Chapter 23
23
NOVA
I flip the sign on the door from OPEN to CLOSED , turning and resting my back against the frame.
Tonight was incredible. Beyond my wildest expectations. I think part of me was afraid that the people who RSVP’d wouldn’t show, but they did. The studio was packed all night long. Evelyn showed me her phone right before she left. The feed of people who checked in to the Ink & Wild location was bursting with color. Pictures of tacos and tattoos and little cookies shaped like flowers.
I’ve been waiting for this feeling. Not quite I made it , but I can fucking do it . I’ve been chasing milestone after milestone since I decided I wanted to open a studio and for the first time I feel…good. Happy. Settled.
Like I can do it.
Some of it is the culmination of months and months of hard work and some of it is the look on my family’s faces when they walked into the space tonight. Beckett’s huff of a laugh when I made him sit in the chair for a tiny tattoo, right next to that maple leaf I gave him over a decade ago. His quiet Proud of you, kiddo when I wiped his new inked birch tree leaf down with a cold wipe.
But some of it is Charlie too. Charlie, who showed up at my house two days ago with some fresh fruit and a pumpkin and decided to rearrange half of my first floor. Charlie, who has chased away the buzzing, anxious feeling with his own brand of distraction. Charlie, who always makes it safe and easy for me to ask for what I need.
Charlie, who drove me to a ferocious, mind-numbing orgasm with his fingers in my office and is now at the back of the studio with a giant trash bag, collecting plastic cups with my logo printed on the side. He stayed because I asked him to, even though I know he didn’t want to.
“You artist types are messy as hell,” he comments from the back of the shop. He mumbles something under his breath about Caleb and cookies and dumps a plate in with the rest of the trash. “I think I got almost everything.”
I circle around my station, collapsing on my stool. It rolls backward across the floor. “I didn’t ask you to stay so you could play custodian, you know.”
He drops the trash bag by the back hallway and walks closer. “Why did you ask me to stay?”
Because he was hurt earlier and trying to hide it. And I don’t like it when Charlie is hurt.
I also have something I want to give him.
I pat the table in front of me.
He blinks at it. “You want me to clean the table?”
“No, Charlie. I want you to sit.”
“On the table?”
“If you want, but you could also sit to the side of it. Whatever your preference.”
“For what?”
I pull out a fresh pair of gloves and tug them on. “For your tattoo.”
Both of his eyebrows shoot up. “You’re finally giving in? You’re gonna give me a scorpion on my ass?”
“If that’s what you want, sure. But I had something else in mind.”
He takes two steps closer. He’s looking at me like I’m about to call his bluff and pull out a Big Bird stencil. “What did you have in mind?”
I pat the table again, then gesture to the stool that’s tucked off to the side. “Take a seat and I’ll tell you.” I snap the gloves against my wrist. “Or show you, I guess.”
Charlie drops himself in the stool across from me, staring hard at the table between us. His eyes drag up to mine and hold, their cobalt blue a brilliant sapphire in the soft glow of my studio. His hair is still messy from my hands and there’s some scruff along his jaw. He looks weary. Exhausted.
Hesitant.
“It’s okay if you don’t want one,” I say quietly. “If you’ve been joking, I understand.”
He doesn’t look away from me. “I haven’t been joking. I just—” He drags his palm over the back of his neck. “I don’t know what I want.”
“I have an idea.”
“Yeah?”
I nod. “I’d like to show you.”
A smile kicks up the side of his mouth. “Is it the poop emoji?”
“Maybe. You’ll just have to see, won’t you?”
I grab a black ballpoint pen from the top of my station. I did stencils tonight because it’s easier for quick turnover, but I usually hand draw with a ballpoint before I finalize with ink. I have more freedom that way. Every body is wonderfully unique, and I like to shape my lines accordingly.
I get out the rest of my supplies and place them in a neat line by my elbow, my body working on autopilot, this routine a familiar comfort. But I feel Charlie’s gaze on me the entire time, his eyes soft and inquisitive, taking in each minute detail. He doesn’t ask any of his questions, though I know he’s probably bursting with them. He just sits, watching, unusually quiet.
