Chapter 5
“Ineed to clean something!” Nix sat up, her hands flitting to her hair. “Like, right now!”
Tabby grabbed the back of her t-shirt and pulled her onto the couch. “No, you freakdog!”
Nix struggled, making the faded cotton stretch even further. “I’m not a freakdog! Just let me wipe down the oven! It’ll make me feel better!”
“No, it won’t. Feeling your feelings will.”
“How the fuck would you know?”
Tabby ignored her. Nix was batshit from all the pregnancy hormones before their long-lost mother showed up. She knew better than to hold her sister responsible for her language now. “Just sit here and watch the pretty vampire show and try to relax, dude. Maybe cry a bit?”
“I’m sick of crying,” Nix spat as fresh tears appeared in her inner eyes. “I want to do something!”
Tabby yanked on her windcheater, forcing Nix into a reclining position. “Tough titties, crazy betch. I’m not gonna let you. Besides, you don’t even live here anymore, so stop with this cleaning bullshit.”
“But—”
“What about the baby?” Tabby demanded, playing her last and most extreme card with reluctance. “What if you inhale too much Jif cream cleaner and turn it all reptilian in utero?”
“That’s so stupid,” Nix sobbed, but she stopped struggling all the same. “At least you and Sam got to see Mum! I didn’t even get to see her!”
“I know,” Tabby said miserably. The guilt she felt about tattooing Jo was compounding by the day. The hour. It had been a week since Jo showed up, and neither of the twins was handling the news better with time. Sam was sullen as a sixteen-year-old, and Nix was speed-running toward her worst possible timeline—martyring so hard she got sent to hospital on the reg just to rest.
But then, her sisters had actual memories of Jo hitting the bricks. Having her wander into the studio named after them and getting a tarot card tattoo from the one kid who couldn’t pick her out of a lineup had fucked with their heads. Tabby knew she should hate Jo for such a shitty move, but she couldn’t. Not even after the porch abduction bombshell.
“When is she going to make contact?” Nix demanded. “Scott emailed her days ago and she hasn’t replied. That’s so wrong!”
Tabby knew Nix was desperately trying to map the future. Was Jo living in Melbourne, or had this been a once-in-a-lifetime visit? Why wasn’t she responding to Scott’s email? Would she ever respond to Scott’s email? Should they send more emails?
If they knew what Jo was planning, Nix would feel better, but there didn’t seem to be a plan—just a bunch of people with shared DNA running around.
“Maybe she just needs more time?” Tabby offered.
“It’s been over twenty years! How much time does she need?”
“I dunno. More, I guess.”
Nix softly stroked her belly, and Tabby felt a cold twist of fear. She never knew it could be this way when someone you loved got pregnant. Not a celebration but a collective holding of breath. Nix was only six weeks gone, and she’d already miscarried three times. Tabby was worried about what all this stress was doing to the baby, but how was she supposed to correct that?
Jo had already shaken up their lives like a snow globe, and now Sam was running up the black flag, and Nix had signed on as first mate. If their mother did show her face again, there was every chance she’d be slapped with a restraining order, or the back of Sam’s hand or both, and the drama would only escalate further.
But I’m running away, Tabby thought. So, it’ll probably work out. Maybe.
She bent to pat Lilah, the not-so-puppy. Tonight, she’d be catching the tram to St Kilda and in a few short tattooing sessions, she’d have all the cash she needed to fly to Cartagena and never look back.
Seeing Toby didn’t matter. She couldn’t have cared less that tonight would be the first time they’d been alone together since her bedroom. And if she was unable to eat or think or sit still, well, that was because she was so excited about the prospect of leaving.
The front door slammed wide, and Sam staggered in, tattooed arms bulging with grocery bags. “I got everything. Family-sized Black Forest Cadbury, Meredith goat cheese, strawberries?—”
“Nuggets…?” Nix moaned like a dying woman pleading for water.
