“See, now you’re just making it weird.”
“She just has energy, period,” Kit agrees, sinking into a chair next to us. “I ran out of shit to give her to do at like noon and she was still asking me for chores.” He glances sideways at Pan. “But I wasn’t training her tofetchor anything.”
“All right, already!” Pan slugs back more of his drink and leans his head back on the settee.
“What’d you have her do?” Fox asks. Kit shrugs.
“Mostly she just wanted to learn about tattoos,” he says. “How it works, if it hurts. Wanted to know what all of us have, and why.”
For a second, his gaze drifts to me, his eyes clear and intent behind his glasses. The tiniest frown pinches between his eyebrows—not angry, but something else…an expression I recognize but can’t place.
And then it’s gone.
“Oh, and whether or not they hurt.” Kit sucks his teeth. “Did you know they tattoo racing greyhounds?”
“No,” Fox gasps, at the same time Pan says “duh.”
Concentration,I realize. That’s it. The same look I’ve seen on Kit when he’s hunched over his sketchbook.
But why onme?
Pan sits up a little straighter. “How did you not? Doesn’t everyone know that? Thought it was common knowledge.”
Fox shakes his head vigorously. “No. Did you know that, Tink?”
“Huh?” I say. “Nothing. What are we talking about?”
Footfalls rattle the spiral stairs behind us, and I turn, expecting Wendy, but seeing…Blue. Who I guess has decided to spend time with us after all.
“Yo,” Fox says. “Did you get me a soda?”
Blue says nothing and drops onto the settee, not next to Pan so much ason topof him. Stretches out his legs. Reclines his arms behind his head like he couldn’t be more relaxed.
“Much better.”
Beneath him, Pan grunts. “The hell’s wrong with you?” he sputters, trying and failing to shove Blue off. “You weigh like a thousand pounds or something?”
Blue grins. “Only in my cock.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“Youfuck off.”
Pan shoves Blue, Blue shoves Pan, and by the time Wendy returns clutching one can of Coke Zero and one can of Monster, they’re full-on wrestling on the shop floor.
“Um…” She pauses at the threshold from the landing to the shop proper. “Are you guys…fighting?”
“Just having a friendly argument,” Pan says through Blue’s half-nelson, and flashes her an OK sign with a wince. “All good.”
“They just do this,” Fox explains. “A…lot.”
Blue flips Pan to the carpet with athudbefore rising easily from his crouch. “What, like you and fuckin’ Tweedle-Dum over there aren’t always getting into it?” he pants, nodding at Kit.
Kit does a palms-up. “I’m a conscientious objector.” He frowns, then glances down at his phone. “And I’m also goingto get my pizza.Mypizza,” he adds as he stands, sweeping a warning gaze around the room. “Which I ordered for me, and me alone.”
Twenty minutes later,we’ve collectively reduced Kit’s pizza to nothing but grease stains and the bones of crusts and the conversation has turned to variouswho would win in a fights.
“I think…” Wendy narrows her eyes, looking between Fox mid-chew on his fourth slice and Kit a few feet away. Her face falls. “Sorry. But I think him.” She nods at Fox.
