Chapter 4
Chapter Four
KASS
“Did your mom text you how her surgery went? I haven’t heard back from her yet.”
Winnie's eyes are locked on her phone in the back seat, texting away. I’m not even sure she heard me until she responds. “Not yet. She probably won’t be able to text much with one hand.”
“Mmk, smart ass.”
I spot a tiny smirk on Winnie's face.
I know I shouldn’t worry about Raina, but I do. Her mom is staying with her and Winnie to help out until she recovers. She's in good hands, and I need to stop worrying. If she wanted me fussing over her, she would have asked me to take care of her instead of her mother.
I'm actually a little offended she didn't, given how close we are and how not close she is with her mother. Then again, I have a shop to run and a daughter to raise, while I’m pretty sure her mom is retired in Florida.
Raina and I met when I first started tattooing.
She was my mentor, and I was her apprentice.
She taught me most of what I know. At that point in my life, I was going through a lot, and Raina was there for me every step of the way, whether that was talking through my troubles with me or providing healthy distractions.
Arlo joined us a couple of years after I started working for Raina, and thus, our little trio was formed.
A few other tattoo artists have come and gone over the last few years, but the three of us haven't split.
We work too well together. But even more than that, we're family.
It’s been odd being Raina's boss the last couple of years, but she prefers it that way.
She used to own the shop but got too stressed out trying to run a business, be a full-time tattoo artist, and be a single mom to a young daughter.
About two years ago, she asked Arlo and me to buy the shop from her so she could focus on the things she deemed more important.
I don’t blame her. Juggling everything in my life on top of running the shop has been stressful, but I manage with Arlo’s help.
Now, Raina just gets to come in when she has clients and leave when she’s done.
I’m grateful for this opportunity she gave me, and I did know full well what I was getting into, but sometimes I miss life being a little simpler.
I park outside my daughter’s elementary school and check the time. It’s 3:20, so she should be getting out any minute now. She doesn’t know I have Winnie in the car with me. I wanted it to be a surprise. She’ll be so excited to see her friend, and I can’t wait to see the look on her face.
A swarm of kids starts filing out of the school, and I spot her in her bright purple jacket.
It stands out against the other kids’ black, navy, and neutral-colored coats.
I never did understand why some parents try to force their own aesthetic on their children, rather than letting them be a kid.
But hey, I parent a little differently in plenty of other ways.
She runs up to the car, and as soon as she opens the back door to hop in, I hear her gasp. “Winnie!”
She jumps in the back and practically tackles Winnie. I even think I hear a phone hit the floor of the car. I'm not sure if it was Winnie's or Clover's, but I make a mental note to check under the seats before I go into the house.
“Alright, Clover, buckle up. I don’t want to slow down the pick-up line.”
“Is Winnie coming over?”
“That’s up to her.” I wait until I hear the click of her seatbelt before I take off. I look at the girls through the rear-view mirror. “Winnie, you want to come over for dinner or head straight to your house?”
“I’ll come over.”
Clover’s face is practically frozen in a beaming smile as she stares at her friend. “Yay.”
The girls have been friends since Clover was a toddler.
But with Clover being eight and Winnie almost being a teenager, I worry that Winnie will start to drift away from Clover.
It hasn’t happened yet, and I hope it never will.
Clover looks up to Winnie like she’s her big sister.
And since Winnie is an only child as well, I like to think she sees Clover as a sister, too.
“What do you girls want for dinner? I have to run to the grocery store anyway, so we‘ll stop there on our way and pick up what we need.”
As the girls chatter in the back seat, probably about everything but what they want to eat for dinner, I let my mind wander.
I think about my list of things I need to get done around the house.
The one that never seems to get any shorter, despite me crossing things off.
I go through my schedule in my head, trying to make sure I don’t forget about any appointments I picked up for Raina this week.
Only three people got added to my schedule.
Two very underwhelming tattoos that’ll probably take me 20 minutes each, and then there’s B’s appointment on Friday.
I’m really looking forward to that one. Mostly for the tattoo, but also because I may have checked out her profile.
She was right when she said the canvas would be gorgeous.
From what I can tell, her arms are already peppered with patchwork tattoos. She seems to have had purple hair for a while now, but has had almost every color of the rainbow at some point in time. Yes, I scrolled that far back.
I’ve known girls like B. They're the type that'll make you want them, then as soon as you get attached, they rip your heart out. I need to be careful around her.
I'm cooking the girls’ dinner when I hear little feet padding down the hardwood floors in the hallway.
"Dad, where are my new shoes? I want to show Winnie."
"They should be in your closet."
"Right. I didn't check there yet."
Clover and Winnie run back down the hallway to Clover's room.
The door slams, and almost immediately their music is blaring again.
At least she has good taste in music. I like to take credit for that, but her mother also used to listen to some pretty great stuff.
It's one of the reasons I first fell in love with her, among many.
Daisy and I met in high school, but never dated. I never could convince her to take a chance on us, even after she got pregnant with Clover. It wasn't for lack of trying. No, I dedicated years of my life to Daisy. She was my everything.
Daisy and I ran with the same crowd of delinquents in school, though Daisy never looked like she belonged there.
While the rest of us dressed like we were trying to get into a Slipknot concert, Daisy looked like a blonde ray of sunshine–a stark contrast to our ever-looming dark clouds.
Her parents were well off, and her mother always held high standards for her.
I think something in Daisy liked rebelling against them, even though she always had a good relationship with them.
Maybe it was their unconditional love for her that made her feel comfortable pushing the boundaries.
She knew they'd always be there for her, even if she messed up.
And though Daisy was perfect in my eyes, she definitely messed up from time to time.
Her best friend Jade was the worst influence of us all, always convincing Daisy to sneak out and dragging her to parties.
Jade and I have never seen eye to eye, and we've always wanted very different things for our friend.
I'm convinced that since Jade could never get her shit together, even well after high school, she held Daisy back from the bright future she could have had.
When Daisy got pregnant, barely a year out of high school, she dropped out of college.
Her parents and I begged her not to, promising to support her in any way we could.
In the end, she chose to move in with Jade to raise Clover.
I was there to help as much as she would let me, and I took Clover to give her a break whenever I could.
Daisy's parents were also a huge help. Anything Clover needed that Daisy and I couldn't afford with our minimum-wage jobs was taken care of.
We were extremely lucky to have them. I still am.
Once Daisy's parents realized I wasn't a deadbeat dad and that I was actually doing something with my life, so that I could provide a future for my daughter, they were team Kass.
On several occasions, I overheard Daisy arguing with her mother about me.
I hate that I was a source of contention between them, especially now.
But Daisy was stubborn. Probably one of the most stubborn, strong-willed women I've ever met.
She wasn't going to be with me just because I knocked her up.
I think even when she did want to be with me, she convinced herself she didn't because she refused to be a cliche.
She wasn't going to be the girl who married the father of her child because that's what society told her to do.
So, back and forth we went for six years.
She always had a million bullshit excuses as to why we would never work.
Yet every now and then, I would find her knocking on my door in the middle of the night with a sleeping Clover in her arms.
She never had to beg me to come in. If anything, I would drag her inside before she had the chance to change her mind.
We'd put Clover to sleep in her bed and spend the whole night talking about whatever was troubling her.
Sometimes she just needed to vent about a guy who wasn't treating her right.
Other times it was about her family. And occasionally, there wasn't anything troubling her, at least none that she would admit to me.
She would say that she just missed me. Those nights usually ended with us tangled up in my sheets.