“Two forty packs.” Sam dumped the shopping on the coffee table and pulled out the brightly coloured nugget bags. “I’ll put them on now.”
“Thank you,” Nix said weakly.
“I’ll help.” Tabby picked up Lilah and put her on Nix’s chest. “Here, doesn’t that feel better?”
Nix pressed her face into Lilah’s fur. “Yes...”
“Good.”
As she lifted the remaining groceries, Tabby wondered how her new niece or nephew or whatever was doing inside Nix. Freaking out, probably. It didn’t seem like a very stable environment. But even if she wasn’t here to look after it, the kid would have loving parents and friends and access to modern psychotherapy. It would be fine.
Like you?
Shut up, brain, you wet bag of shit.
Tabby lugged the shopping bags into the kitchen, where Sam was slamming trays into the oven like they’d stolen her credit cards. Now that she knew better, Tabby couldn’t believe she hadn’t recognised Jo. The twins had her navy eyes and killer cheekbones, and all three women had to be within an inch of each other in height. But then Tabby had never factored her mum into any comparative equation. An older woman who looked a little like Sam and Nix was just an older woman who looked a little like Sam and Nix.
Would she ever regain that naivety? Or would she always be hunting for Jo in middle-aged women’s faces?
No, she told herself. Not when everyone around you is Colombian.
“Bitch,” Sam snapped, smashing the oven door closed.
Tabby flinched, almost dropping a jar of pearled onions.
“Sorry. I don’t mean you,” Sam muttered. “How are you, anyway? Excited about your… thing?”
She’d told the twins she was meeting a potential sponsor today, someone interested in paying her to shill their jewellery on Instagram. She needed a reason to get out of the house and an explanation for the money Toby was going to give her, lest they find it and assume she was sucking mad dick for cash.
“Should be good,” she said with all the casualness she could muster. “I’m meeting two people. Marcie and Darnell. They seem pretty keen to make a deal.”
“Good,” Sam said absently. “Nice work.”
Tabby watched her sister faff around with the now-empty shopping bags. “I’m thinking of challenging one of them to a duel. Trying to take over their company by medieval force.”
“Cool. Lemme know how it goes.”
Yeah, Sam wasn’t listening. Tabby took the bags away and dropped them in Nicole’s designated bag leaving area. She wished she could tell her sisters she was seeing Toby in a few hours. Going to his fuckhead house to start his thirteen-thousand-dollar tattoo.
But the twins were in no state to hear it, even if she wasn’t planning on bailing out of Melbourne with the money. She was starting to think she could paint herself green and run around screaming about aliens, and Sam and Nix would just keep cleaning and slamming doors and utilising whatever other maladaptive coping strategies they could come up with to try to process their mum’s unexpected return.
She didn’t mind. Much. It was just kind of lonely. And confusing. Why did she feel so normal? She wanted to ask someone, but there was no way she was confiding in Weepy Nix or Shotgun Sam. Instead, she returned to the couch to watch the vampire show with Nix until the nuggets were ready.
Sam poured the piping hot chicken parcels straight onto plates and handed them out along with their condiments of choice. Tabby liked mayo, Sam liked sauce, and Nix had a little pack of microwaved gravy. As they ate, Tabby wondered if Jo liked chicken nuggets. Their dad didn’t; he’d been a vegetarian forever, but maybe she did. Maybe they had a tonne of small yet significant things in common.
“Would you want to see her again?” Nix asked for the millionth time.
“No,” Sam snarled. “Not unless Noah can get me a gun.”
“He’s not a criminal anymore! Aren’t you worried we won’t ever see her again?”
“‘Hoping’ is the word you’re looking for, Nicole. Hoping.”
Tabby pushed a lopsided nugget around her plate. She did want to see Jo again. If only to ask for an explanation. Why now? Because she knew their dad wasn’t around or some other reason? And why get a tattoo? She felt like she’d been conned into giving Jo a piece of herself. Her art transfused into her mother’s skin for all eternity…
“Well, I’d like to see her,” Nix said quietly. “Even just to ask why she left.”
