Chapter 7
SEVEN
BENJI
NOW
“Oh God, I’m sorry.” I wipe my face with my hands.
“Wait,” Dion says loudly, as he reaches for my arm and brings it away from my face. “Just wait. Let me cover this first.”
Oh, shit, I’m fucking up even more. Maybe tears are toxic to tattoos or something.
I don’t know. I’m clueless and I’m an idiot and I couldn’t make it through this short appointment without crying.
I sniff and use my other hand to wipe away the tears.
But it’s ineffective. And my nose is starting to run, so I lift my T-shirt and use that to wipe under my nose, but then I see Dion’s confused face and I realise I’ve revealed my colostomy bag.
Quickly dropping my T-shirt and rearranging it like that will make the bag disappear, I give up — on recovering, on being less embarrassed, maybe on life itself — and I lean back in the chair and close my eyes.
“I’m really sorry,” I say eventually when the silence is too much and Dion isn’t wrapping my tattoo like he said he would.
“Why are you sorry?” He surprises me by asking. His tone is hard-edged, but the words, they give me pause.
“Well, I’m … I’m just a bit of a mess.” I open my eyes.
“So what?” he says with a very unbothered shrug and then gets to work covering my new tattoo in a sheer thin wrap that he tells me I need to keep on for 24 hours. He talks and moves like my emotional outburst didn’t just happen and I didn’t just reveal my shit bag to him.
“I didn’t want to get so emotional,” I tell him when he’s finished and pulling off his gloves. “It’s just been a hard few weeks. Well, months. Years, really.”
I stop talking because a fresh batch of tears is locked and loaded behind my eyes.
“Your mum died,” he says and then nods at my stomach. “And by the looks of it you also have chronic health issues.”
I replay the way he just said those words searching for discomfort, judgement or second-hand shame. But they’re not there. He’s just brisk and brusque and matter of fact.
“Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”
He rolls a bit further away, as if to give me space to stand up, but he doesn’t leave.
He stays close enough, and I don’t know if it’s an invitation to talk or not, but the words tumble out of me regardless.
“Mum died of breast cancer. She had it the first time about six years ago, and she got through it. Went into remission. But then it came back, just over a year ago. And it was … It was a completely different story.” I exhale a shuddering breath.
“And me,” I point to my stomach, “I have Crohn’s disease.
Had it a long time, but this is a very new, er, accessory. I’m still getting used to it.”
“Does it help?” Dion asks, another unloaded question.
“Yeah, it does,” I say and realise I need to remind myself of this more often rather than focusing on all the ways it’s made my life different and awkward.
It wasn’t like life was easy before when I was in agony most days and needed hospital stays once or twice a year because of bowel obstruction or dehydration.
“I’ve just got to get used to it, which they say will take some time. ”
“I hope it continues to help,” he says, and for a moment we share eye contact.
His eyes. There’s something about them. I mean, yes, they’re beautiful.
Long lashes, dark, dark brown irises that are big enough to be described as Disney Prince-esque, but there’s something else there.
There’s something about his eyes. There’s something about him.
I’m about to ask him where he went to school, maybe he was somebody I knew from football training.
Maybe I played against him if he went to a rival school.
I know he wasn’t in my year at school. There’s no way I would forget somebody who’s as, well, fucking hot as him.
I’m about to find out more information, but Dion rolls away on his stool and continues talking himself.
“My dad has a chronic illness,” he says as he tidies up at the counter behind my chair.
“MS. He was diagnosed when I was a kid, so a while ago now. There’s not much they can do for him other than keep up treatment plans and encourage him to manage his energy and take his meds.
It’s hard. Especially now he’s getting older. ”
I move my body so I’m sitting sideways, my feet on the ground. “Is he local?”
“Yeah, I still live with him and my mum actually.” Dion walks towards me again.
I smile at how he doesn’t even seem to be embarrassed about living with his parents.
He must be my age, if not a little older or younger, and yet he sounds like he couldn’t give a shit what I may think about his living arrangements.
“For those homecooked meals?” I tease.
Dion gives me a very blank and not exactly friendly look. “No, because my dad needs help, and my mum works shifts, so she isn’t always there to do what needs to be done.”
I bite my lips into my mouth. That’s me thoroughly told.
“Oh, right. Sorry.” I stand. The sooner I can get out of this place the better. I’ve definitely overstayed my welcome and it seems even when we get close to connecting on something, I fuck it up.