I hold out my hand for his and he stares at it.
“What?” he asks.
I wiggle my fingers. “Your hand, please.”
“Knuckle tats?”
I snort a laugh. “Now there’s an idea.”
He’d look good with tattoos over his big hands. I imagine dark lines decorating his fingers as his hands hold me in place, the way they might move when he squeezes my thighs. I have to take a second to compose myself.
He slips his hand into mine with a snicker. “I’d love to know what’s going on in that mind of yours.”
“I’m sure you would.”
I rub my gloved thumb over his knuckles, cradling his hand in both of mine. He has a scar just beneath his pinky. A smattering of freckles over his wrist. So many details I still haven’t noticed about him. So many things left to discover. I trace both and flip his hand over. I work on unbuttoning his cuff, then roll his sleeve. He’s wearing a chambray shirt tonight, a blue so pale it almost looks gray.
“I was thinking right here,” I say quietly, my index finger tracing a line over the inside of his wrist. His fingers flex up toward mine and then relax. “Something small. So your watch can cover it while you’re at work.”
His eyes drift toward the Rolex on my wrist. “Will I be getting my watch back?”
I twist it and make a show of checking the time. His legs shift beneath the table until both of his knees hug one of mine. “I thought you said you had other watches.”
He laughs, his shoulders relaxing. “Yeah, you’re right. I do.”
I grin at him. “Does this spot work? Or do you want something different? You can be honest. You won’t hurt my feelings.”
I watch him swallow, the strong line of his throat working. He doesn’t bother looking down at his wrist. “That spot is good.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Tattoos are forever, you know.”
“I’m aware, Nova.” His fingers twitch up again, tracing the matching spot on my wrist right where my glove ends. “Do your worst.”
I reach for the prep pad and tear it open. “My worst is still pretty damn good, Charlie.”
His face melts into something appreciative, the most he’s looked like himself since I saw him standing on the sidewalk outside the studio trying to decide if he wanted to talk to me or not.
“Ah,” he says. “There she is.”
“Who?”
“You,” he says simply. “In full Technicolor. I like seeing you confident, Nova.”
A blush warms my cheeks. “We’re already sleeping together. You don’t need to flirt,” I deflect, trying to hide how proud that simple observation makes me. That I’ve managed to work through my anxieties and stress and confusion and shine just as bright as I’ve always wanted to. That he sees it. That he’s been seeing it this whole time. “But thank you,” I add quietly. “I like it too.”
His smile settles into something softer. His knees hug mine beneath the table, and I wipe carefully at the place I plan to put his ink. His skin is so delicate here, his veins a web of blue beneath paper thin skin. I trace my thumb back and forth over the spot, even after I’m done with the wipe. Will my touch here carry all the way back to his heart? That spot between his shoulder and neck that always makes him sigh when I kiss it? I like to think so.
I clear my throat and try to scrape together my professionalism, but it’s hard when my knee is tucked between his legs and he’s staring at me like that.
“Are you afraid of needles?” I ask.
“No. Just clowns.”
“Guess I’ll have to change your tattoo design, then.”
“Probably.”
I pick up the razor and drag it over his skin. Tiny efficient movements. I toss it in the wastebasket and reach for my favorite cheap plastic ballpoint.
“You’re going to draw?” he asks.
I nod and flick off the cap with my thumb. “I usually do it like this. Is that all right?”
“You don’t have to keep asking me if it’s okay. I trust you, Nova.”
“Even if it’s a poop emoji?”
“Even then. I’d probably deserve it.”
I squeeze his hand. “You wouldn’t deserve it.”
I’ve known what I wanted to draw for Charlie for weeks now, since that night on his couch when he put Katharine Hepburn on and pressed his thigh to mine. I doodled it on the edge of the pizza box. Seven different variations, over and over again. I’ve been doodling them ever since.