“She left because she’s a twat,” Sam said, chewing like she was trying to crack her own teeth.
“But with Dad gone, it’s like we’ve lost both of them.” Nix’s eyes brimmed with fresh tears. “If I carry to term, he might not be here when the baby comes and Mum… Mum…”
Nix dissolved into more loud sobs, and Tabby and Sam each touched her shoulder.
“Sorry, Nix,” Tabby said, swallowing what felt like a landslide of guilt and chicken. How easy would it be for Nix to put on lingerie and seduce where their dad was out of Noah? Super fucking easy, she bet. And yet, she felt a twisted obligation to respect her dad’s wishes. Or at least stop Nicole from throwing a wok at Noah’s head in pregnant rage.
“This whole thing sucks,” Sam muttered. “It fucking sucks, but we don’t know where dad is and catching up with the deadbeat mum of the century isn’t going to help. Especially when she doesn’t want to see us.”
Nicole sighed, shoving her plate of uneaten nuggets onto the coffee table. Déjà vu washed over Tabby as she recalled watching Nix do this back when she was still school captain and the curator of the world’s cringiest ‘white guy with guitar’ playlists. When had this anxious, fluttering person replaced her sister? And on the other side of the couch, Sam was glaring fit to burn the house down. She’d always been grumpy, but she’d been happy too. She used to laugh so loudly people turned from down the street when they heard it. And now she’d been body-snatched by this angry golem.
And then there was her, drifting aimlessly, unable to consider anything as simple as re-dyeing her hair or telling her sisters about Toby. Spreading lies, keeping secrets, and acting like she thought it would all work out when she suspected the opposite. Unable to keep her thoughts to herself, she turned to Nix.
“When did we all…?” But she couldn’t finish her sentence.
Sam dragged a nugget through tomato sauce. “When did we all, what?”
“Get so old…”
Nicole gave an offended gasp, and Sam burst out laughing. “Get fucked, Tabs.”
“What? I’m not trying to be a dick!”
“You’re younger than us,” Nicole cried. “And we’re in our early thirties!”
“Yeah, but I didn’t mean… God, never mind.”
How was she supposed to explain to her sisters that she didn’t mean that time had passed but that they’d changed? She couldn’t, so she finished her nuggets silently, watching the vampires flirt and taking nothing in.
Sam cleared away the plates and brought them Diet Cokes, which Tabby knew was her way of apologising for her snappiness.
“Thanks, Sammity. For the nugs and everything.”
“All good.” Sam tilted her head to the side. “You okay?”
“Nope,” Tabby said, full of fake cheer. “But that’s what happens when your progenitor shows up under false pretences to get a tattoo out of you.”
“Not that.” Sam’s eyes narrowed. “Are you planning something?”
“No.”
She said it quickly. Too quickly.
Nicole straightened against the couch. “Tabby?”
God, she’d been afraid of this.
“I’m not planning anything!” she said, and this time, she had the right amount of contempt in her voice. “Excuse me for acting a little unusual at this extremely cooked time!”
Nix slumped back onto the couch. “Sorry.”
“Yeah, sorry,” Sam said. “When are you heading out?”
Tabby checked the clock on the wall, ignoring the now-familiar twist of nerves. “In about twenty.”
“Where are you going?” Nix asked.
“Ah, to hang out with some rhinestone company who wants to give me a sponsorship.”
“That’s fantastic—hang on.” Nix pointed to her shirtdress. “You can’t wear that, it’s all rumply. And there’s a stain on it.”
Tabby looked down, and sure enough, there was a white blob of mayonnaise on her hem. She swiped it away. “All better.”
“It is not all better! You can still see the mark.”
“So?”
Sam rolled her eyes. “So, it looks like jizz.”
“And?”
“Whatever, grot. Your nails look shit, too, by the way.”
