12 - Sage
Sage
“I swear if you move again, I’m charging extra.”
The woman in my chair laughed, curls shaking, shoulders doing the same. So much so, I had to pause what I was doing.
“Sorry,” she said, sounding anything but. “It’s just spicy.”
“It’s linework.” I gave my machine a few whirring tests, wiping the ink to clear the remaining stencil on the peony. “Color’s worse.”
Her face dropped. “Worse?”
“This is where I remind you of the waiver you signed.” I held back laughter, although Misty didn’t fare too well again.
The fun clients always made my job easier. If I was lucky to book someone I could mess around with, time moved faster, my work turned out better, and everyone left the session feeling good.
“Do you still think working with only one color is the way to go?”
I rolled closer on my chair and bent over her outstretched wrist again, machine buzzing to life. “When I’m finished with you, it won’t look like just one color. Trust me.”
“I trust you,” she said. “You come highly recommen—”
Her words caught when voices from the main store filtered through. I recognized Nick’s instantly, his deep baritone setting a walk-in straight. He explained we worked by appointment only, his tone still carrying a hint of customer service friendliness.
“Happens at least twice a day,” I told Misty, marking her alarm.
She frowned. “Sounds like he has his hands full. Should you help?”
I snorted a short laugh. “Don’t worry about it. Nicky’s yet to meet a client he can’t handle.”
My words hadn’t gone cold when:
“Hey, I said you can’t go back there. Yo! Are you deaf?”
The curtain pulled back just as I swiveled on my chair to look. And I immediately wished I hadn’t.
“Sage.”
Misty’s gaze jumped between Aiden and me, her curiosity prancing on the tension pulled tight in my booth.
“I’m working.”
The neutral statement was enough to buy myself a ticket out of whatever shitshow he had planned, and I turned back to my client. He stepped forward then stopped abruptly, his sneakers squeaking on the floor.
“I need five minutes.”
My hand stayed steady despite my heartbeat spiking, and I was just thankful there was something to focus on that didn’t include baby blue eyes and a smile that got me weak in the knees.
“Sage—”
“I don’t have five minutes.”
Careful to keep her movements small, Misty twisted her head toward him. “She said she’s working.”
Nick’s head popped into my booth, as if having one large man encroaching on my workspace wasn’t enough. “Sorry, Sage. I told him—”
“I heard.”
“I’m not bothering anyone,” Aiden said, holding up his hands. “I just want to talk.”
Nick threw an arm over Aiden’s shoulders, and I clocked all this unfolding without looking up from Misty’s peony. Aiden shrugged him off, stepping deeper into the booth.
“Come on, man.”
The bell over the front door jingled, calling an end to the debate. Nick gave me a look, and I nodded. He couldn’t exactly be late for his booking.
“It’s okay,” I said to him. “He’s on his way out.”
Nick didn’t look convinced, and I couldn’t blame him. I doubted my own assertion. Mostly because of what happened the last time Aiden and I shared the same space.
Had I thought about this inevitability? Sure. But I’d also given Aiden’s resolve too much credit. In my imaginary scenario, at least two weeks passed before he’d barge in here.
“Please don’t distract my artist,” Misty said, all her sweetness from earlier now replaced with a sternness often associated with grouchy librarians. I liked her even more for it. “This is my first time and as you can imagine, I don’t want anything going wrong.”
“You probably shouldn’t talk so much while the needle’s on you.”
“Seriously?” I glared at him. “You force your way in here, and then proceed to give my client a hard time?”
“She looks like she could use a break.” He gestured with his head for me to follow him out. “Can we talk? Please?”
The stubbornness was a lot. Too much. I’d been a dick; I was willing to own that. But that didn’t give him the right to force me into something I wasn’t ready for.
The machine cut off under my thumb, the vibration dying against my palm.
Silence pressed in around the booth, thick with antiseptic and ink. I kept my grip on the frame of Misty’s wrist, my gloved fingers steady against the warm stretch of her skin, and lifted my eyes to Aiden.
“Get out.”
He still stood inside the curtain he’d pushed aside, one hand tangled in the black fabric.
The front of the shop glowed behind him.
Reception chatter carried faintly through the curtain, a laugh from the piercer, the bell over the door chiming as someone else came in.
None of it touched the space between us.
“I just need five minutes,” he said.
“You need to leave.” I reached for a fresh paper towel and wiped away the excess ink, revealing the clean curve of the stem I’d just finished. “You can’t be back here.”
