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“Please,” I uttered, more an exhale than a properly formed word.
Aurnia was having none of it. Of course not.
“You’re either going to teach me how to tattoo right here and right now or you’re going to tell me what the hell is going on. Why you won’t teach me. Why you won’t be kind to me. Why you won’t look at me. Why you won’t go back to your apartment now that I’m there.”
She dumped the contents of her arms onto the drafting desk. I didn’t make a move to catch anything as it skidded off the edge and onto the floor around me. I could feel her glaring at me, my silence only serving to make her madder.
“Well?” she shouted. “What will it be?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, but that only made Aurnia’s voice louder in my ears.
“I’m tired of you holding me hostage. You won’t teach me to tattoo, but that’s the reason why I’m here. Why do you keep me here if you hate me so much? If you can’t stand the very sight of me, just get rid of me.”
Maybe if I could just hold on for a little while. Let her shout. Let her scream. Let her get it out of her system. If she tuckered herself out, she would leave. I’d seen her waiting beneath the rickety old bus stop in the rain before. She would tire. She would leave. Then I could breathe. Then I could scream.
If Aurnia was a freight train she was only gaining steam.
“Because it seems to me, Conor,” she said, the volume of her voice rising, “that you brought me in closer to you only so that you can show me the full extent of your cruelty.”
This was no longer about tattooing. She was talking about me and her. She was talking about us.
There was no us.
There could be no us.
Maybe she could smell the sweat on me. Maybe she would smell it like blood on a wounded animal. Maybe she would see I was sick, that I couldn’t do this right now. Maybe she would step back.
Of fucking course she didn’t step back. She only got closer.
A sudden gust of wind brought a sheet of rain so violently against the window that even if Aurnia had shouted something at me at the top of her lungs I wasn’t sure either of us would have heard it.
I wasn’t going to last long. Aurnia seemed like she was just getting started.
“Why won’t you say something?” she shouted. “Why won’t you say fucking anything? You drive me to this, you push me, you prod me, you dare me to say something and when I finally do you just stand there like a statue? What do you want, Conor? What do you fucking want?”
Couldn’t we go back to talking about shop duties? About the bathroom cleaning schedule? How it wasn’t fair that she had to show up on time when all the rest of us wandered in whenever we damned well pleased?
Those were safe subjects. I could handle that. I could grit my teeth and swallow back a wave of nausea and nod. “You’re right,” I could say. “Anything you want. You’ve got it.” There, I said it. I gave in. Now she could leave.
“I think I know why you don’t teach me to tattoo,” Aurnia said, “because you don’t want me to leave.”
Don’t say it. Dear fucking God, don’t say it.
Aurnia got closer. The pain in my leg was a hot iron.
“The last thing in the world that you want is for me to leave.”
Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t. I wasn’t sure she could get any closer. I wasn’t sure the pain in my leg could get any worse. At least not with me still conscious.
“Because it’s the only thing you can think of to keep me around short of tying me up by my ankles and wrists in the storeroom.”
I was begging whatever god was out there and listening: please don’t let her say it, please, please, don’t let her say it.
Aurnia’s little fingers were on my arm. Couldn’t she feel the heat of my fever? Wasn’t it burning her? Didn’t it give her even the tiniest bit of mercy?
No.
“Because you want me,” she said, her eyes on fire. “Because you’ve wanted me from the second you saw me. You’ve wanted nothing else. And you get off on denying yourself me.”
