Chapter 21
Elias looked up as the door opened, and a part of him wished he could turn back time five seconds and lock it when Vince walked in.
He hardly ever came to the tattoo parlor, but when he did, it never failed to cause problems. Sometimes it gave Elias a headache.
Other times, it meant him and Javier holding back Marco, when really what they wanted was to let him go and allow him to strangle the life from Vince.
“I didn’t expect you to be here,” Vince said as the smile on his face spoke of the blatant lie. Elias also knew his cousin had seen his car in the parking lot.
“I work here,” Elias decided to respond.
“With as little as you’re here, can you really claim that?” Vince asked.
Elias quirked a brow because Vince had no idea how often Elias was there.
Unless he’d been driving by daily to figure it out.
He wouldn’t put it past the other man and his aunt to still be trying to get him hired, even with the definitive no Marco had given.
He also knew Vince well enough to know that by some divine intervention it happened, he’d figure out a way to spin it as if he’d taken Elias’ chair.
“What do you want?” Elias asked, cutting to the chase. In his experience, it was always better to deal with Vince quickly and try to be done with him.
The other man plopped down in Elias’ chair. “I came to get a tattoo.”
“Then you should have made an appointment. Get up. I have a client coming in half an hour,” Elias informed.
“I can wait until you’re done,” Vince countered and moved to one of the waiting chairs.
Elias sat in his chair and decided not to tell him he had another client after his upcoming one, because he didn’t think Vince would be there that long.
He would either say something to piss Elias off, or Marco would finish the tattoo he’d started an hour ago, and Vince would make a quick exit as he normally did after sparking a match.
He ignored his cousin for the next five minutes as he scrolled through his phone, but could feel the other man’s eyes on him the entire time.
It was irritating, but he knew that was Vince’s goal, and Elias would not give him the satisfaction of getting under his skin so easily.
When five more minutes passed, Vince finally broke the silence.
“When are you going to start dating?”
“Why are you interested in my dating life? I would think you had someone’s seconds you needed to worry about instead,” Elias responded without looking at him.
Vince didn’t respond for a moment, and Elias could feel him glaring at him. “I’m just surprised you haven’t now that Marco is married. I was honestly surprised you didn’t jump on the dating bandwagon right after him, since you like to do everything he does.”
Elias looked up from his phone. “He also busted you in your shit a few months ago.” He put his phone aside. “I suppose I should do that too, since I do everything he does.”
Vince snorted. “Why so hostile to the truth? You’re too old to think that violence is always the answer, but since he hasn’t learned it, I don’t expect you to have either.”
“And you’re too old to throw rocks and hide your hand, throw tantrums like a child, have your mother still take care of you, try and fail to steal every girl either of us has ever dated, pay for pussy because you can’t get it any other way, and cry over everything that doesn’t go your way.
Do I need to continue?” Vince glared at him as he stood, Elias following suit.
“You step into my space, and I’m putting your ass on this floor,” he warned the other man.
“Elias,” Nesiah started from where she’d been watching them at her station. “Don’t break anything.”
He decided not to ask her if that included Vince’s face, but he knew it wouldn’t get that far.
If his cousin had learned nothing else, it was that Elias would only warn him once.
Sometimes, self-preservation kicked in for the other man, and this seemed to be one of those times as he stomped out of the parlor.
“I wonder if that man has a humiliation kink because that’s the only way I see him coming here just to be punked each time he does so,” Nesiah said, and Elias chuckled.
“Whatever it is, you would think he’d get tired of it turning physical and getting him hurt.”
“Facts. Especially where Marco is concerned because he swings first. At this point, I can’t really say I blame him. You’re at least mildly nicer.”
“When I’m in a good mood.”
“Which you seem to have been over the past couple of weeks,” Nesiah smirked, and Elias raised a brow at her. “I’m only saying the tension was thick for a while, but I’m glad the two of you worked it out.”
He hummed and sat back down in his chair, picking up his phone. Nesiah was not the first person to tell him that, and he wondered if it had really been that bad.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Eri sat in the chair, allowing Avian to use her as a prop as she perfected the dance routine she planned on teaching in her upcoming classes.
It was an intimate dance, and she wondered if her friend would also perform it for Marco in addition to teaching it.
It was the first chair dance Avian was teaching her class.
The first dance that required another person as a prop, and Eri could easily tell Avian wanted it to be sensual, but not overly complex, in case someone was uncomfortable.
Avian grabbed Eri’s hands and placed them on her hips as she sat on her lap, undulating her hips as the music began to fade out.
“Careful, Avi,” Eri teased. “Your husband might walk in and get jealous.”
