2. Sophia
SOPHIA
I do my best to look comfortable in these alien surroundings, consciously making an effort not to bounce my leg up and down or chew my lower lip. I pick up a magazine on tattooing, but the shivering of the pages each time I turn one only makes it obvious as to how badly my hand is shaking.
My nerves haven’t been helped by the information that the tattoo artist I’d originally met with to discuss my design was sick for the day, and I’ll be getting someone else called Rocco.
They’d given me the option to rebook for another time, but I’d worked myself up to this moment for the last month and had barely slept last night in anticipation.
The American woman I’d spoken to had assured me that this Rocco was just as talented, if not more so, than the original artist I had booked, though, the woman had added, I’m not allowed to tell anyone she’d said that.
I couldn’t stand the thought of going through the build-up all over again, so I’d agreed to go ahead with the other artist.
A big, scary-looking guy with spiky dark hair and a silver hole through one of his ears, which I can see right through, is standing behind the reception desk.
At first, I’d wondered if he was the one who’d be working on me, but he hadn’t said as much when I’d come in, and there are a number of rooms, so he obviously isn’t the only artist here.
He seemed friendly enough, but I still can’t stop myself from staring at the numerous tattoos crawling up his arms, and even up the side of his neck.
As I’m staring, a short woman with dark hair comes up behind him and wraps her arms around his waist and presses herself into his back.
My heart clenches at the sight, and I blush and glance away from the intimate moment.
I wish I had that for myself, but the years of my adult life haven’t been easy so far, and men who get involved with me tend to realise I’m not going to be as much fun as I look.
As soon as they figure out that being with me isn’t going to be simple, they take off for the hills.
Sure, I have my family, but that doesn’t mean I’m not lonely sometimes.
“He won’t be too much longer,” the brunette behind reception calls to me.
“Oh, thanks. No problem.” I smile, trying to hide my nerves.
A door opens, and a voice I haven’t heard for ten years speaks. “Sophia?”
My heart lurches as I turn towards him.
It’s only one word, and yet it tumbles me back in time to a place where I’d been the happiest in my life.
To a time when I’d felt loved and cherished and adored.
To a time when I’d had a scruffy boy, whose brown hair had always ended with blond highlights in the summer, but then had darkened in winter.
A boy who’d always protected me and made me laugh and had been there for me every step of the way, until life had forced us apart.
My gaze finds his face, and my heart stops again.
It’s him. He looks so different and yet somehow exactly the same.
He’s filled out from when he was seventeen, his shoulders broad beneath his t-shirt.
A short beard hides his chin, and the brown locks I’d loved so much have been shorn right down to his head.
But his eyes… His eyes are exactly the same.
Deep brown, almost black in lower light, while golden honey and specked with amber flecks in the sunlight.
He’s ten years older, and bigger, and harder, but it’s him, without a doubt.
I get to my feet, though my legs feel like they don’t belong to me. “Richard?”
His perfect lips twists. “I don’t go by that any more. Everyone calls me Rocco.”
I nod, in a stunned daze. “Rocco,” I say, tasting the name on my tongue. “It suits you.”
He takes a step towards me and then stops, as though he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do next. Hug me? Kiss me? Shake my hand? So instead we just stand opposite each other, staring, while the two people behind the counter watch the awkward interaction with curious confusion.
“How…? How have you been?” he asks.
I nod, forcing a smile. “Okay. I’ve been okay.”
I don’t want to get into all of that now, not standing here, in the middle of a tattoo studio.
Richard—Rocco—must become aware of our audience as he turns to the other two people, who are watching with amused expressions by the counter.
“We knew each other as kids,” he explains to his colleagues. “I mean, we were friends. We basically grew up together.”
It was more than that, I want to say. We grew up as the same person. We shared each other’s skin. Every experience one of us went through, the other was there right by their side.
My first memory is of us at a birthday party, sitting on a rug outside on the grass with a birthday cake in front of us. I couldn’t say whose birthday it had been, but I remember him right there, next to me, and how we’d both blown out the candles at the same time.
