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“Ask Susan,” Mason laughed.
“Sally,” Conor corrected.
“Oh, hey, I almost forgot,” Mason said. “Someone called earlier about coming in this afternoon. Wanted something small, but still.”
I could just make out Conor’s huff of irritation. “How many times have I asked you to put all the messages on the board? It can’t be that hard.”
“Look,” Mason said. “Susan can really do wonders for that stick up your ass, Conor. I can give her a call right now.”
“Sally,” was all Conor said before Rian shouted, “Hey, how do you make pancakes?”
A realisation hit me at that exact moment. My smile, which I had held the entire time I’d been eavesdropping on the conversation, fell. My fingertips slipped from the door as I stepped back from it. The warmth disappeared from my body and the harsh wind suddenly found every weak spot: at the frayed collar of my jacket, beneath the oversized waistline, between the gap of my threadbare sweater and the top of my jeans. I shivered, arms coming to wrap around myself. I glanced around me and the sky seemed greyer, the trash bins fuller, the ground dirtier.
How quickly they had moved on from me. How quickly I had been dropped from the conversation, forgotten out in the cold alleyway.I knew for certain that I would not be brought up again that day. Conor had won and Mason and Rian had accepted that. They’d chosen him over me, because of course they would.
They were a family.
I was not a part of it.
I think that’s why the cold felt colder now. I had felt, if only for a little while, true warmth. It had been so nice inside Dublin Ink. The old worn-in furniture. The soft lampshades. The buzz of the broken neon sign. Mason and Rian on either side of me. The tools laid out. All their promises to teach me this, teach me that. Who knew, maybe I’d even make something out of it. I could be a tattoo artist. In those little warm moments, I was sure I could have been anything.
I decided that it was worse to grab onto something that would be taken away than to never have held it in the first place. Better, really, to not grab ahold in the first place.
I thought that Conor was keeping it secret that I had robbed Dublin Ink to protect me. But I was wrong. He hadn’t told them because it hadn’t mattered. In his mind, he had already moved on. Conor was done with me. And now so were Mason and Rian.
I knelt beside my backpack with a mixture of anger and hurt in my heart. Anger at Conor, because he was cruel and judgmental and cold. Anger at myself for not seeing it from the start. Anger at myself for letting myself be hurt by it. Why, why did I keep making the same mistake over and over again? Why did I always stop to find beauty where there was none? Why did I stop every time when I should have run?
It happened like it always happened. I was conscious of the cans in my hands, the cold of the metal biting my skin. I was conscious of the wall as I brushed my fingertips against it, feeling, it seemed, for its heartbeat. I was conscious of the tightness in my chest: tight with emotions that thrashed and tore. But then I was conscious of nothing more. Something inside of me took over. Something I didn’t have control over.
The last thing I remembered thinking before I thought no more was this:Conor had called me a little thief. But he was the one who had stolen something from me.
And worse.
I had let him.
