice to be heard over the noise of the machine. “Worst that can happen is – wait, did she say yes?”
“She did.” I still can’t wrap my head around that one. I thought for sure she’d turn me down, or at least hesitate. Instead, I got an enthusiasticof course.
Fucking incredible.
“Okay, you’re off to a good start. Maybe it’ll go well, maybe it won’t. Just take it one day at a time.”
Goddamn, why does the thought of Elsie and I not hitting it off beyond our physical attraction feel like a dagger to the gut? It doesn’t make sense, the way my body – hell, maybe even my goddamn heart – feels like it has a claim over her already. I see her and the only coherent thought running through my head is,mine. She feels like mine, and I don’t know how to grapple with the fact that she isn’treally. Not yet.
Every day is torture, watching her through the window between our shops and wondering what’s going through that gorgeous head of hers. Those few days when she was avoiding me were torture, the way she would run and hide every time I tried to pop over and talk to her. Fuck, I’m glad we got past that.
“I’m not sure I know how to do the whole dating thing,” I admit.
It’s been weighing on me, the idea that I won’t measure up to whatever expectations Elsie might have. I’m sure Deja would tell me it’s some deep-rooted trauma from my childhood coming to surface. She’d probably relate it to the way I always thought if I just tried harder in school, or did more chores around the apartment, my mom would actually stick around.
She thinks I have a fear of abandonment, and it’s why I never settle anywhere for more than a few years. “You can’t be left behind if you take off running first,” she’s said before.
She might be onto something there. But I’ve also never done the whole boyfriend thing. Never met anyone else that I feel this strange pull toward, this inexplicable need to make themmineand do my damnedest not to let them go.
I can’t help this nagging fear that I could be putting myself out there only to fuck it all up, the way I have with so many other things in my life.
“Hell, I didn’t know what I was doing either, before meeting Frankie,” Sean points out. “And trust me, she let me know when I was doing a shit job.” He chuckles at the memory, but the thought of screwing things up with Elsie makes my palms start sweating. “Mistakes are inevitable. It’s how you learn from them that matters. You fuck up, you learn from it, you do better next time.”
I nod, committing his advice to memory. Sometimes you really just need someone to tell you it’s okay to not know what the fuck you’re doing.
“Thanks, man,” I tell him, watching as he expertly shades in the letters on my arm. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Not that I want to scare you off from asking me for advice,” Sean says, a bit too nonchalantly, “but I think I can count on one hand thenumber of times you’ve asked for advice over the years and it wasn’t tattoo related.”
He sets his machine down and grabs a paper towel and soap to wipe down the fresh ink. I watch as the diluted green liquid drips onto my skin and he wipes it away, leaving a shiny new tattoo in its wake.
“Was there a question somewhere in there?”
“Just wondering what’s up,” he says, still not looking at me. Not at my face, anyway; his attention is on my arm, where he’s slathering on a layer of ointment to go under the protective wrap. “You seem different here, in Port Myles. Not bad,” he hastens to add. “Just… different.”
I hesitate. I know this could be a good opportunity to finally let Sean in on some of my shit. I could just bite the bullet and do it.
I grew up with an addict for a mom and my grandparents had to do most of the raising me while she was too busy getting high, forgetting I existed and leaving me behind when her latest boyfriend convinced her to skip town with him.
I’m in this tiny ass town because it’s close to where my mom lives, but far enough away that I can still breathe without being suffocated by all of the shitty memories I have of her and growing up in Portland.
I’m finally trying to build a relationship with my mom and also quit running from my problems, which is why I let you talk me into coming here and working with you, and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I’ve been in therapy for six years and I’m only now starting to feel like I’m turning into the kind of person I want to be.
I’m asking you for help because my therapist convinced me I need to let people in, and you’re the first person I’ve ever wanted to.
There’s a lot I could say right now, but I don’t think I’m ready yet. Not positive I ever will be.
