Chapter 15
Declan
Owning a business seems fucking exhausting.
I’ve always just been an artist with no stake in the game beyond my own clients.
Now, with Sean looping me in on all the shit he has to handle, there’s always something to worry about – making sure employees get paid on time, keeping supplies stocked, making sure bills are paid to keep the lights on in this place.
Right now, my biggest headache is trying to figure out a good organizational system for our stock of ink.
We’ve got boxes upon boxes of the stuff because we didn’t know how much we’d need and didn’t want to run out.
Hopefully business will stay steady enough that we’ll get to use it all before it has to be tossed.
We have decent storage space, but we’ve just been shoving boxes in our back storage room without giving any thought to how we’re going to find the shit that we need. My five o’clock client cancelled, so I’m using my free time to get things sorted.
Over the sound of Noah Kahan singing about wanting to go to Maine, I hear Sean yell, ”Declan, come out here for a sec.”
I’ve been in the zone for over an hour in here and his request startles me. I jolt, nearly dropping the bottles of black ink in my hands. The top on one of the bottles must be loose, because the next thing I know I’m fucking covered in it, up my arm and down my chest.
“Fuck,” I mutter. It’s not the first shirt I’ve lost over spilled ink, but I actually like this one. I got it at a Blink 182 concert years ago.
“Just a minute,” I yell back. My last client of the day is due to show up soon, but I was hoping to finish up in here first.
I put the unopened bottles on the shelf, setting aside the one that spilled so I can toss it out.
On my way out of the storage room I swing by the sink at the back of the shop, grabbing some paper towels to clean myself up with.
The ink wipes off my skin easily, but I know the same won’t be true for my ruined shirt.
I pull it over my head slowly, careful not to smear ink on my face and hair.
I ball it up and toss it on the floor by the sink.
It’s probably a lost cause, but I’ll try to wash it later anyway.
“What’s up?” I ask Sean, making my way over to his work station. He looks up briefly from the tattoo he’s doing, then does a double take.
“Why the fuck are you shirtless?”
“He was busy admiring his muscles in the mirror,” Eddie chimes in, the little shit.
“I would too if I was ripped like that,” Sean’s client jokes. He’s a scrawny dude, not much older than a teenager by the looks of it.
“All of you can fuck off,” I tell them. “I spilled some ink. What’s up? Is my next appointment here?”
“Nah,” Sean chuckles, setting his machine down. “This is Parker. He’s George’s son,” he explains, referring to the building owner. “He’s thinking about getting a back piece and I wanted him to see yours. Didn’t know you’d come parading out here without your top on for us.”
“Fuck off,” I tell him again. I turn away so they can see my back and the hours of work Sean put into it when we were working in Boston together.
The phoenix with its wings spread open across my shoulders and dripping flames is American traditional in style, Sean’s specialty.
He’d tried to talk me into doing full color, but I stuck with black and gray.
Color didn’t feel like me. It’s still fucking sick as it is.
I stand with my hands on my hips while Parker examines the design and Sean explains some of the details he added in. I can’t picture this guy with a full back tat, but hey, we all have to start somewhere.
It’s no surprise when I find my eyes wandering to that big window yet again.
What is a surprise, though, is what I see on the other side: Elsie, standing stock still in the middle of her shop, with wide eyes and her water cup raised halfway to her mouth, as if she’d been about to take a sip but got distracted.
Her mouth is slightly agape and I watch as she takes a deep breath, her eyes locked onto my torso.
The sight of Elsie – the woman who’s been plaguing my thoughts more often than not lately – stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of my body… fuck, it does something to me. I want to beat my chest like a goddamn animal.
Instead, I raise a hand and wave. I watch as she jumps a little, her eyes snapping up to mine and widening even further.
I tip my mouth into the smirk that infuriates her so much and she drops the keys she’d been clutching in her other hand.
I can’t help it; I laugh. The sound echoes through the shop as she bends to pick up her keys, and I can tell by the look on her face when she straightens back up that she heard it.
With another quick glance my way, like she can’t help herself, she turns and hurries out, flipping the lights off and locking the shop doors as she goes.
“I still can’t decide if you two are going to fuck each other or kill each other,” Sean muses behind me.
“Both,” Maya chimes in from her station.
“Definitely both,” Eddie agrees.