Chapter 13 Heaven
Heaven
Saylor pulls my chair over to my bed, and we spend almost an hour going through different accounts she’s found.
All queer or female tattoo artists, tattoo artists of color, seeing what they’ve posted, what seems to get the most attention and what doesn’t.
Clearly, I need to learn how to tattoo first, but I realize Miss Kelly was right. It’s a good thing I can actually draw.
I’ll admit—only to myself and never ever out loud—that I was a little nervous about Saylor coming over.
I tried not to think too much about her last night, but man I screwed up.
There’s nothing worse than letting an annoying, completely unhelpful thought take hold.
But my brain has decided that it’s time for me to really notice a girl for the first time in my life and not in a metaphorical sense.
My super-obnoxious and pathetic imagination definitely needs to get outside and touch grass, flowers, and some baby ducks.
Because it thinks it’s a good idea to become really interested in Saylor Ford. And I just can’t let that happen.
It’s true, I don’t like attention. I don’t like to be perceived, and I’m pretty sure suggesting to Saylor that I’ve been thinking about her in any way outside of our newly established partnership would do more than attract attention.
She’d look at me like I’ve completely lost it and then I’d spontaneously melt or combust. She would very nicely tell me there is no way an us would ever happen.
Then a hole in the Earth’s crust would open and swallow me up.
I can just picture it, the nice, polite way she’d let me down, telling me that I would never ever have a chance with her.
I haven’t known Saylor without a boyfriend.
I’m sure once everyone at our school and the rest of Los Angeles County finds out she’s gay, every age-appropriate girl with a working phone will be in her DMs. If they aren’t already.
I’m listening to her talk as we sit near each other and that nice, hypothetical rejection is all I can think about as my eyes jump from her phone screen, where she’s showing me TatsBiKat’s profile, to the hem of her shorts.
Saylor said it herself. She’s just an affectionate person.
Kissing my cheek was the same as her breathing or ordering fries with her burger.
Things were easier back when Jake and Axel were dateless too, but now they have serious girlfriends and they both know Saylor.
I can’t talk to them about this. Axel would tell me to do something ridiculous like declare my love in the most dramatic way possible.
Jake would just listen and be supportive, but then he would accidentally tell Bethany and then she would tell Saylor, and Saylor would preemptively reject me, and then we’re back to me being swallowed up by a hole in the Earth’s crust.
“Okay, so I think you should pick fifteen pieces from freshman year until now. People love progress content.”
“That makes sense.”
“Your first post can be something of an introduction, or you can post like your favorite piece and enter with a bang. Second post should be your first piece from freshman year, and third post should be one of the flash things?”
“Yeah, one of the flash sheets or part of one.”
“Yeah. I saw that DanielleSkylar person does like eight pieces per sheet so you can spread it out, one piece per post. Less work for more engagement,” she says. “Well, kinda. It’s still work.”
“Yeah, but I see what you mean.” I unlock my tablet and show her the sad-clown flash sheets I’ve been working on.
She looks at them for longer than I expect her to and then she looks up at me and smiles.
It’s really weird when she looks at me. Saylor’s eyes are roaming all over my face and she’s still smiling this soft smile.
I ignore the weird jumping in my stomach and glance back down at my tablet screen.
“What?”
“These are really good. You’re really good.
” Her knee nudges mine as she says it. I don’t think she did it on purpose, but it’s almost like the moment she kissed my cheek—the skin of her bare knee burning a hole through my black Dickies, warming my whole leg.
My throat goes dry, and my face is just getting hotter.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. I feel like I have good people skills and I’m good at sports, except for when I trip over my own feet and break my arm and face.”
“I’ve seen you play sports. You’re good. And there’s nothing wrong with your face.”
“Thanks, but I still wish I had this kind of talent. For the ‘draw your mom a picture’ square, I’m gonna have to use some crayons. And my left hand.”
“I’ll draw something simple for you and you can use your crayons to color it in,” I say.
Saylor laughs. “Thanks. Okay. There’s one big thing we need to do. We need to come up with your new username. You can go two ways with this.”
“Mm-hmm?”
“You can use your name. Clean, very professional.”
I shake my head. “Too personal.” Saylor smiles again, nipping the side of her lip.
“You don’t have to put your full name on your profile.
A lot of tattoo artists don’t. I was thinking you could do a play on your name.
I was thinking of puns and stuff. And then I thought I could look up all the songs with the word heaven in them.
There’s a ton, so I narrowed it down to songs that have heaven in the title. ”
“You did?”
“There’s one eighties song my dad loves—”
“ ‘Hands to Heaven’?” she guesses.
“That’s the one.”
“Okay. So, I was thinking Hand It 2 Heaven, but with the two i’s like Beyoncé spells it. There’s already like ten people with usernames that are variations of the song title, but no one has taken that yet.”
I think for a second trying to visualize this fresh new profile. “I like it.”
“I think you should use one of your sad-clown self-portraits as your profile picture.” She laughs. “I’m sorry, those are so funny. It’s like you captured the goth vibe you are clearly hiding behind.”
I glare at her, and she does this thing that kind of melts my brain. She scrunches her nose up at me and leans back just a little. She’s teasing me on purpose again, my heart truly can’t take it. I am not cut out for her platonic flirting.
“I’m glad you like them. Jake’s mom was worried she was gonna have to call a therapist for me.”
“No, I love them,” Saylor says. Just as her stomach lets out the loudest grumble.
“Dang! You hungry?” I snort.
“Yeah, I could eat.”
“Come on. I’ll make us something and then we can actually think about the bingo for a second.”
“Good call. Watch us spend the whole summer together and don’t finish a square.” She laughs.
I grab my tablet and lead the way downstairs thinking that that might not be so bad. As long as we’re together. I really need help.