Tabby studied her hands. Her nails did look shit with their tattered pink polish and bitten cuticles. “Fuck it.”
Nicole groaned. “Please go get changed; I can see the stain from a mile away.”
“Yeah, but you always notice stuff like that. I’ll just order something with mayonnaise and pretend the stain happened while I was there.”
“And how does that help?”
“It helps me not get changed.”
Nix looked horrified. “Tabby, I will never understand your need to fight for mediocrity.”
And I will never understand why you and Sam don’t understand me, Tabby thought. But fuck it. I’m running away.
* * *
She caughtthe 96 tram to St Kilda, watching the houses grow bigger and the streets get wider the further she trundled south. The leafy, non-native trees and ethereal boutiques were like warning stripes—do you have enough money to be here? She’d looked up Toby’s address on Street View. It was modern, with huge floor-to-ceiling windows and multiple terraces—the kind of place where rich people got murdered in California. God only knew why he’d gone for a place so big, but then why did rich people do anything?
St Kilda Bay, complete with honey-skinned beach babes, sparkled into view, and Tabby buried her face in her phone. Social media had nothing worth being distracted by, so she looked over her sketch of Toby’s tattoo. She’d been taken aback by what he wanted: a winter forest scene with a stag in the foreground. She’d taken liberties with the design, whipping snow through the air and drawing the young buck charging, his horned head lowered in determination.
Perfect, Toby had texted when she’d sent him a demo. I want this included.
It was a picture of a butterfly done with a fingerprint design.
You want a butterfly? Tabby asked.
I want fingerprints—five of them. Work them into what you have.
Whose fingerprints?she asked.
Whoever’s, he replied. Yours. I don’t give a fuck. I just like the look.
Irritated at his condescending tone, she was nevertheless intrigued. She’d started doing fingerprint tattoos a year ago, integrating them into her art to personalise designs. They were less cliché than loved ones’ names and more unique. She tried to lift some fingerprints off Shutterstock but realised they might belong to some weirdo. She knew she could bring ink and pads to Toby’s place and get him to use his own, but that would take time, and she didn’t want their tattooing sessions to go even longer. In the end, she had used her own prints. It would suck to have a part of her etched permanently onto Toby, but she was already consenting to do that by agreeing to tattoo him. Why not add fingerprints?
She had snuck into the studio after hours and scanned her right hand into the studio’s shared image base. She’d thought adding them to the design would be tricky, but it wasn’t. She worked her prints into the border of the forest, blurring them slightly so it looked like an invisible hand gripped the design. She’d spent hours on the sketch over the last few days, tracing and retracing lines, adding more detail to the leaves and snowflakes. Contrary to what her sisters might think, she did take pride in her work, and she’d grown to love the design. A quiet forest loaded with snow. A lonely deer surging at an unseen enemy. A godlike presence tearing at the scenery…
Great, Toby said when she’d sent him the final proof. Come around tomorrow at eight.
Now, ‘tomorrow’ was today. It was less than fifteen minutes away. Her winter forest stencil had been printed onto water slide paper and was curled up carefully inside her carry bag along with ink and her tattooing machine. Her fingertips were about to be embedded into her ex-friend’s right bicep forever…
For thirteen thousand bucks, she reminded herself. For enough money to get to Cartagena, and that was all that mattered.
It would take a minimum of three sessions to complete without her hands cramping to death, and Toby would have to be shirtless the whole time. She remembered the way he’d looked beneath her, his chest and abdomen slick with sweat. Maybe she could make him wear one of those little capes they gave you at the hairdressers? But she didn’t have one, and it was too late to buy anything.
The tram stopped outside a Westpac Bank, and Tabby’s stomach knotted. There was still time to run. Once she started inking, there would be no going back. She’d rather cut her hand off than leave someone with a half-finished tattoo—even Toby Tennant.
The tram beeped, and the doors started to close. She jumped up, dragging her bag behind her like a disobedient dog. She headed in the direction of Toby’s house, but when she passed a twee little wine bar, she turned inside.
