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I whipped around and they both shrank back from the intensity of my glare.
“They’re not taking on new clients,” I said.
“Okay,” they both stammered, practically clutching at each other in fear. And people said I wasn’t charming.
Without another word, I shouldered my way back through the crowd, all thronging forward, pushing and shoving for their turn. The safe and the heart and the two words “Little Thief” would be put on social media and shared and tagged and more people would show up.
The brats would knock on the door of Dublin Ink, stick their pimply faces inside, ask meekly if they could get “what’s outside” on their hip, on their thigh, on their ankle. But the art didn’t mean anything to them. It was just a pretty, trendy thing to shock their parents with, arouse their horny boyfriends with. The art would flare up in popularity and burn out as it always did and no one would care about it the way I did. It would never mean to them what it meant to me. And I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t fucking stand it.
A little line of young people followed me timidly like they were ducklings and I was their fucking mother.
Inside Dublin Ink, Mason and Rian were both talking with girls who were raising their sweaters or tugging down the collars of their button-down shirts, pointing excitedly.
“Out!” I said, holding open the door. “Out, out, out.”
Mason and Rian began to protest, but I spoke over them.
“Sorry, loves, we’re closed.”
Mason jotted down his number for one of the girls, but I snatched it from her fingerless gloves on the way out. I slammed the door and switched off the “Open” sign and drew the drapes.
Declan was grinning at me from the tattoo chair when I turned around.
“A private session,” he said. “Lucky me.”