“I’m not trying to cause a scene.”
“Too late.”
Misty shifted on the vinyl chair, craning her neck to see him. “Is he supposed to be part of this appointment? Because I didn’t sign off on an audience.”
“I’m not— I just need to talk to you.” His eyes stayed on me. “Please. Five minutes.”
He said ‘please’ like it cost him something. That might’ve worked on me a week ago.
“You want to talk?” I peeled off one glove, snapped it into the trash, then stripped the other and tossed it in after. “Fine. We’ll talk.”
Relief moved across his face before he caught it. He took a step forward, like he’d already won.
“When I’m done here,” I added, and watched that hope in his eyes die out. “And you can wait in reception.”
His mouth opened.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I’m not sitting out there like some—”
Misty lifted her head off the headrest and looked at him full on. “Oh, my God. Just go sit down.”
He blinked at her.
“You got what you wanted. She said she’ll talk. So please meet her halfway, and wait.” Misty flicked her fingers toward the front. “Put us all out of our misery.”
It looked like hearing it from a stranger made all the difference. Aiden’s shoulders pulled back, pride rearranging itself into something he could live with. He glanced at me, but I held his gaze and said nothing.
After a beat, he gave a stiff nod, letting the curtain fall back into place. The aged fabric whispered against the metal rod, and the booth closed around us again.
The noise from reception dulled.
I didn’t realize I’d been watching the line where the curtain met the wall until Misty cleared her throat.
“Thanks,” I said, already reaching for a new pair of gloves.
She grinned. “Sisters need to stick together.”
I slid the latex over my hands and flexed my fingers into it. “Don’t ever say that again.”
Her grin widened. “Noted.”
I lowered myself back onto the stool and adjusted her arm, guiding her wrist into position so the skin stretched clean beneath my thumb.
The stencil’s faint purple lines waited under the shine of ointment.
Before, we’d been laughing about her ex and the floral symbolism she’d sworn she didn’t care about.
I’d been in rhythm. Comfortable. The machine felt like an extension of my hand.
Now the shop felt smaller.
I could track where he was without seeing him.
The reception bench creaked if someone shifted their weight.
The coffee machine hissed every time it kicked on.
The bell over the door chimed again, and I imagined him glancing up at every new arrival, wondering who saw him there. Wondering what they thought.
I turned the machine back on and set the needle to skin.
My line wavered by a fraction before I corrected it.
What was he going to say?
That he wanted me? That he’d been thinking about me, and we could figure it out?
How was I going to tell him that none of it mattered?
How did I tell him that every time he touched me, I could see the fallout already written across my future? That I wasn’t the type of woman he wanted to get mixed up with.
Misty shifted under my hands. “You’ve gone quiet.”
“I’m working.”
“You were working before, and we were having a great time.”
I dipped the needle into the ink cap and wiped it against the rim. “He’s not my boyfriend, if that’s what you’re circling around.”
“Oh.” She studied the ceiling tiles for a beat. “Ex, then?”
“He’s not that either.”
“So what is he?”
I focused on the curve of a petal, pulling the line in one steady pass. “We’re not even friends.”
She snorted. “Could’ve fooled me.”
The words lodged somewhere under my ribs, and I sighed.
Because she wasn’t wrong. There’d always been something between Aiden and me. It had been there in the way his hand found my waist without asking, in the way I’d fit against him too easily. I’d told myself it was temporary. Physical. A bad decision with good chemistry.
But I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about his mouth. The weight of his body between my thighs. The way my name sounded when he moaned into my ear.
I wiped Misty’s skin again, if only to just collect my runaway thoughts. “It doesn’t matter what we are.”
“It matters to him,” she said.
“Yeah, well. It’ll never happen.”
She turned her head to look at me again, brows raised. “Why not?”
“It’s a long story.”
Misty settled deeper into the chair, adjusting her grip on the armrests. “Looks like I’m gonna be here for a while. So a long story is perfect.”
I ended up avoiding it expertly, thanks to several years of practice. It didn’t take much to dupe Misty into taking over the conversation. She talked while I worked, and I let her. It kept the booth from feeling like a pressure cooker.
I built the peony petal by petal, deepening the black at the base, feathering it outward until the gradients caught the light instead of swallowing it.
Earlier she’d wrinkled her nose when I’d told her we were sticking to one color.
She’d wanted pink. I’d told her to trust me, that one pigment didn’t mean one dimension, and she’d rolled her eyes but settled back in the chair.