Chapter 1
Two years later
“Have you ever fucked someone who went evil?”
The older woman sitting in Tabby’s tattoo chair blinked. “Sorry?”
“This guy I fucked went evil,” Tabby said as she continued drilling dots of black ink into the woman’s forearm. “One minute, he was this nerd who wouldn’t say boo to a goose; the next, we had casual intercourse, and he went full Darth Maul. Or Vader. Or Sidious. One of the Darths.”
The woman—Jo, according to her client intake form—continued to blink at her as though English was a foreign language. Tabby didn’t blame her. She wasn’t known for her small talk, especially not when she was tattooing. She specialised in big talk: rhetorical questions and philosophical debates, whatever weird thing was on her mind—but this was pretty out there, even by her standards.
“Sorry,” she muttered, refocusing on the tarot card she was inking onto Jo’s arm. “I’m not… I’m having kind of a hard time.”
Jo didn’t say anything. Possibly, she already knew that from looking at her. Tabby’s once bright-blue hair was aqua-pale with four inches of dishwater roots. She had zits on both cheeks, and her nails were bitten to shit. She could have minimised all of this with makeup or a nice outfit, but she was barefaced and in leggings, Crocs and a huge ‘Aliums Exist!’ hoodie doused in paint stains.
Sometimes, she saw old photos of herself wearing dresses and fake eyelashes and felt so tired she wanted to curl up on the floor.
“What’s going on?” Jo asked tentatively.
Please don’t say it, don’t say it…
“I was putting together a music festival, and it got cancelled. The weather got so extreme that insurance wouldn’t cover it, and the guy I was planning it with ran off to New Zealand without helping me sort out the ticket refunds or anything.”
“Wow. That’s really bad.”
Tabby squinted at Jo, checking she wasn’t making fun of her. “Yes…”
“It’s so hard to invest time and money into something and have it go wrong. You must feel terrible about it.”
“I… do,” Tabby said cautiously. “It was the first thing I put heaps of effort into for ages, and it all went to shit. And I couldn’t get any of the deposits back, so, in addition to being a laughingstock, I’m broke as fuck.”
Jo gave a little sympathetic hum, and Tabby felt invigorated. Whenever she mentioned the third-trimester abortion that was Sparkling Whine to her sisters or Scott or even Noah, they were all fake positive and life-affirm-y. ‘You’ll get back on your feet! Just save up and try something else!’
It was enough to make a girl put her head through a window.
“Everything completely sucks right now,” Tabby said, flexing her misery muscle a little more. “But nothing sucks as much as the fact Toby Tennant went evil because of my cursed genitals.”
Tabby was immediately worried she’d pushed it too far, but Jo seemed as unperturbed by that statement as anything else she’d said.
“When you say he ‘went evil’…?”
“Quit his job, invested in cryptocurrency, started doing CrossFit and bought a beachfront property in St Kilda.”
Jo winced, and Tabby was gratified that she knew where she was coming from. Working in finance was bad enough, but living on the fucking Esplanade? Near the eastern suburbs!?
“I didn’t even tell you the best-worst part: He has a money podcast, you know, one of those ones where finance dickweeds pretend to know how investing works?”
“Um…”
“I’ll play you a bit.” Tabby removed her glove, whipped out her phone and searched ‘Cash Kings: Finance Bros Unleashed’—a name that never failed to fill her with rage. This was a slight detour in the tattooing process, but fuck it, she was the one hunched over the chair, her wrists cramping into Hargraven’s claws from thousands of hours of inking. The least punters could do was indulge her irrational anger.
Ignoring the thumbnail of Toby and his co-host”s dumb faces, Tabby hit play on the top episode, ‘Lambo Dreams and Rolex Schemes: The Right Way to Handle Flashy Investments.’
“Fuckin’ ridiculous,” she muttered. “Wait till you hear this, Joanne. Your name’s Joanne, right?”
“It is?—”
“Shhh, it’s about to start!”
“Good afternoon, morning, evening, wherever you are, investors,” came a smooth, ultra-deep baritone.
Tabby’s breakfast tortilla rose in her stomach like an avocado-laced zombie.
“You’re listening to ‘Cash Kings’ with Toby Tennant. As always, I’m joined by Brennan MacAvaney and Tom Hurst.”