He squints at me. “You say sorry too much.”
“I think I say things that warrant apologies too much.” I huff out a rough chuckle to accompany my self-deprecation, but Dion does not laugh with me.
“If you have any problems with your tattoo, call us,” Dion says as I walk to the door, holding my sweatshirt in one hand and being extra careful not to knock my tattooed forearm.
“Okay. Will do. Thanks,” I mumble, and I hear Dion follow me through to the front of the studio.
Once at the counter, I dig in my pocket for my wallet so I can pay the bill, which I do without us sharing any more conversation.
Picking up my jumper to put it on, I pause and wonder how I can do this without brushing the material up against my raw, freshly tattooed skin.
It’s not that it hurts. I just don’t want to risk dislodging the wrap and doing something else wrong.
“It’s fine,” Dion says, looking at me frozen with my hands in the sweatshirt. “The cover isn’t going anywhere.”
“Right, okay, yeah,” I say, and then I pull the jumper over my head.
When it’s in place, I see Dion looking at my mid-section.
Maybe he wasn’t as blasé about my colostomy bag as I thought.
But I guess I have to get used to that. It’s not like anyone is actually going to look at it and think, ‘Wow, that’s sexy’.
But I push this thought to the back of my mind and focus on getting out of here so I can go home, lie in my childhood bedroom and sulk in peace. What a thrilling evening I have ahead of me.
“So, thanks for your time and work,” I say, because I do owe Dion that much. He did a perfect job. “It’s exactly what I wanted.”
To my surprise a small smile pulls his full lips up. “The best kind of praise a tattoo artist can hear.” He nods at me, and I suddenly don’t want to leave. I want to make that smile grow. I want to find out more about him. I want to know, ridiculously, if maybe I could see him again …
But that’s foolish. I’m just feeling sad and lonely and like I have no real direction or purpose in this town that I thought I’d left behind me a long time ago.
Maybe I’ll see him around, and if I’m lucky he’ll remember who I am and he’ll say ‘hi’. Yep, that’s the best possible scenario I can expect right now.
“Cool, well, I’ll see you around,” I say and step back, half-stumbling my way to the front door. When I pull it towards me, it doesn’t budge. I try again, but nothing.
“Oh, shit, yeah, it’s locked. Mari locked us in for security because we’d be out the back,” Dion says, and he starts looking around behind the counter. “They left me some keys so I’ll just find them and then …”
I stand at the door unsure if I should move or just stand and wait. My indecision makes me feel a lot more awkward than just going to help, but that’s the story of my life.
“Shit,” I hear Dion say. “I can’t find them.”
“Oh,” I say, and then I look closer at the door. “Can we not just open it from the inside?” I reach for the knob of a Yale lock.
“Yeah, that one will open but the other two locks need a key,” Dion says, but his body is lost behind the counter as he continues to look.
I stand in my awkward position for a moment longer before I realise that helping to look would be a lot more useful.
I come around to Dion’s side of the counter and see him crouching down, opening drawers and rummaging through each one.
“The thing is,” he says, “they should just be right on the counter, or on this ledge right here.” He gestures to a small shelf next to the till’s cash drawer.
“That’s where we normally leave the studio keys. ”
“Well, they’re definitely not there,” I say, peering into that empty space.
“I know that,” Dion says curtly. “Thank you.”
“Sorry,” I mumble. “Should we look in the other room?”
“No, Mari said they left them here.” Dion sounds like he’s running out of patience and I’m clearly not helping.
“Is there another exit that I can leave by?”
“No,” Dion says so firmly I flinch. “Just give me a minute, I’ll call Mari.”
He walks away before I can say anything else, and he’s in the room behind the counter a second later with his phone at his ear. I watch through the internal glass window as he starts talking on the phone, becoming more and more animated, hands waving around and face scowling in frustration.
I don’t know why I still hope for good news when he gets off the phone and walks back into the room I’m in.
He certainly didn’t look like that was what he was hearing.
And yet, when he walks back in, I do hope that he has an answer and a way for me to get out of here because his thunderous expression is not one that I want to be near right now.
“Fuck.” He throws his phone onto the counter and it clatters against the glass.
“Problem?” I stupidly, stupidly ask.
He levels me the dirtiest look I think I’ve ever received, and it’s there again, that something I can’t put my finger on, but there’s no time to interrogate that further because he’s opening his mouth and delivering my fate, our fate. “Mari has the keys. We’re locked in.”