Pretty in Paint (Side Hustle #5)

Chapter One

Luke

“Iput some red paint in, I take my spray gun out, I put some more paint in and I shake it all about. I spray another bumper and I slowly go insane. That’s what it’s all about.

” I sang this bastardization of a kids’ song every time I set up to paint a car — or part of one — at Road Ready Mechanics.

Granted, I had planned on a more artistic career than matching paint codes and fixing damage from fender benders, but such is life.

I spent a few hours doing what I do best before stripping off my gear and heading to the back. I up-nodded my boss, Asher, and yanked my phone from the back pocket of my jeans.

“Shit,” I muttered.

Asher poked his head up. “What’s up?”

“Three missed calls from Roxy.” Roxy was my boss, well, my other boss. On top of being Road Ready’s resident expert on painting car bodies, I was also a tattoo apprentice at Think Ink tattoo shop. If she was trying this hard to get ahold of me, something was up.

Asher shuddered. “Uh oh. What did you do to piss her off? More importantly, if you have to go into witness protection, tell me now so I can hire a new painter.”

“Thanks for the concern, Ash.” Granted, Roxy was a little terrifying, but I hadn’t done anything wrong…

that I was aware of. There had been some trouble at the shop for the last six months since The Tat Shack opened up down the road and started poaching our business.

Fuck, I hoped they wouldn’t have to get rid of me. “I better go see what’s up.”

“Don’t let her kill you. I’ve got three jobs on the books for you tomorrow.”

I gave Asher the old one-finger salute as I walked out to my truck.

I squinted against the sudden onset of natural light as I walked out of the shop and started driving towards downtown Springwood.

Traffic got thicker as I neared the city center, and I kept an eye out for parking.

I managed to snag a spot a few blocks from Think Ink and tucked my hands into my pockets as I walked towards the shop.

The breeze was chilly and was blowing red and orange leaves around my feet.

When I pulled open the shop door, I was expecting smiles like always, but Dane was more stoic than usual. He picked up his ever-present cup of tea and took a sip.

My brow dropped. “What’s going on, man? You look like someone pissed in your chamomile.”

He took my teasing with good nature, as he always does. The guy was spookily calm. “Roxy and I need to talk to you.”

“Damn right we do.” Roxy appeared at her office door like a poltergeist. She was a short little powerhouse with rich brown skin and a stare Medusa would be envious of.

“Do you want to tell me why overnight the shop got no less than fifteen one-star reviews? The common theme was an incompetent artist who can’t even color in the lines? ”

Dane stepped out from behind the desk and put an arm around his wife. He was the still water to her raging wildfire. “Let’s go talk in the office,” he suggested.

Roxy ran a hand through her hair but allowed herself to be led away from the main lobby. Once we were in her office, she dropped into a chair.

Her husband interlaced their fingers, running a thumb soothingly over the back of her hand.

“What’s going on?” I asked, taking a seat. This was worse than I expected. I already knew we were losing business to the competition, but a barrage of low ratings was a whole other thing.

“Have a look for yourself.” Dane turned the laptop on the desk to face me.

I read through a few of the shop’s most recent reviews.

My friend came in for a simple request and was turned away. FFS, how are they even in business?!?!

The artist said they couldn’t color a tattoo. Kindergarten skills, lol. Go to Tat Shack.

Go anywhere else, asked to have a partial piece completed, and they couldn’t even do that. Turned away, really rude about it too. Went down the street to The Tat Shack and they got me in and did the job. Way better shop IMO

Customer service anyone??? Didn’t ask for fucking picaso just the basics, and they failed.

Then it dawned on me what they were talking about.

“This guy came in a few days ago with an outline already done. He wanted us to finish the tattoo. The outline looked like shit. Wonky lines, amateur-looking drawing. I didn’t want to have our names on it.

Even if we had shaded and finished it perfectly, it would still look like shit thanks to how bad the outline was.

I politely told the person to go back to the original artists since this wasn’t our style. ”

I grabbed my phone from my pocket, scrolled to the picture I was looking for and turned it towards Roxy and Dane. “This is the tattoo they’re talking about.”

Roxy leaned forward and grimaced. “Looks like a toddler did it. I know damn well this wasn’t done by my apprentice.”

“I remember that now,” Dane said, snapping his fingers. “They threw a little fit and stormed out.”

“Looks like that wasn’t the end of it.” I tucked my phone back into my pocket.

My chest felt tight. This place was important to me.

If my handling of a tough customer gave the competition a leg up, I could have signed the death certificate on this place.

I’d only just gotten far enough into my apprenticeship to tattoo on people. I couldn’t lose that.

“The question is what are we going to do about it? We can request that the reviews be removed, but I’m not sure if they can actually do that.

In the meantime, our average has now dipped below four stars.

There is no way this isn’t going to impact business.

We aren’t the only show in town.” Dane said, running a hand over Roxy’s back.

“We need a lot of positive reviews and fast, at least that would drown out the shitty ones and push our average back up.” Roxy said.

“But how do we do that?” I asked.

“I think we need to bring someone in. Hire a marketing person to help pull us out of this mess. We were already suffering with Tat Shack offering low-prices and poaching our walk-in customers,” Dane suggested reasonably.

Roxy played with her lip ring for a moment before nodding. “Alright, put out an ad. We’re hiring a marketing manager to get us out of this mess.”