“Hey, Tobes.”
“What up, big lad?”
“Nothing much, boys. Today, we’re gonna discuss the pros and cons of those riskier investments that come across your screen from time to time, including?—”
Tabby had heard enough. She exited the podcast app. “I can’t believe I smashed someone who self-identifies as a finance bro.”
“That podcast does sound terrible,” Jo agreed.
“You have no idea. I hate-listen when I can’t sleep, and it’s like… new levels of audio self-harm. He should sell it to whoever’s running Gitmo these days.”
She laughed. “And what does this Toby Tennant look like?”
“These days? A four-hundred-dollar haircut with a thumb attached.”
“And that looks like?”
“Oh, you know. They’re always swanning around Chapel Street in the cuntiest ‘fits you’ve ever seen. All linen shirts and cufflinks. It’s like, fuck, we get it, you’ve done cocaine. Congrats. It was probably all crushed-up chalk and methamphetamine anyway.” Tabby put her tattooing glove back on and picked up her blotting sheets. “Five hundred bucks a bag, my hole…”
“He sounds handsome.”
Tabby glared at her client. “He sounds like ass cancer.”
“Was he… your boyfriend?”
“Fuck no. We were mates. Not that it matters. After we hooked up, he ran away like a little bitch because he got everything he wanted out of the situation.”
“Sleeping with you?”
“Not having to be a late-in-life virgin.” She could hear the venom in her voice but was powerless to tone it down.
“He was a virgin?”
“Yup. Or at least he said he was. He didn’t bleed after.”
“But was it good? Making love to him?”
Tabby wanted to snort like an angry horse, then remembered Jo was a paying customer. “No. Like, it was fine, but it was one fucking time.”
“Sometimes, one time is all it takes.”
“To turn into an insufferable dunce? Apparently.”
“Wow, you really know how to hold a grudge, huh?”
“Yup.”
No, not really. Sam was the DaSilva who nursed grudges. Over the years, Tabby had let plenty of worse crap go, but something about Toby had every cell in her body baying for his blood. Well, not ‘something.’ Several very specific things she had no intention of telling Jo.
She concentrated on tracing a tiny six-point star close to her client’s inner elbow, but her mind showed her Toby, sprawled naked across her bed, his lean, tennis player body gleaming with sweat.
“You’re so beautiful it hurts,” he’d said. “I swear it’s like a knife down my ribs whenever I look at you. I can’t believe this is fucking happening…”
The day he’d left her bedroom, she’d been so giddy everyone at the studio thought she was high. It wasn’t just Toby’s big dick and endless enthusiasm; it was his voice and his muscular thighs, and the sounds he made when he came. It was how they’d talked between sessions, laughing and winding their fingers together as they discussed everything and nothing.
It had felt like the start of something. It had actually been the end.
“Are you still thinking about your evil friend?”
Tabby glanced at Jo. “He’s not my friend.”
“My mistake. Are you thinking about the guy you had casual intercourse with who turned evil? Can I know what those thoughts are?”
He’d licked her pussy like he was born to do it. Swirling his tongue around her clit and sucking lightly until she saw stars.
“Have you been practising on pillows?” she’d gasped.
“Porn tutorials,” he’d said, red spreading across his cheeks. “Is it… was I okay?”
Tabby squeezed her eyes tight, then opened them, wishing the action could delete her memories like a backspace bar. Yes, she was thinking about Toby. No, she wasn’t going to tell this nice old broad about them burning through a whole pack of condoms as they went at it again and again. Even her love of drama had limits.
“I’m trying not to think about him,” she said. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
“Did he stop talking to you?” Jo asked. “After you’d made love? Did he… what’s that young person thing…? Ghost you?”
Tabby couldn’t blame her for wanting to stay on the topic of Toby—she’d brought him up after all—but she was beginning to regret being such a loudmouth almost as much as she regretted the phrase ‘made love’ existed.
“Yeah. He ghosted me.”
But again, that wasn’t exactly the truth.
She’d texted Toby the day he left to ask if he wanted to meet up at his place and smash it out. He’d said he was busy, and she’d been a little stung but hadn’t thought much of it. That was until another two days passed and she was practically climbing the walls wanting more. So, she’d gotten mildly stoned and messaged him to ask if he could come by to play with the dogs—the subtext being, ‘I can’t stop thinking about your dick, and I want it inside me right now even if we have to do it super quietly so my sisters don’t hear.’
