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“Fuck you, stupid cunt.”
“Not likely, sissy.”
“Ricki!” Murray was standing now, his own face full of rage.
“Oh, shit,” Jason whispered, and I shot him a glare.
Okay, maybe I should have backed down, but nothing I had said was any worse than the shit Murray would say on a regular basis to his own customers.
He was just pissed because I wasme.
Meaning not one ofthem.
Fucking boys’ club.
Sighing in defeat, I walked away from both of them and stripped off my gloves to begin cleaning up my station, gathering the tools, and preparing everything for the autoclave.
Some days, I hated this place.
And other days, Ireallyhated it. When Murray agreed to take me on as an apprentice, I had big dreams of creating beautiful art that people would love to have on their bodies. Pieces that they would cherish for the rest of their lives, things that folks on the street would stop and ask them about.
Instead, what I got was a position as the shop whipping girl, doing all the grunt work and chores, and settling for whatever cheap-ass customer wanted to take a chance on me because they didn’t really have the funds or the desire to pay full price.
The thing of it was, I was a great fucking tattoo artist. Something about it just came naturally to me. I could look at a person’s skin and justseethe piece, how it would flow over the curves of their body, which colors would best compliment their natural tones, and how to make it really pop, whether in color or black and white.
Art was my passion, and working on the human body is literally what brought my art to life.
But finding a shop where a woman was appreciated for her work and not how much cleavage she was showing was like finding a needle in a New York City sized haystack.
What I wanted—what I dreamed about day and night for as long as I could remember—was a shop of my own. A place where I could be comfortable in my position and my art and not have to worry about kowtowing to the big bad man who ran the joint or to all the poser alpha-wannabe’s who only wanted ink because they thought it made them look tough.
These punk ass kids had absolutely zero appreciation for the art, for the beauty of a piece as an extension of the soul.
They just wanted to look like they were hardcore, and I hated it.
But my apprenticeship was almost over, and when I was a full-blown employee of this shop, they wouldn’t be talking to me like I was just the office eye candy anymore.
My work would speak for itself.
Loading the last of my tools into the cartridge, I started the autoclave and headed back out to the main floor, not at all surprised to see that Javier had fled the scene. I hoped he hated his incomplete calf piece and that it took Murray six months to pencil him in to finish it.
Served him right.
Once I’d wiped down my station and had it ready for the next customer willing to let me work on them, I went about the rest of the things I was supposed to be doing in a day: all the cleaning.
I started with the glass cleaner, spraying down the massive windows that made up the front wall of the shop, making sure there were no fingerprints on the door before moving on to the counter and finally the coffee station. While I worked, I let myself get lost in the constant buzz of the coil machines and the drone of the heavy rock music Murray liked to keep at a ridiculous volume while he worked, my mind drifting to all the things I would do differently when I finally owned my own place.
One day.
Hopefully.
I was almost finished sweeping the whole shop, my feet aching from so many hours spent on the concrete floors, when my phone started vibrating in my back pocket.
Fishing it out, I answered without looking.
“Yeah?” I said, not really caring who was on the other end of the line, simply grateful for the interruption.
“Hey, Ricki,” came a voice I hadn’t heard in way too long. “You busy?”
