Chapter 29 Rachel
Currently playing: Burning for you by Blue Oyster Cult
***
Adam: No run tonight. I’ve got other plans for us.
I’ll bring the candles, you bring the whipped cream?
Adam: Not those kinds of plans.
Go on…
Adam:Meet me at the house when your shift is over. I want to check off another bucket list item.
Are we going to get a chinchilla?
Adam:No.
Adam: They carry diseases.
So do most men.
Adam: Touché.
“A tattoo shop?” I gasped a laugh at Adam’s smug grin as we hopped off his bike. “You’re getting another tattoo?”
He shrugged a single shoulder. “Me and you both, honey.”
I think he knew how well the whole honey thing was working on me because he’d throw it into a sentence when he didn’t want me to say no. Can you make me more of those sourdough bagels, honey? I said yes every time.
“Wha—” I laughed with my head thrown back, looking up at the bright neon flashing sign. “I am not.” My smile couldn’t go away, no matter how hard I tried to pull it down.
“Come on, Steve. You’ve been wanting one for years. Now’s the time to do it.”
I glared at his nickname for me. That one and honey definitely had the opposite effects on me. My teeth bit down on my lip, and it curled immediately. I had wanted one for a long time. I’d told Adam years ago, and he had apparently kept it locked in that everlasting vault that he called a brain.
He leaned in closer to me, whispering low. “Think about the list.”
A snort left me. “Easy for you to say. You have like twenty tattoos. I’m an ink virgin.”
“If it helps, you can pick out what I get.”
I raised a brow at him. “Anything?”
“Anything.”
“What about my name on your butt? In a very feminine font and lots of hearts.”
He winced. “If that’s what you want.”
I would never truly ask for it, but Adam was a man of his word. That…left some interesting possibilities on the table. I glanced inside the large windows of the tattoo shop. It wasn’t like any of the places I’d seen before, but then again, that was mostly on TV. I didn’t see any burly men in leather jackets with mean scowls and clenched fists. No sign of the stereotypical framed skull paintings or tall, scary people with large holes in their ears and tattooed eyebrows that said try me.
No, this looked more like a casual coffee shop than somewhere to get a Care Bear permanently inked on your tush. Not that that’s what I wanted. Though it was kind of tempting. Clean, crisp white walls with a multitude of plants scattered around the room. A brown leather couch on one wall, and a few chairs on the opposite side. Mirrors lined the wall behind the chairs. One girl had her back facing it, her neck craned to view a freshly inked tattoo.
If I was going to get a tattoo, this would probably be the place.
Adam’s tattoos were always tastefully done. An array of flowers for his mom, his nephews’ names in handwritten script, the tribal one, the plane, on and on. I had always been a my body is a temple kind of gal when it came to the thought of getting any ink. I assumed I would get something and regret it, but then I saw all of Adam’s and my interest was suddenly piqued, and all previous assumptions dissipated.
“Do you regret getting any?”
“No. They are all what I needed most at the time I got them.”
I looked up at Adam. He was smirking down at me. “Come on, you can watch me first if you want. Or we can do you first, to get it over with.”
I still hesitated, and he sucked in a breath, dipped down to whisper to me. “I’ll hold your hand the whole time.”
That was enough motivation for me.
I reached a hand down to his wrist and wrapped my fingers around it, squeezing tight around his warmth. He nodded down at me and led me inside.
“Adam!” a low voice called across the room. A short older man with dark skin hobbled over to the front. “You did not call me—” The man’s eyes looked from Adam to me, halting his movements.
I shifted, pulling my hand from Adam’s wrist. The man’s lips pulled in a slow smile, and he waved a shaky pointer finger at me. “Ah, you are Rachel.”
“I am.” I smiled, and Adam stiffened behind me.
The man had a small name tag on that read Clyde. He reached for my hands, his cold, wrinkled fingers wrapping around mine and giving them a firm shake. “Oh, you are prettier than I even imagined. Our Adam did not do you justice.”
He dropped my hands and turned to Adam behind me. “What are we here for today? Want to add to your back?”
“Actually I was thinking about filling the last spot on my forearm.” He twisted his arm to show one free space about three inches below the bend of his elbow. “Also, she’s getting her first.”
Clyde lit up like a child who’d been told he could see Santa at the mall. “Your first? Do we know what we’re getting?”
Annoying as it was, Adam was right. I’d known what I wanted for a tattoo for years. I hadn’t ever worked up the courage. I pulled up a Pinterest board named One Day and scrolled until the familiar image came up.
I twisted the phone to Clyde, and he pulled his glasses down and squinted at it. “How lovely. It fits you well.” He directed a hand to an empty chair and a younger, gladiator-like man standing behind it on his phone. “Brendan, can help yo—”
“No,” Adam interrupted, his baritone alone causing my skin to raise. “Felicity. She can see Felicity.”
He gestured to the woman that was wrapping some kind of film around a girl’s arm at her chair. Clyde smiled at him. “Sure, son.”
After thirty minutes of signing waivers and getting a pep talk from Adam—which was more of a physical reassurance than a conversation—I felt ready. Ready enough, I guess.
Felicity laid me face down, and adjusted my shirt so she could see my back more clearly. She wiped me down and showed me a stencil of what I wanted.
It was exactly what I imagined, but custom tailored to me. A set of my favorite headphones, the ones that wrap around your head and rest on your ears like a couple of clouds, with a pink bow tied to each earpiece. Two of my favorite things, mixed into one tiny art piece. My love for music wrapped up in a perfect package with the cutest bow on top. It was everything.