… And he’d left her on read. A full day later, twenty-four fucking hours, he sent the message that had burned itself into her long-term memory.
Sorry, Tabs, I’m crazy busy…
Busy with what,asshole? You work in a fucking office. How many coffee cups could need to be cleaned? Nine?
… Thanks for the other day…
Thanks?Fucking thanks?!?
… But I’m not feeling anything serious right now…
What are you talking about, you fucking virgin? Who else is beating down your front door? Pornhub? Your left hand? Some seriously betrayed and ultra-possessive sports sock???
… Let’s circle back when I’m in a different place x
Why don’tyou circle back off the fucking planet and get stuck next to all the space junk near Mars, you limp-dick, bottom-feeding, pansy-ass scumbag?
When she was done absorbing the mountain of fuckery that was his message, Tabby burst out of her bedroom and screamed to the whole house that Toby Tennant was dead to her. Of course, Sam and Nix had asked what the fuck she was talking about, and she’d lied and said Toby was avoiding her when the truth was…
He wasn’t interested in her. And no man she’d openly offered sex had ever turned her down. And sure, that was vain and privileged, and it was probably well past time for her to join the human race and get rejected, but it fucking sucked. Especially coming from a friend. Her pride had been obliterated. It took everything she had not to go through his social media and fuck everyone who’d ever meant anything to him out of revenge, including his dad. Instead, she’d buried herself in organising Sparkling Whine and then that had blown up in her face too. She might as well have just revenge fucked Toby’s whole family.
“Maybe it has nothing to do with you…” Jo said, startling Tabby out of her thoughts.
“Huh?”
“Maybe he left—ghosted—for reasons that had nothing to do with you?”
“Why does that matter? He still did it.”
Jo didn’t say anything.
“But maybe you’re right,” Tabby admitted. “His parents were these big Jesus freaks, and they moved away a month before we hooked up. Maybe he was always going to let his inner asshole run wild once they were gone, and his v-plates were the last thing holding him back.”
“Where did his parents go?”
“To a lifestyle community in the Philippines where people from all walks of life can come together to agree Wi-Fi is giving us tumours.”
Jo blinked at her, nonplussed.
“A cult. They joined a cult, is what I’m saying.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, no wonder Toby turned out to be such a freakdog.”
“Freakdog?”
“Just something me and my sisters say. It’s like… a person who’s a dyed-in-the-wool weirdo, like those dogs with long noses and white fur that look like death horses.”
“I don’t think I know what those are.”
“Borzois. Look them up some time; they’re total freaks. I love them, though. I love all dogs. My family have a bunch that came from the same mother.”
“That’s sweet.”
But that brought her right back to thinking about Toby, because the DaSilva pups were the bastard offspring of his parents’ old breeding spaniel, Mopsy. Where was Mopsy now? Did Toby have her in his waterfront property, or had she been dragged to whatever Jonestown Hellmouth his parents were currently eating gruel in? She wished she knew, but no one at the studio was in friendly contact with Toby anymore.
Two weeks after eating her pussy, he’d sold his parents’ house and quit his job as Scott’s assistant without so much as a ‘Hey, I’m thinking about a career change.’
Sam swore a lot about it, and Scott had been hurt, but that was that. A few months after Toby vanished, Noah found his money podcast, and for a while they’d all enjoyed listening to it and pissing themselves laughing whenever work was slow. But then Nix ruined it by saying he actually gave sound financial advice, and the fun was over.
From then on, Toby was rarely mentioned, and Tabby started to feel like a tit for being so stuck on him. She constantly fought the urge to bring him up in conversation, mention his podcast or drunkenly tell her sisters she’d banged him. She waited for her obsession to fade but couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t over. Whenever she left the house, she found herself scanning the streets for the man who wasn’t there.
“I saw him last week,” she told Jo. “My evil ex-friend.”
She’d finally started to think it would never happen, and then it fucking happened. She’d run into Toby Tennant for the first time in two years under the worst possible circumstances.
