Five
Wes
“Hey, beautiful,” I say with a grin as I answer the FaceTime call from Natasha coming through via the tablet I have set up on the table next to me.
“Oh, sorry. I can call back If you’re busy,” she says, arching an eyebrow at the man lying face-down on the bench beside me, his inked back on full display.
I shrug. “It’s fine. You don’t mind, do you, Tom?”
“As long as you don’t fuck up the ink,” he grumbles.
“Mate, have I ever let you down?” I say with a chuckle before rolling my stool closer and starting to prepare the needle. “What’s up, Tash?”
“You remember that woman who emailed me about her wedding jitters?”
“The one whose fiancé wasn’t giving her any?” I ask, mildly curious.
“Yeah.”
“What about her?”
“Well, I think she broke it off with him.”
“Good for her,” I say with a smile. “Let me guess, she wrote back to thank you for your amazing advice?”
“Uh…not exactly. He did.”
My gaze snaps up at her hesitant tone, and I can tell by the anxious look in her eyes and the way she’s chewing on her thumbnail that something isn’t right. “What do you mean he wrote to you? To thank you?”
“Um…no…not to thank me…”
“What did he say?” I demand, perhaps a little more harshly than is necessary.
“Uh…well, clearly he wasn’t expecting the wedding to be called off,” she explains. “And he doesn’t seem to have taken it very well.”
I narrow my eyes at her, knowing her well enough to tell she’s leaving part of the story out. “Can you forward me the email?”
Her eyes widen. “Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
I arch an eyebrow at her. “Well now I really want to see it.”
She sighs, her head falling back in resignation. “Ok, fine. But don’t freak out.”
She scans her eyes over the screen, and I can only assume she’s looking for the email in her inbox.
A moment later, I feel my phone buzz in my back pocket.
I snap off my latex gloves and pull it out to see an email alert on the screen.
The same one appears on my iPad but I use my phone so I don’t need to switch away from the call with Natasha.
I’m not sure what I was expecting from the email. Some lovesick guy pouring his heart out about his breakup and pining over his lost fiancée, maybe? That would certainly explain the guilt flashing over Tash’s face.
But what I read is perhaps as far from that sweet image as you can imagine. The guy is pissed and for some reason he’s decided to take all his frustration out on my amazing and completely innocent best friend.
“That fucking prick!” I growl. I’ve only made it halfway through, but I’m already fuming. How dare this arsehole blame Natasha for his relationship problems? How dare he take his anger out on an innocent woman who was simply doing her job?
“What did he say?” Tom asks, clearly curious about the conversation going on around him.
I’m too angry to speak, my whole body is absolutely thrumming with it, so I shove my phone under Tom’s face and he takes it from me so he can read for himself.
Then I pace around the small area of my tattooing room, willing myself to calm down because I know I won’t be able to do the work Tom’s scheduled while I’m all riled up like this.
“It’s okay, Wes. Calm down,” Natasha says from my iPad screen. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Yes, it is,” I growl. “You’re upset. I can tell. This guy had no right to say this crap to you.”
“Bastard,” Tom grunts in agreement, handing my phone back.
“He was upset,” Tash reasons. “Obviously he wasn’t expecting the wedding to be called off…”
“Don’t make excuses for him,” I growl. “I don’t care how upset is, or how badly his heart was broken—that doesn’t give him the right to take his anger out on you.
You were just doing your job, Tash. What were you supposed to do?
Tell the woman to go ahead and get married when she clearly wasn’t in love with him?
” I hold my phone up. “Judging by this, she clearly dodged a bullet.”
Here’s the thing: way back when I was in uni, before I started apprenticing here, I used to work at the customer recovery centre for a major airline.
That’s actually where I met Natasha. She was always good at dealing with the arseholes who complained about everything from lost luggage, to flight delays, to not receiving a vegan meal even though they didn’t actually request a vegan meal on their booking.
I, on the other hand, was not so great at it; two whole years of biting my tongue and grinding my teeth have left me with permanent damage.
But I don’t need to bite my tongue now; I can give this arsehole a piece of my mind.
“I’m going to write back,” I announce.
Tash gasps, her blue eyes wide. “Don’t you dare!”
“Why not? This guy needs to know it’s not okay to behave like this. Fucking entitled.arsehole.”
“Wesley Alexander Holt, promise me you won’t write back to this guy,” Tash says, eyes narrowed.
I let out a heavy sigh of resignation. “Fine.”
“Thank you.”
“I’d better go. Work to do,” I say with a nod in Tom’s direction.
“Your real name is Wesley?” Tom asks once I’ve ended the call with Natasha and resumed my seat in the stool next to the tattoo bench.
“What did you think Wes was short for?”
“I don’t know…Wesmond?”
I let out a soft chuckle as I tug on another pair of gloves before picking the gun back up. “You need to stay off the weed, mate.”
I had every intention of actually cooking dinner tonight, but I’m completely wrecked by the time I get home, so instead of the pasta I’d intended to make, I opt for a cheese toastie instead. Not the gourmet fare I’d imagined, but it is technically something cooked.
I grab a beer from the fridge and take it and my toastie over to the couch, where I sprawl out with my feet up on the coffee table.
I should just turn on the TV and watch the football like I normally would, but my phone feels like it’s burning in my back pocket, and I can’t seem to stop myself from digging it out and bringing up that fucking email again.
I know I promised Natasha I’d let it go, but that’s just bollocks.
Why should this tosser get away with behaving like this?
Maybe I’m just experiencing a little PTSD from all the times I had to let shit like this slide back when it was my job to make angry people happy again, but there’s just no way I can drop this now.
And, really, what’s the worst that could happen?