AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I never got to do anything like that. I would’ve killed for a neighborhood like this when I was growing up. Well, when I wasn’t sick, that is.” I said.
“You were sick when you were a kid?” She asked sharply, startling me out of my observation of the kids.
That’s when I realized what I’d just said. Fuck. Would she look at me differently when she knew how sick I once was? I didn’t really want to ruin what was left of our walk on things that neither she, nor I, could change.
“When did you get your first tattoo?” I asked, changing the subject, and hoping that she went along with that subject change.
I saw her eye me speculatively out my peripheral vision for long moments before deciding to answer me. “When I was sixteen. My sister bet me thirty dollars to do it, banking on me chickening out. Thirty dollars was a lot of money to a teenager whose father refused to give them money because he thought they’d spend it on frivolous stuff. So I got this one.” She said, pointing at her wrist. “Walked up the tattoo parlor and asked for a sugar skull on my wrist, and the woman gave it to me that day, not even asking me if I was eighteen. Little did I know that the woman was an apprentice and was super excited to get anyone to work on besides fake skin. Should have found out how much it was beforehand, though, because otherwise I would’ve never done it. Cost me two hundred bucks, and I had to call my dad down to the shop to pay for it.”
I burst out laughing. I could just see her dad storming down to that tattoo parlor in his colors, ripping the apprentice a new one for tattooing a minor. “And what did he have to say about that?”
She smiled wistfully. “He didn’t, really. At first, he was kind of miffed, but eventually he got over it. He was the one that took me for the next couple of them. This one,” she said, indicating a line of script I’d read a million times before. “I got the day he died.”
The writing was simple and said, ‘Squeeze you to pieces.’
“What does that mean?” I asked, realizing that it meant a lot to her.
“My mom and dad always said it to each other when they hugged and said goodbye. She’d say, ‘Squeeze you to pieces’and he’d reply with,‘Squeeze you back together.’ They said it to us every chance they got. And when he died, Viddy and I got it tattooed on us. Mine on my wrist, and hers on her ribs. Her tattoo says ‘Squeeze you back together.’ It was her first and only tattoo.” She said wistfully.
“My mom used to have a saying similar to that. ‘I love you, you who.’” I said just as we arrived at the entrance to our complex.
She smiled widely at me, grabbed my arm, and walked with me hand in hand until we arrived at my bike.
“Do you want to do this again tomorrow night when you get home?” She asked hopefully.
My hand came up involuntarily until it rested just under the line of her jaw. I could feel the fluttering of her pulse, as it beat wildly against my palm, and I barely squashed the urge to jeer in acceptance.
“Sure.” I replied as flippantly as I could manage.
Leaning forward, she went up to her tippy toes before giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Be careful at work, do you hear?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I acknowledged as I watched her climb the steps to her apartment.
“Good boy,” she teased as she disappeared inside her apartment.
Oh, if only she knew the thoughts that were pouring through my mind right now, then she wouldn’t be thinking of me as a ‘good’ anything.
• • •
KETTLE
One month later
“What’s up with you today?” Sebastian asked from the station’s kitchen table.
I shut the refrigerator and turned with a bottle of water in my hand. “Nothing.”
It wasn’t nothing, and he and I both fuckin’ knew it.
I was sexually frustrated.
I hadn’t fucked anyone in well over two and a half months now, and everyone kept telling me that I needed to get laid.
Well my fucking dick didn’t want to get laid by justanyone.
It wanted to get laid by the hot as hell chemistry teacher next door.
Except one thing after another kept coming up whether it be my job, or her job, or my club, or her sister.
