12 - Sage #2
Now the layers did the arguing for me.
Every few minutes the chair in reception creaked. Aiden was still out there. And I still had no idea what I was going to do with him.
My hand stayed steady. I wiped away excess ink, checked the symmetry, went back in to darken a fold that needed weight. The flower began to push off her skin, not flat anymore but alive with contrast.
I capped the ink and pulled back, scanning the whole piece the way my mentor had drilled into me. Balance. Flow. No rushed lines.
“All done.”
Misty lifted her head and craned around. “Don’t mess with me.”
I swiveled the light toward her wrist, and the sudden flash made it look as if the flower were real.
Her mouth dropped open. “Oh, my God.”
She held it up carefully, trying to catch every angle. The black shifted from dense at the core to smoke at the edges, each petal layered over the next. It didn’t read as one color. It read as depth.
“I thought this was gonna be flat,” she said. “You said one color and I was like, okay, fine, minimalist era. But this—” She reached toward it and I caught her hand before her fingertip could make contact.
“Don’t touch.”
“Right. Sorry.” She laughed, still staring. “It looks amazing.”
“Thank you,” I said, and peeled off my gloves.
Misty eased herself out of the chair, testing her weight, then glanced at me. Her grin faded just enough.
“You look like you’re about to walk into traffic,” she said. “It’s better to just get it over with. Clean break.”
I gave her a tight smile, and started wrapping her wrist, smoothing the film over the ink. “Yeah.”
Get it over with. Easy-peasy.
As if feelings were a bandage you could rip off and toss in the trash at the slightest inconvenience.
If I were honest with myself, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be over it. That was the problem.
Misty paid, promised to tag the shop in every photo she posted, and disappeared through the curtain. The bell over the front door chimed a minute later. I sat alone in the booth with the machine in its cradle and the faint imprint of her arm still warm against the armrest of the chair.
I stacked the used ink caps, wiped down the tray, folded the paper towels into the trash. My pulse refused to settle, though. I told myself I had time. I could breathe. I could decide how this would go.
The curtain shifted before I’d even finished disinfecting everything.
Aiden stepped inside and let the curtain fall closed behind him. He didn’t raise his voice, or pace nervously. His contained impatience filled the space anyway, as though he’d packed it tight beneath his skin.
“I came looking for you last night,” he said. “But you weren’t here.”
I capped the bottle and set it aside. “Surprise, surprise. I don’t actually live in the shop. I have an apartment. A couch. A life outside of ink.”
He crossed the few steps between us and lifted his hand to my face, his palm warm against my cheek. The contact sent a memory across my mouth, the echo of his kiss, the way I’d melted into him without thinking.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
I didn’t pull away, but I didn’t lean in either. “There’s nothing to talk about, Aiden.”
The words scraped my throat on the way out. He wasn’t cruel. He hadn’t lied to me. If things were different—if I were built differently—we could probably make something work. I knew that. But like everything else, I kept it to myself.
“You don’t have to talk,” he said. “But I have a few things to say.”
I shook my head. “Dragging this out won’t help. You need to leave, Aiden. Please. And you need to forget about anything happening between us.”
His jaw tightened. Before I could read what he was about to do, he shrugged out of his jacket and tugged his shirt over his head in one motion. His clothes fell to the floor.
“What are you doing?”
He dropped into the chair Misty had just vacated, bare chest against the vinyl, hands braced on the armrests. “I want a new tattoo.”
It took me a beat to catch up. “You’re kidding.”
“This is a tattoo studio. I want a tattoo.” His mouth curved without humor. “Strictly platonic.”
I stared at him. “I doubt that. And if it’s a tattoo you want, you can go out front and make an appointment. I won’t be your artist, though. One of the other guys will—”
“Sage, please.”
I held his gaze. Said nothing. I wasn’t going to be tricked into talking. Not when there was no point to any of it.
He exhaled through his nose and grabbed his shirt, dragging it back over his head as he stood. “Okay. No tattoo. Have lunch with me then.”
“It’s ten a.m.”
His composure slipped at the edges, and he stepped closer, hands falling to his sides. “Why won’t you just let me like you? I don’t get it.”
The question hit harder than anything else he’d said.
Because liking him meant imagining more. It meant picturing where we’d end up when his world collided with mine. It meant risking the version of myself I’d fought to build.
“You can like me all you want,” I said. “What I’m trying to say is… I’m the one who doesn’t like you.”
He went still.
I forced myself to hold his gaze, to let him see the certainty on my face, even as something inside me strained against the lie.