“You need to get back out there,” her friend Patience had insisted last Saturday. “It sucks about Sparkling Whine, but you can’t just sit around rotting into the floor like a cordyceps fungus.”
“I can,” Tabby responded, but she’d agreed to go out for a big one that night anyway. She didn’t feel like getting dressed up, so she hadn’t. Patience had taken one look at her baggy, second-hand cargo pants and started crying. “Who are you, and what have you done with Tabitha DaSilva?”
A valid question.
Despite her dogshit outfit, Tabby had been allowed to join Patience’s crew of mega-hot hairdressers and drink buckets of wine alongside them. They’d worked their way from the city to Chapel Street and, around two in the morning, stumbled into the Village Belle Hotel.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Patience screamed. “You get the margs!”
Tabby had had a bad feeling about the Belle, but she’d dismissed it like she always dismissed bad feelings when she was seven drinks in. She’d wandered up to the bar, and instead of finding a decent range of tequilas and limited chemical relief, she found Toby Tennant having a public threesome. Well, almost… He was sitting in a leather booth across from the bar, his arms around two stunning blondes, both of whom were sticking their tongues in his mouth.
For a second, slower than all the unboiled kettles in the world, Tabby watched them, her heart pumping bile. Running into him after all that time always would have sucked, but he looked so… good.
Everything about it did.
It looked like a fashion shoot: Toby in his hot pink and blue shirt, the girls in matching green dresses, and the bottle of vodka in front of them. Tabby’s mind had unwittingly formed an advertising slogan.
‘Chopin Family Reserve; it’ll get you sucked off two at a time!’
She’d watched the three of them writhe around, none of them concerned that banging in public was still very much illegal. She’d wanted to be mistaken. Wanted to be dead. Wanted to believe Toby had set up this sleazy scene just to hurt her because the alternative—that this was just how he lived now—was too painful to comprehend.
But she didn’t know anything about pain, not yet, because before she could pull her jaw off the floor, Toby disentangled himself from his paramours and looked straight at her.
The memory still had more knives than a butcher shop. Unlike her, Toby’s surprise rapidly morphed into amusement. He’d scanned her body like she was a topless waitress, and Tabby had just stood there, dumbfounded. He’d always been cute, but in the Village Belle Hotel, he’d looked amazing. He’d put on at least ten kilos of muscle, and his fuckboy haircut perfectly showcased his pale blue eyes and killer cheekbones.
Their gaze met—had his lashes always been a foot long?—and he’d smirked. Smirked. Smirked at her like he’d punched her v-ticket.
She wanted to be disgusted, but a fluttering heat had licked through her like flame, and all she could think about was his weight on her body as he thrust hard and fast. “That feel good, Tabby? You gonna come on it again?”
Toby jerked his head ‘C’mere,’ and instead of running away, she’d moved toward him like her feet were stuck to those little office chair wheels. The blondes stopped trying to fornicate Toby in the middle of the bar and turned to look at her, too. They were AI-level gorgeous, and Tabby wanted to cover the zit on her chin with her hand. She’d never felt so underdressed or unattractive.
“Tabitha DaSilva,” Toby said in his stupidly deep voice. “Fancy seeing you here...”
Tabby wasn’t super tall, but in that moment, she’d have fit under a three-leaf clover.
“Hi,” she’d managed to say. “Been a while.”
She’d wanted to sound cunty, but it came out as pure uncertainty.
“How’s the family?” Toby asked.
From the slur in his voice, he was drunk and, judging from his pupils, high. But that didn’t cheapen him or the scene she’d stumbled onto. It was just so fucking… sexy. Toby, all pretty and muscular with his pet bimbos at his side.
“My family think you’re a bellend,” she’d said, because why not escalate to petty name calling?
“Fair,” Toby said as though she’d responded normally. “You know, I wanted to come in and see you at Silver Daughters. Thinking about getting a tattoo.”
“Oh, coooool,” Blonde One cooed. She had bright green eyes and seemed as fucked up as Toby. “You’d look so good with a tattoo.”
“Thanks,” Toby said, grinning at her.
“I think you’d look good as weeeeellll,” Blonde Two said, smearing her mouth all over Toby’s neck. “Can we leave soon?”
“Sure,” Toby said, and Blonde Two grabbed his cheek and kissed him.