At the same time. That was how it had been for us.
We’d done everything together. We’d learned to swim together in the Cornish sea during the long, hot summers where the population of our small town seemed to quadruple with the number of tourists.
We’d learned to ride our bikes together, and how to fall off together, too.
And then we’d grown older, and things had changed between us.
The man behind the counter clears his throat. “Are you going to take her through, then, Rocco? You’ve got work to do.”
“Oh yeah. Course. My studio’s this way.”
I flash the other man a grateful smile. I feel as though we’d have been standing here staring at each other for hours if someone hadn’t intervened.
I can’t tear my gaze away from Richard’s—no, Rocco’s—back as he leads me through to his studio.
He’s certainly filled out over the years.
He’d been a strong, lean teenager from years of outside activity, but nothing like he is now.
I note all the tattoos running across his arms and wonder how much of his skin he has tattooed.
The idea sends mixed emotions through me.
I’d loved his skin when we’d been teenagers.
We’d always been outside, on the beach, mainly, and he’d always tanned to a deep, honeyed brown.
We’d often laughed, putting our forearms side by side to compare the difference in our skin tone.
With my auburn hair and pale skin, I never went anything more than a slightly darker shade of pale.
Then I would press my nose and lips against his smooth shoulder, salty from the sea and warm from the sun, and inhale the scent of him.
I step into the room that’s his studio and look around.
Will this place tell me more about the man he’s grown into?
I check the desk which holds the computer, wondering if there will be framed photographs of him with a girlfriend, or maybe even a couple of kids smiling back at them, but there’s nothing like that.
“Sit down, please,” he says, pointing to a plastic chair opposite his own.
I give a nervous smile and drop into it, placing my bag on the floor beside me.
He puts both his hands to his face, hiding his mouth.
“Fucking hell, Sophia. I can’t believe it’s really you.
I mean, I saw your name on the computer, and I was trying to convince myself there must be plenty of Sophia Alexanders in the world.
But then I walked out, and it was you.” He gestures to me. “I mean, clearly it’s you.”
“I know. I can’t believe it either. You look so different.” I shake my head. “It’s weird, ’cause you kind of look exactly the same, but you look really different, too.”
He laughs. “Well, you do look exactly the same. What happened to you, Sophia? All those years ago, you just upped and left, and I never heard from you again.”
I rub my arms, subconsciously hugging myself. “It was my parents. They moved away suddenly, and I had to go with them.”
“But you could have come back. You were seventeen. You could have visited. I had no idea where you’d gone, and you didn’t answer my calls or messages.”
I remember the night when I’d got back home after a day on the beach to find my house in boxes.
My parents had announced they were moving, that my dad’s job was under threat unless he was able to start at the new location the very next week.
I remember screaming and crying and threatening, but it had done no good.
And I remember running over to Richard’s house, throwing myself into his arms and crying against his chest as I’d told him I was leaving.
“I know, and I’m sorry. Other stuff happened, and life just kind of got away on me.”
His lips twist. “Yeah, me, too.”
“Looks like you’ve done well for yourself, though,” I say, trying to make my voice brighter. I don’t want him to know what the years have been like for me.
He nods. “Things have been all right. How about you? What have you been doing all these years?”
“Oh, not much.” I give a tight smile and glance away, not knowing how to answer his question. I want to change the subject. “Are we going to do it, then?” I say instead.
His deep-brown eyes widen at my words. “Do it?”
“The tattoo,” I remind him, my cheeks flushing as I realise his mind had jumped to something else.
He gives his head a slight shake. “Oh yeah, of course.”
He turns back to the computer and pulls up my image. “This is the one, right?”
I smile and nod. “That’s right. Chikara ,” I say in Japanese. “The symbol means strength.”
“And where do you want it?”
“On the outside of my right ankle, about this big.” I hold up my fingers to show an inch space between them.
“That’s no problem. It won’t take long. The ankle can hurt, though.”
“I have a high pain threshold.” I’ve needed to have, over the years.
“Hop up on the bed, then.”