I start in the middle of his wrist, right at that heavy blue line that goes all the way to his heart. I start there and draw outward. I keep my eyes on his skin and the tiny, incremental movements his body makes. The flex and flow of the ink from my pen to the canvas of his body. I inhale deeply through my nose. Spice. Cider. Evergreen and Charlie.
I release my breath and draw some more.
“Nova,” Charlie says, voice low, a hitch in his breath.
I draw another line, my fingers flexing on where I hold his arm steady. “Hmm?”
“I’m sorry.”
I don’t look up, distracted by the tiny petal I’m trying to get right. “Thank you. You should apologize for thinking I’d ever tattoo a clown on anyone,” I murmur.
“Not that. For…for the back room. Earlier. The way I acted.”
“You already apologized for that,” I tell him. I hate that he apologized before, and I hate that he’s apologizing now. He has nothing to be sorry for. Because he gave me something without taking anything for himself?
Knowing Charlie, he probably thinks he took something. What did he tell me the other night? He thinks just the act of wanting something turns him into a selfish man. But that’s not true. I followed him down that hallway because I knew he was upset, and I knew what was upsetting him.
But Charlie thinks he has to earn everything. Even the right to touch me, I guess.
It breaks my heart.
“I didn’t like seeing you with him,” he confesses quietly.
He’s talking about Jake, a tattoo artist I worked with briefly at my old space. Jake has trouble with social interaction the same way Beckett does and tends to cling to people he knows when the room is crowded. He’s kind and quiet, soft-spoken in a way that most men in this industry are not. He came to ask if I needed any help with overflow clients.
“You were jealous,” I say, not a question.
“Yes,” he agrees.
I lift my pen from his arm and look up. He’s staring at me with a serious look on his handsome face, a furrow between his dark eyebrows. I drag my gloved thumb back and forth along the inside of his elbow where I’m gripping him to hold him steady.
“You have nothing to be jealous of,” I whisper.
“I do.”
“You don’t, Charlie. I promise.”
“I do,” he says again, an uncharacteristic hardness to his voice. “Because I know what it feels like to be on the other side of that smile, Nova. That laugh. I know what it feels like to have all of your attention. And I wanted to drag him away from you by the back of that ridiculous TJ Maxx T-shirt for getting even a shred of it.”
I blink at him, and his mouth settles into a firm line, a deep breath pushed out from his nose. His eyes trail along my face like he’s trying to figure something out.
“I want all of your attention,” he tells me. “Every last bit. And I feel like I should probably apologize for that too.”
“I don’t want you to,” I hear myself say. I tilt my face back down to his wrist and pick up my pen. “I don’t want you to apologize.”
I like him jealous. I like him greedy. I like the wild, unrestrained version of him I got in the back office. It feels like he’s finally possessed with the same sort of mindlessness I’ve been carrying around this entire time. I like him honest.
I think I just like him.
More than like him, actually.
I draw another line on his wrist and sit with that, waiting for the inevitable flare of panic. But there’s nothing. There’s only me and Charlie and the steady thrum of his pulse in the strong vein on the inside of his wrist, my heart skittering to match.
I finish with the design and toss my pen on the table between us, tilting my head to the side and taking a look. It’s lovely. Thin, delicate lines that I’ll have to be gentle with, but will be worth the extra care and attention.
I look up at him. “Do you want to see it before I get started with the ink?”
He doesn’t even glance in the direction of his wrist. “No.”
I frown. “Why not?”
“Because I said I trust you, Nova. And that doesn’t have qualifications.”
“But it’s permanent.”
He blinks once. “And I trust you,” he says, the ghost of a grin brushing across his mouth.
It feels like we’re arguing about something in two separate languages. I stare at him and wait for him to change his mind, to yank his wrist out of my hand and laugh at the design I’ve drawn for him, but he keeps his eyes on mine with a steady, calm look.
I reach for the tattoo pen and the tiny pod of black ink. I fill another disposable cup with deep blue and add a few drops of white until it’s the color of the sky on a cold, cloudless day. Pale, pale blue.
Charlie arches an eyebrow at the color but doesn’t say a word.