Tabby watched them make out, and to her horror, the heat burning through her reached scourging point. She’d wanted to leave, but couldn’t. Toby was wielding evil magic against her, gluing her to the spot while strangers pawed at the chest she’d once laid her head on. Blonde One bit Toby’s ear, and Tabby forcibly shook her head. “So, I’m gonna go…”
Toby and Blonde Two stopped kissing. She’d expected him to look at least a little uncomfortable, but he was still smirking. “I’ll call the studio then. Figure out the tattoo thing?”
“Whatever. You can talk to Noah about it.”
Toby curled a hand around Blonde One’s shoulder. “I don’t want a tattoo from Noah. I want a tattoo from you.”
Time went a little strange then. She’d stared at Toby, and he’d stared at her, and his blondes got all lemon-faced, clearly irritated to have their three-way interrupted.
“Toby…” Blonde Two pouted. “Make her go away.”
“In a sec.” Toby’s blue gaze bored into Tabby’s. “So, you’ll tattoo me?”
Blonde Two touched her nonexistent roots and smirked at Blonde One. Tabby was suddenly very aware of her regrowth.
“No,” she said flatly.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a cunt.”
Both blondes gasped.
“Don’t be like that,” Toby said. “I’ll pay your maximum rate plus a little extra for a job well done.”
He said it all low and suggestively, and Tabby couldn’t help remembering the way her pussy had squeezed tight around him as though it never wanted to let him go. She felt a wild urge to claw Blonde One and Blonde Two out of the way and take her rightful place on Toby Tennant’s lap
… which was probably why she’d gone in on him like a nuclear warhead…
“How about instead of paying my usual rate, you jam your money up your dickhole?” she’d told Toby in her sweetest baby-girl voice.
“Might be hard,” he said. “It’s mostly electronic…”
“Mehmemememeheehehehewwww,” Tabby mimicked, totally losing her cool. “Go fuck yourself. I wouldn’t tattoo you if you had the last piece of living skin on earth, you jumped-up, spoiled little tit-fucker.”
“What a bitch,” Blonde One had drooled. “And so meh.”
“Soooo meh,” Blonde Two agreed, uncrossing her mile-long legs and almost knocking over the vodka. “Like… go get your hair done.”
Tabby’s hands had balled into fists. “Toby, tell your bitches to go eat some biscuits and sober up before I come over there and rip the extension tape clean off their heads.”
Before either blonde could say anything, Toby cut in. “Enough. Tabitha, is that your final answer on a tattoo?”
The tone. The presumption. The refusal to take ‘I wouldn’t tattoo you if you had the last piece of living skin on earth’ for an answer. Tabby exploded. “No, champ, my final answer is ‘Go kick rocks, you tacky bootlicking piece of shit.’”
“Oh my God,” Blonde One slurred. “You’re so loud!”
“I know,” Tabby snapped. “Be grateful because if it weren’t for women like me, you wouldn’t be allowed to drive.”
The blonde made more sucky lemon faces and Tabby gave her the finger. She still felt a little guilty about that, but whatever. It wasn’t unfeminist to hate some pick-me bitch. Equality meant women were allowed to hate shit women. God knew men hated shit men.
“I’m leaving,” she’d told Toby. “Have fun with your cabal of dye-job bitches, and never talk to me again.”
“Fuck you,” Blonde Two said, which was fair enough, but Toby didn’t say anything. He’d nodded as though she’d asked to use the bathroom, and as Tabby finally found the strength to turn and run, she felt his gaze follow her across the bar.
“Tabitha?”
She jerked back to the present and saw she’d tattooed over three-quarters of Jo’s tarot card, her brain and hand in hyperfocus while her mind was a million miles away.
“Sorry,” she said to Jo. “I was in the zone. Everything okay?”
“Fine. You just mentioned that you’d run into your ex-friend last week.”
“Oh. Shit.” Tabby blotted excess ink from Jo’s arm, wishing it was her memories of that night. “He wanted a tattoo from me. We accidentally saw each other at a bar, and he was a total fucking cumberworld, and then this Monday, he called the studio to try and book a tattoo. Said he’d pay four grand cash, but it had to be me.”
“Really?” Jo said. “What did you say?”
“The same thing I told him in the bar—I don’t tattoo cunts.”
Jo laughed.