Avian laughed. “Your boyfriend might too.”
It was the first time she’d heard Elias referred to as her boyfriend, and she liked it. Eri doubted either of them would get jealous, even in other situations, because they were far too confident, and neither she nor Avian would give them a reason to be.
Avian got up and went to the mini-fridge to grab a bottle of water. “I think one more time, and I’ll be confident in the routine.”
“You just want to keep grinding on me,” Eri playfully jested. “But I’m for it.”
Avian laughed before taking a drink from the bottle, bringing a second one to Eri.
“Everything’s coming together,” Avian said two hours later as they sat on the couch. “The venue has been chosen, and there are a ton of vendor and participant applications.”
Eri had to agree. Even with her and Avian researching almost half of the vendor applicants so far and deciding not to allow some of them for one reason or another.
There were still a lot of them. The chosen venue was a large outdoor space, but it wouldn’t be wise to overcrowd it with vendors and risk making it uncomfortable for people coming out to move about freely.
“Once we finish researching all the vendors that responded, we can further narrow them down by avoiding similar vendors. I’ve seen four different barbecue places sign up, and we definitely don’t need all four of them,” Eri pointed out.
“Agreed. I also would like to include more small businesses that are just starting up too,” Avian responded, writing on her tablet.
Eri liked that idea. They would have a good mixture of businesses known throughout the city. The event could also serve as a springboard for new businesses or smaller side businesses for some.
“Are we assigning them spaces?”
“I was thinking more about assigning areas for different categories of vendors. Have all the food vendors in one area, maybe all the apparel vendors in another, and handmade items in their own area. Then have signage or give out little maps when people arrive so it’s easy to find everything when it’s in a designated spot,” Avian responded. “What do you think?”
“That works. We can go after class and take a look to get a feel for where everything will go, and I’ll make a map. We can have hard copies and a QR code for them to scan if they want a digital one.”
Marco and Avian had both been to the venue, and she could pull up pictures of it. Still, Eri needed to see it in person if she was going to make a vendor map. It would also help decide where they should be placed.
“Does Thursday work for you before I go to work?”
Eri nodded. “Yeah, we can go right after my last class. It shouldn’t take long, and it gives us plenty of time before you have to get to work.”
“I feel like time has flown from the time we were first talking about this in October till now.”
“It has,” Eri agreed.
Avian put her tablet aside and turned towards Eri. “I’ve been trying not to ask, and I know you said the two of you talked, but did you tell him?”
Eri didn’t need her friend to elaborate on what she was talking about. “No. Not yet. I told him I got overwhelmed and that my last experience of being intimate with someone wasn’t great, but I didn’t tell him why it wasn’t.”
“Ah, okay. I was just wondering. I’m happy you worked it out because I was close to putting hands on him if he kept it up. Well, that or telling his mama.”
Eri laughed. “I believe you. Thanks for having my back, but still pointing out that we were both wrong.”
“Always. I can support you while being honest with you.”
Eri stayed with Avian for another hour before heading home. She was in her kitchen, taking out ingredients to make dinner, when her phone rang. She saw the name flash across the screen and couldn’t help but smile. Gosh, what am I? Twelve? She wondered before answering the phone.
“Hey, babe.”
“Hey, Amate. How were your classes?”
“Boring, honestly. While getting all my assignments done was a good idea, I might have shot myself in the foot because I still have to go to the lectures. It feels tedious. How was work?” she asked, and Elias groaned. “That bad?”
“No, not really, but Vince came by the shop today with the sole objective of getting on my nerves.”
Eri hummed. She’d only met Vince once, briefly, when she’d gone to Marco’s that first time, when they were celebrating the motocross client Elias got.
She didn’t know him personally, but from what she heard from Avian and Elias, he didn’t seem like someone she wanted to be around for extended periods of time.
“Other than him bothering you, everything was good?” she inquired.
“It was. Did you decide when you wanted to get your next tattoo?”
Eri hadn’t really thought about it much since they got back together. She’d mentioned it before everything happened, and it hadn’t been a priority after the fact, but she wasn’t surprised he hadn’t forgotten about it.
“Whenever you have time to do it.”
“I don’t have any clients this Saturday. I want to take you somewhere, and we can do it after that if you’re free.”
“I am,” Eri responded. “What time on Saturday?”
“I’ll pick you up at noon. You’ll need your helmet.”
Before she’d left to go home at the end of spring break, he’d given the helmet to her. “Okay,” she responded.
They spoke for the next two hours, and by the time they hung up, Eri was leafing through her closet trying to find something to wear on Saturday. She made a mental note to call her dad before he went to bed to let him know what she wanted for her birthday since she’d decided.