“If you’re sure,” I offer, one last opportunity for him to back out.
“I’m sure,” he tells me.
I test the trigger of the pen so he can hear the sound. He doesn’t so much as jump, his arm still extended on the table between us, palm up. Trusting.
“It’ll be a pinch when I first start,” I say. “It’ll hurt, but once the blood starts moving in that direction it’ll calm down. It’s a small design. It shouldn’t take me long.”
“I can take it,” he tells me with a cocky grin that falters somewhere in the middle. He’s trying so hard tonight to be the person he usually is in front of everyone else. Good Time Charlie and all the shiny, sparkly things that are meant to distract. He said I’m in Technicolor, but tonight he’s hiding in shades of gray, none of his usual colors shining through. He’s watering himself down, for whatever reason.
I wish he’d stop.
I dip my pen into the pod of ink and let the needle fill, then settle over the design on his wrist. The hum of the pen vibrates from my fingers to my wrist, up my arm and over my shoulder until it feels like my entire being is alive with the rhythm. This is my favorite part. The anticipation right before I set my needle to skin.
I am the one in control. I am the one creating something beautiful on another person. Something permanent. Something lasting.
I tend to lose myself when I’m working, time turning into a fluid concept that slips right from my fingers as I dip my pen into ink over and over. I trace the lines on Charlie’s wrist, my awareness of him reduced to the stretch of his arm across the padded table and his steady breathing. He doesn’t flinch or twitch. His body relaxes into it, a curious, contemplative look on his face every time I flick my eyes up to check on him.
He’s a natural.
“Do you remember when you asked me why I’m always down here?” he asks about ten minutes into my work. My body jolts at the scratch in his voice, bringing me back to the room where there is light and sound and something other than ink and skin and bone and vein.
I lift my pen from his wrist. I asked him about that weeks ago. “Yeah, I remember. You told me you spend time here because you like the food.”
“I do. Like the food. But that’s not—” He swallows, and I know he’s fighting to keep himself still. “That’s not the only reason I visit.”
I turn back to his wrist and trace another smooth line. “What’s the other reason?”
I have my theories. Charlie might smile and laugh and joke when people are watching, but his shoulders curl in as soon as they turn away. He collapses in on himself in increments. It’s like he’s tired down to his bones from the strain of trying to pretend.
Charlie is always doing his best to make everyone around him happy. I used to think it was because it made him feel good, but I think it’s deeper than that. I think he needs to be the loudest laugh in the room. He needs to entertain. He needs to feel like he’s earned his spot.
His body collapses with a sigh, the hand not outstretched on the table scrubbing roughly at the back of his head.
“I’m lonely, Nova,” he says, his voice cracking down the middle of my thoughts, sucking the air right out of my lungs. It’s the simple honesty of the statement, I think, that hits me the hardest. He’s not trying to hide at all.
I don’t look up, offering him the privacy of my diverted attention. But there’s a tremble in my hand that wasn’t there before, and I have to take a second before I finish another two lines on his wrist.
Tell me more , my mind begs, even as my heart feels like it’s going to thump right out of my chest onto the floor. Tell me everything.
His pinky flexes, grazing right below my glove again, and then relaxes. The trembling in my hands stops, my grip sure around the tattoo pen.
“I try to convince myself I’m not with all the ridiculous shit I do, but I’m lonely all the time. I go to work, and I keep myself busy with things I don’t care about, and I come back to a fancy apartment with everything I could ever want, and I feel…nothing. Empty. I’m empty when I’m there, and my brain tries to fill the space with thoughts that go around and around, and I…I’m always halfway here before I realize it.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t. I’m too busy picturing him in a gorgeous New York City apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows and a view of a glittering skyline. In a chair that probably costs more than anything I’ve ever owned, his suit jacket folded over the back of it and a half-empty glass of something at his elbow.
I think of him there, all alone, and I ink another line.