“Glad you think it’s funny,” Tabby said gloomily. “Sam almost killed me.”
“That’s your… older sister?”
“Yup. She owns the studio, and she told me I was pissing money up against the wall and it was bad for our reputation, but I don’t give a fuck. Toby can get whatever pleb tattoo he wants from anyone. He only wants me to ink him as a power trip.”
Jo frowned. “But you’re the most expensive tattooist on staff?”
“So?”
“So maybe he just wanted the best?”
Tabby snorted. “Me charging the most doesn’t mean I’m the best. It means I’m the most famous.”
“Sorry?”
“That’s how it works,” she said, her mind mostly still on Toby and his indecent proposal. “I’ve got the biggest social media following, so I can charge the most.”
“Hmm,” Jo said drily. “I wish I’d known this beforehand.”
Tabby winced. She was really shitting the professional bed today. “Hey, I’m not saying I’m not good. I am. But the industry is what it is.”
“A charade?”
“An industry. Anyway, talent is subjective. Fame is numeric.”
Jo surprised her by dropping the angry boomer act and laughing. It was different from how she’d laughed before. Clear and high and kind of adorable. Tabby giggled along with her, feeling some of the misery in her chest shift.
“Glad you’re not too mad at me,” she told Jo. “I don’t think I could handle any more enemies.”
Jo wiped her eyes. “You’re a funny girl, aren’t you?”
“That’s what they say.”
“You don’t think so?”
“If I am, I don’t see it doing much good.”
Jo looked amused. “Does your family put pressure on you?”
“Nah, I think they just want more for me. Or more for the world, maybe. Either way, I ignore them, and they’re mostly fine with it.”
“I see. I did the same thing. My mother practically forced me to go to nursing school, but I cancelled my enrolment and ran away to paint instead.”
“Nice. Where’d you head?”
“Here,” Jo said with a fond smile. “Melbourne. It was the first place I ever felt at home.”
“Cool. What kind of art do you do?”
Jo waved her free hand as though it didn’t matter. “Earrings, pottery. Right now, I’m doing a few oil commissions for Candour House.”
“Sweet,” Tabby said, impressed. “They hardly take anyone on.”
“I know the owner. So, your older sister owns Silver Daughters?”
“Yeah, it used to be my dad’s, but he bounced.”
Jo looked shocked. “He left you?”
“No, not like that,” Tabby said quickly. “He went away to live by himself. It was this spiritual ‘rite of passage’ thing. You’d have to know my dad for it to make sense.”
“Okay...”
“Anyway, that’s why the studio’s called Silver Daughters Ink. He named it after us. And, yeah, Sam runs the shop, and I work here, and my other sister, Nix, does the accounts. She and Sam are twins. Identical.”
“Hmm. So, Nicole runs the books, huh?”
“Yeah, she’s an accountant. She has her own business, but she does this place for free. Which is great until she comes in to bitch about the price of hand sanitiser.”
Jo laughed. “She’s a little uptight?”
“She gives ponytails a run for their money. To be fair, her husband works here, so that’s at least part of the reason she’s always clogging up the studio.”
“Husband?”
“Did you see the huge criminal-looking bloke in the other room? That’s Noah. He and Nix are having a kid.”
Jo’s fingers flexed against the arms of the tattooing chair. “Really?”
“Yup. They had a hard time with it, though. Nix has had a few miscarriages.”
“Oh my…”
Tabby felt a faint stab of guilt. Maybe she shouldn’t have told this random punter something so personal. Then again, Nix wanted to be open about her experiences. She already ran a not-for-profit educating girls and women about sexually transmitted diseases. She wanted to do the same thing for people struggling with conception and infertility.
“Are they happy together?” Jo asked. “Your sister and the tattoo artist?”
“Disgustingly. You’ve never seen more repulsive displays of heteronormativity.”
“What about the one who runs the studio?”
“Sam? Ahh, she’s happy, too. She’s with this dickhead who used to live next door. Scotty ‘Doesn’t Know’ Sanderson, I call him.”
Jo’s eyebrows contracted, and not like she thought the ‘Scotty Doesn’t Know’ thing was funny. Her lip stuck out, and for a second, it looked like she might cry. “That’s… so nice.”