I turned to get Adam’s approval, not that I truly needed it.
“What do you—”
“I love it.” He smiled, staring at my tiny ink patch. A real, true smile full of pride. My chest felt weightless, and a tingling started at my head and spread down to my toes. My heart picked up speed, a tap, tap, tap on my chest, almost like an alarm going off. Warning: you are getting way too excited over a single smile. Yet it only made me want to hurry this process a little longer. Maybe sign up to get another one just to witness that smile again.
“You ready, honey?” Adam dipped his head to the chair, and I quickly nodded.
My excitement quickly turned to agony as Felicity, who I’d initially liked but was now plotting the demise of, stabbed me over and over again.
Truthfully, I’d always thought I had a pretty high pain tolerance. I’d broken my wrist in middle school and didn’t even know until the next day because it felt a little sore. When my dad and I went to a Foo Fighters concert about six months before his diagnosis, in the heat of the moment—a.k.a. the drum solo of “One Of These Days”—it seemed like a great idea for me to crowd surf. It was more crowd than surf, considering I got trampled on by many grown men. My dad had to stick a hand out in the crowd and pull me up like a child drowning in the deep end without her floaties.
Even then, I wasn’t this fazed.
Maybe it was the needle itself, or the fact that I had become more of a pansy the older I got, but this was torment. And if Adam hadn’t been here, chances were I would have jumped off this table the minute Felicity put that forsaken needle to my innocent back. Leaving with a single black dot that looked like more like a freckle than any sort of tattoo would be a lot less embarrassing if my husband wasn’t right beside me. But he was, and considering he was entirely covered in tattoos, these must be worth it, right? Otherwise why would anyone get more than one?
“You’re doing so good.” He squeezed my hand, which was tightly wrapped around his, my fingers digging into the back side of his hand and forcing all pain to go away.
“Look at you, not even crying.” He chuckled a bit. “You’re better than Liam.”
He didn’t do good?was what I wanted to ask, but it came out more like “He didn’t—Ah-—dogoo?”
Adam smiled at me, brushing one rogue tendril of hair off my forehead. This felt oddly like the birthing videos we were forced to watch in high school. “Cried the entire time. Had to take a break every two minutes. I think the artist was ready to kick him out. By the time we were finished he was begging for another though, and now he’s got a sleeve similar to mine.”
I laughed and immediately winced because Felicity took advantage of the opportunity to move closer to my shoulder blade. The sharp needle pain shuddered through me, a vibration forming the closer she got to the bone. And not the good kind.
“Why don’t we go pick out a new vinyl after this?” He rubbed his thumb over my hand.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Or we can get that name tattooed on my ass if you’re still interested.”
I snorted. “That is very tempting.”
About an hour of torture later, I had a tattoo. A real one. Not one of those fake floral ones that I’d gotten on a whim at PCB on Spring Break in 2010 that resulted in a fiery rash a week later. A real, life changing, forever there tattoo.
I turned my back to the mirror, admiring the outline art again and again. My cheeks hurt from smiling. I couldn’t stop staring. It was absolutely perfect. And Adam’s approving grin made it that much better.
Twisting on my heel, I reached for Adam. “I want another one.”
I could totally see how people found these addicting. I was already envisioning a tiger on my thigh, or maybe a Bob Dylan lyric. The possibilities were endless. I could very well leave here in six hours looking like a children’s doodle pad and still be this excited.
“Maybe let’s just let this one heal first, yeah?” He reached a firm hand to my lower waist, slightly rubbing up and down, leading me in a trance.
I nodded and turned my back to Felicity, who had now worked her way back into my good graces, to wrap me up. She gave me a detailed list of instructions that were really hard to pay attention to due to the high I was riding, but I didn’t have to even worry about it. Adam always made sure I was taken care of. This was no different.
When his turn came, he sat in front of the next free station, which was Mr. Gladiator—Brendan—from earlier. Adam ground his molars when he very politely introduced himself to me. Then he shortly explained to the guy what he wanted and settled in his chair, forearm up.
Since he was more accustomed to the process, Adam’s tattoo didn’t take nearly as long, and unfortunately, he didn’t need nearly as much hand-holding as I had. Though he did wince at one spot, a quick sucked-in breath through gritted teeth that had me flying across the spinny chair fully prepared to deck Brendan. He assured me it was a more sensitive spot, but I still hated the sight.
With Adam’s finished up, I pulled out my camera to take a picture to send to his siblings. Thankfully we hadn’t had to tiptoe near as much around them, considering we were now married.
“Let me see it!” I squealed, but as the art came into view, my heart stuttered. The track in my head scratched, playing the same note again and again.
On the one free space of his forearm sat a thinly outlined record, on one side was a scripted R and on the other, an A. I stared at it for a moment, then two, frozen entirely, until his voice broke into my halted brain.
“It’s not your name on my ass, but it’s as good as I could get ya.”
He shrugged a single shoulder as if the man had simply given me half of his side of fries or had agreed to split the cost of an Uber.
“Adam.” My mouth dropped, closed, and dropped again.
They are all what I needed most at the time I got them. That’s what he said before, wasn’t it? Granted, that was years ago, but still.
“You just…it’s beautiful.” I hadn’t realized my eyes were tearing up until I felt a single droplet on my cheekbone, slowly caressing its way down my face.
Adam’s eyebrows lowered at it. “It’s about time, you know?”
I smiled and nodded at him, because yeah, it was about time. Time for both of us after all we had been through together.