“I’m a disappointment to most people. My father in particular. He wants me to be something I’m not. I’ve tried my whole life to get there, but I don’t think I’ll ever reach the bar he’s set for me. I’m not sure he wants me to.” He drags his free hand through his hair until it sticks up in the back, the same way it does first thing in the morning. “I think I’m tired of trying.”
I finish with the black and set the machine to the side, wiping a cold cloth over his skin. He releases another breath. “So, that’s the answer. That’s why I’m always here. Because I don’t feel so empty when I’m spending time in Inglewild. I know it’s not where I’m supposed to be, but I like to pretend it could be.”
I refill my pen with the blue. “What do you mean it’s not where you’re supposed to be?”
“My whole life is in New York,” he says gently. “This is temporary. I’ve…inserted myself. I don’t fit here. Not really.”
“You still think that? Even now?” I shade another petal. “Don’t you have a standing lunch with Caleb and Alex’s grandmother once a month?”
“I do, but—”
“And weren’t you just sharing bean dip recipes on the street like a week ago?”
“I was, but—”
“Shut up for a second.”
I finish with the last of the shading and flick the machine off, setting it behind me to clean later. I drag another cloth over the design and then glance up at Charlie, holding on to his wrist with both of my hands. He’s staring at me with a smile in the lines by his eyes but nowhere else, a softness in his expression that he reserves for the dead of night when I’ve stolen his shirt to sleep in and I can’t stop yawning in his face. When our legs are tangled beneath the blankets and his arm is heavy over my hip.
Stolen moments when he doesn’t think I’m looking.
“No one feels bad for you, Charlie. No one is…entertaining you to make you feel better about yourself.”
He cheeks pink, the slightest bit. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him blush. We stare at each other. His face is a mask. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Despite the ease with which he supports others, I don’t think Charlie has ever had someone do the same for him. I think he’s been holding on to these secrets for a long time.
I never thought I’d want to be that person for anyone. But it’s easy enough to twist my fingers through his and squeeze. He squeezes back.
I want to ask him if he feels like he fits with me. If he’s comfortable in the spaces we occupy together. But I swallow the words back down.
I already know the answer to that question. Charlie has always made it very clear.
I peel off my gloves and toss them in the wastebasket, then grab some Aquaphor and start to slather it over his tattoo. He still hasn’t looked at it. “Do you want to see what it is?” I ask gently.
“I’m working myself up to it.”
“Do you want me to do a countdown? I can start at ten if you’d like.”
“Maybe start at one hundred.”
A laugh bursts out of me. His smile finally drops from his eyes to the rest of his face. It feels like a victory.
“You’re really that nervous?” I ask.
“I don’t know. It feels like a big deal.”
“It is a big deal,” I tell him simply. “I told you, tattoos are permanent.” Not to mention I’ve been drawing exactly this for weeks on every piece of scrap paper I could get my hands on. Whenever my brain turned off and my hand started doodling, I’d find this tattoo scribbled along the edges. I finally realized what my brain has been trying to tell me. It’s a gift for Charlie, sure, but it’s a confession too. I swallow. “You can look when you’re ready.”
He breathes in deep through his nose and watches me, eyes trailing across my face like he’s still waiting for me to tell him this is all one big joke. But it’s not a joke, and I don’t tattoo things I don’t mean for the people I care about most. Charlie, despite my best intentions and probably his as well, is the person I care about most. And I’m not nearly as scared of that as I used to be.
Growth, maybe. Or maybe I’m learning to listen to myself a little bit better. I don’t know.
Apprehension pricks between my shoulders as I wait for him to look. I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous for someone to see a final design. Not even Beckett, the very first time.
He flicks his gaze down to his wrist and the thin design I tattooed there.
“It’s a flower,” he says, bending his head closer to get a better look.
I nod and swivel back and forth on my stool. “Do you know what kind of flower it is?”
He shakes his head. “Frankly, I’m still trying to get over the fact that you had an opportunity to tattoo Colonel Sanders on me and you didn’t.”