An awkward silence spiralled between them, and confused, Tabby bent back to her work. This was what she got for oversharing.
“Sorry,” Jo said. “I’m just… I haven’t eaten very much today. I get dizzy sometimes.”
“Oh shit. Do you want to take a break? I can get you a cup of tea or something?”
“It’s fine. So, Sam and Scotty are doing well? Are they married?”
“Nah, Sam always says the thought of being someone’s wife makes her wanna stick her head in an oven,” Tabby said, glad she hadn’t freaked Jo out. “But they’re super committed. They got matching tats this year. His and hers lockets.”
“Very sweet. So, that’s both your sisters taken care of?”
“Yup,” Tabby said heavily. “And then there’s me. Fuck knows when I’m ever going to meet someone.”
Who isn’t a guy who says ‘4X trading’ ten times a day…
“I’d like to meet someone,” Jo said. “Where do single men over forty-five drink these days?”
“In the shower.”
Jo laughed her bright, childlike laugh again. “I think you’ll meet someone soon, Tabitha.”
“We’ll see. Bunch of absolute fours around here.”
Tabby went silent as she began the detailing around the card. The lines needed to be delicate but deep enough to last. Like anything, she guessed. Yet, as she did her work, she couldn’t stop her mind from returning to Toby. Where was he? What was he thinking? And most of all—when would she be done? It had been two years since they’d slept together, and this obsession wasn’t getting any easier and it had only gained ground since she’d run into him sucking double face in the Village Belle Hotel.
Twenty minutes later, Jo’s tattoo was done. Tabby wiped off her stencil and took photos for social media and the Silver Daughters website. Jo seemed happy, studying her forearm with the fascination that Tabby guessed was kind of like having a new baby. This thing that now existed that hadn’t been a part of you before. She smeared the tattoo with healing butter, then wrapped Jo’s arm in Second Skin like she had done for clients a million times before. Jo had a lot of ink already, so she gave the speedrun version of the ‘don’t poke it, don’t scrub it, don’t fuck with it at all’ speech. Then she and Jo shook hands and went to reception to process the payment.
It was quiet at the front of house. Noah and Ilene—the studio’s new part-timer—were with clients, and Sam was out getting her hair done. Jo covered the two-thousand-dollar payment in cash. It wasn’t unheard of, but it was unusual for an older female client. Tabby wondered if she was a sex worker, and whether that was why she seemed a little withdrawn.
“Thanks for coming to me for this,” she told Jo. “It was awesome to do some tarot stuff.”
“Thank you. It’s beautiful.” Jo’s voice was cheery, but her eyes were sad. “I guess I’ll come back if I need anything else.”
“Sure.” Tabby gave an extra-big smile. “Well, call me if you have any issues…”
Jo looked like she was about to say something, but then she nodded and turned for the door. From behind, she looked younger. Early thirties or even twenties.
I hope you meet someone,Tabby told Jo’s retreating ass. Some nice dude who doesn’t drink in the shower too much.
Just as Jo opened the door, Sam appeared on the other side of the studio windows.
“Shit,” Tabby hissed. She’d promised to take out the bins, but there was no time to run away and pretend she’d already done it.
“Sorry!” she called as Sam and Jo crossed paths. “I’ll go do the bins right now! Please don’t be mad at me! Love me! Be kind!”
But Sam didn’t seem to hear her. As the studio door slammed shut behind her, she removed her scrunchie, running her fingers through the straight black hair she and Nicole shared. Her face was blank as a page.
Since her typically furious sister seemed decommissioned, Tabby figured this was as good a time as any to come clean about the myriad other things she’d fucked up: “I haven’t done the bins, and I haven’t ordered any more Second Skin, and I haven’t wiped down the front desk, and I ate that yogurt you were keeping in the fridge.”
She’d expected at least a scowl at that one, but her oldest sister continued to stare into space like she’d been hit with a novelty mallet.
“Sambo?” Tabby asked. “What the hell’s with you?”
“I…” Sam jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Do you know who that was?”
“Who? Jo? I just tattooed her. She wanted a tarot card. It was pretty sick.”
Sam somehow grew paler, her ink as stark as tiger stripes against her green-grey skin. “Her name’s not Jo.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She’s our mum,” Sam said. “You just tattooed our mum.”