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I removed my blazer and draped it over the armrest before making myself comfortable in the chair. Jackson pulled a blue curtain around us that reminded me of the curtains in my mom’s hospital ward, although I tried not to think about that. Cora perched next to me on a stool he pulled up especially for her.
“I’ll put the stencil on first and you can tell me what you think of it,” Jackson said. “Then we’ll make any adjustments you want and after that, we’ll get started. How are you feeling?”
“Nervous,” I admitted. “But glad I’m finally doing this.”
Jackson smiled warmly and pulled the stencil out of a cardboard folder he kept in his trolley — the phoenix drawn in black and white on tracing paper. It was even more intricate than it looked on my phone, and I was awestruck at his talent.
Xavier had already told me the tattoo would take several sessions and now, seeing how intricate it was, I could see why.
“You’ll be glad you did this, I promise,” Jackson said, as he held the stencil above my chest and considered its placement. “But this tattoo’s bigger than your existing one, so I’ll need you to take your top off.”
I hesitated. When the original tattoo was done, I didn’t have to remove any of my clothes — the artist was happy to slide the strap of the tank and my bra down my shoulder. But I could already see that this tattoo would curl around my breasts, so it made sense that he’d need to access more skin.
I pulled it off and gave it to Cora, who folded it. Now I was lying in front of this sexy stranger wearing just my bra and jeans — I felt like I was basically naked.
And it was about to get more intense.
Jackson gestured to my chest.
“And your bra.”
His voice remained steady, like he was asking me to take off a hat. I reminded myself that he must have seen dozens — maybe even hundreds — of breasts in his line of work, but that didn’t make me feel any less self-conscious as I reached behind my back and undid the clasp.
He didn’t look at me — he fiddled with something in his trolley instead — but when his eyes swung in my direction again, they were a hundred percent professional, and stayed on my face.
“Comfortable?” he asked, and I did my best to ignore the fact that not only could he and Cora see my half naked body, but there were at least four other people on the other side of that flimsy curtain.
“Yes,” I lied, and Cora bit her lip like she was trying not to laugh.
“Let’s see how this is going to look,” Jackson said, ignoring Cora as he cleaned my skin and arranged the stencil on my chest. “What do you think?”
In the mirror on the ceiling, I could see how the phoenix was going to cover the entire Nathan tattoo, with lines that were so cleverly designed that the two images would blend together.
“I love it,” I breathed, my self-consciousness forgotten for a moment.
“Great,” Jackson said. He applied the stencil to my skin and patted it gently. I could feel the warmth of his fingers through the tracing paper, and his hot breath on my shoulder as he worked. If he noticed how aroused yet awkward I was feeling, he didn’t show it. “I’ll get a few things ready, and I’ll be back in a minute.”
He left us alone for a moment while he disappeared to the other side of the curtain.
Cora leaned close as she angled her phone toward me so I could see the thumbnail images from the television shows on the screen.
“What would you like to watch? Brides, hoarders, or strippers?” she asked.
“Hoarders,” I said, instinctively knowing I didn’t want the man, no matter how professional he was, to see me watching a series about strippers while he was only inches away from my naked breast.
Cora touched the screen a few times, and the show started, opening on an interview with a woman named Gertrude. She looked normal, although underweight, but then the camera panned around her house to show floor-to-ceiling piles of rubbish.
“This is my living room,” she said, as she stepped over a pile of junk to lead the cameraman through the narrow path where you could barely see the floor.
Old photographs of a neat and tidy suburban home flashed on the screen.
“My husband and I moved into this house in nineteen seventy-eight,” Gertrude narrated, as a photo of her younger self smiling in a much cleaner living room appeared. “Everything was fine until he died, and ever since then, I haven’t seen the point of doing all the things I used to do.”
“How sad,” Cora said, shaking her head so her dark curls swayed around her face.
Jackson returned and sat next to me on a stool similar to Cora’s.
“Final chance,” he said. “Are you a hundred percent sure you love it?”