I ignore him. “It’s a forget-me-not. I think my brain sometimes thinks in flowers and plants. My dad talked about them so much when we were growing up, it was inevitable. He had this big botanical book on the edge of his desk in his workshop. Always in the same spot. I don’t think he moved it once. I’d sit on the table while he worked and I’d flip through it. I liked to trace the stems and the flowers with my finger. Eventually I started tipping over flower pots to draw in the soil instead.”
Charlie grins. “I bet your dad loved that.”
“He didn’t. By the fifth time I did it, he went out and got me a sketch book. I drew every flower and tree and root system in that book. And when I finished, I just started all over again.”
“Ink and Wild,” he says softly, still with that smile on his face. “The flowers in your logo. What are they?”
“You noticed.”
His eyes are soft. Knowing. “I always notice you, Nova girl.”
I smile back. Yeah. Yeah, he does.
“ Astrantia ‘Roma.’ They’re for courage. Strength. I wanted a reminder that I have both of those things. That I can do this.”
Charlie’s thumb nudges against mine when our hands lay flat on my table. “Fuck yeah, you can.”
My smile tugs wider, something that always seems to happen when I’m talking to Charlie. I used to hate it but I think I love it now. I think I crave it. “I’ve always liked flowers best. They’re pretty, but more resilient than people give them credit for.” I trace my thumb along the bottom edge of the stem that curls along his wrist. The pale blue petal tucked carefully right next to that precious vein right under his skin. “Forget-me-nots, in particular. They’re one of my favorites. They’re almost constantly in bloom, always tilting toward the sun.”
Charlie’s eyes search my face. “And you picked this one for me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because—” I try to figure it out for myself, why I started drawing them on a pizza box while Charlie sat on the couch next to me, trying so damn hard to keep himself in bloom. “Probably because your eyes remind me of page seventy-three in the Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers . Forget-me-not blue.”
Charlie swallows and looks back down at the flower on his wrist. “What does it symbolize?” He shifts in his seat like he’s afraid of the answer. “This flower. What does it mean?”
“Fidelity,” I explain. “Loyalty and respect.”
Charlie keeps looking at the flower. “You respect me?”
“One of the most beautiful things about you is your big heart and your faithfulness to the people you care about. I know you think you’re being selfish, taking affection for yourself, but you’re not. It’s generosity. The best sort of love. I know you feel like you need to earn your place, Charlie, but you don’t. Not in this town and not”— not with me , I almost say—“not anywhere else.”
I think of what Beckett said to me in my kitchen. The thing about love. “It’s just yours,” I whisper to Charlie. “Yours to have and yours to keep. You don’t have to earn anything. You belong here. And I…I wanted to give you this flower because I want you to know that you don’t have to be anything other than exactly who you are. I know you’ve been hiding, Charlie. But I see all of your colors. The bright ones and the dark ones too. I see how you’re always tilting toward the sun. Forget-me-nots were always my favorite, and—well. You’re kind of my favorite too.”
That big knot in my chest untangles a little more. He keeps staring at the flower. He stares at it for so long without a single word that my tiny prick of apprehension turns into a fist pressing right in the center of my back.
He doesn’t like it.
“It’s small enough that you can cover it with your watch easily enough,” I tell him quietly, trying not to let regret swallow me whole. He’s too quiet. Too still. I assumed a lot and said too much. He probably hates the damn thing. “Or I could—”
“Nova,” he says quietly, cutting me off. His voice is rougher than I’ve ever heard it.
I quiet. “Yes?”
He lifts his newly tattooed arm and wipes quickly under his eye. He sniffs once and digs his knuckle into his cheek. His eyes drag up to meet mine, red rimmed but bright.
Forget-me-not blue.
“I’ve never been anyone’s favorite,” he whispers.
“Well,” I say, feeling defensive. “You’re mine.”
He leans his body across the table and cups his hand around my face, hauling me to him. His kiss is slow and deep, a methodical undoing of every last hesitation I have.
I fall into it happily.
“Nova,” he whispers, somewhere against my mouth. “I don’t think my feelings are business casual.”
I sigh into him. I hold on to him wherever I can reach. “I don’t think mine are either.”