The guy behind the counter was cute—big as Noah with bleached hair and tattoos across his knuckles.
“Evening,” he said, flashing her a big smile. “Getcha something?”
Tabby hesitated. She didn’t drink before work, obviously, but this was off the books, and she wasn’t a fucking brain surgeon. She’d tattooed her friends after numerous beers, and the ink had always come out perfect. Besides, at this rate, nerves would have her shaking worse than booze would.
“Tequila, please. 1806 if you have it.”
“Sure. Ice?”
“Great.”
She sat at a nearby table, putting her bag between her feet. The people around her were all dressed up for dinner. Nix was right—she should have changed her dress or worn something better. Or not agreed to be here at all. She checked her phone and found it was bang on eight, but fuck it, let the prick sweat. She wasn’t his lackey.
“All yours,” the bartender said, placing her drink on the table. “Tabby, right?”
She blinked. “Yeah. How…?”
“Instagram. You’re a tattoo artist, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said, stupidly reassured by his friendliness. “Thanks for the tequila.”
“On the house.” He put his hands on the back of the chair opposite hers, leaning forward. “You meeting some guy here?”
Tabby felt a low tingle of… not attraction, exactly. More relief that she mustn’t look like complete dogshit despite her grown-out hair and jizz-dress. Not if this hot dude was pushing up on her. “Just grabbing a quick one.”
“How quick? I finish in a couple of hours.”
Tabby felt a flash of guilt and shoved it aside. “Pretty quick. But that’s not to say I couldn’t come back…?”
The guy grinned, revealing perfect white teeth. “I’ve gotta head back to the bar, but can I grab your number first?”
“Sure,” she said, as automatically as she’d turned into this place. “Why not?”
He pulled out his phone, and she recited her digits, her pulse racing like she was planning a heist.
The shiftiness she felt at giving this stranger a way to contact her was acute and fucking humiliating. Toby Tennant was publicly double-tagging blondes and hearting comments from Instagram models. Meanwhile, she’d been celibate for longer than she cared to remember. Unable to muster even the most moderate interest in the guys who came to Silver Daughters to meet the ‘hot tattoo chick.’ The fact she didn’t feel like the ‘hot tattoo chick’ anymore wasn’t the point. She was single, and she’d always been able to pull herself out of a funk with a little life-affirming menergy. So why not give it another go? She owed nothing to anyone, least of all Toby.
“Done,” the bartender said, tucking his phone away. “I’m Vince, by the by. Chat soon.”
“Sure thing, Vince.”
As he retreated, Tabby reached for her tequila and sipped. The tingly heat gave her a boost of reassurance, but then her phone buzzed—a message from Toby.
I’m waiting, Tabitha.
Lust and genuine excitement burst inside her like paintballs, and she scowled at her phone.
“Fuck you,” she said, taking a big drink and almost draining the tumbler. Stupid too much ice, making the drink look fuller than it was…
Behind the bar, Vince was chatting to a pretty blonde. She looked so much like one of Toby’s girls that Tabby had to squint to make sure it wasn’t. Vince winked a lot as he talked to the blonde, flexing his biceps as he pulled pints.
Tabby felt another low squirm of attraction and groaned. The dude might have just been flirting to catch her eye, but probably not. Dollars to doughnuts, he was a horny, fun-time dog—just like everyone she found hot.
It was such a cliché, liking bad boys. She could defend the tattoos and big shoulders, but not how they treated her. The way she let them treat her, Tabby corrected, because no one made her chase Jonah or Mika around.
Everyone joked about her being friends with all her exes, but that wasn’t strictly true. She liked everyone she’d slept with, but she’d only ever fallen—really fallen—for two guys. Jonah, the guitarist, when she was nineteen, and Mika, the artist, when she was twenty-two. In both cases, she and the guy in question had barely dated. She and Mika had only kissed twice. It didn’t matter. She’d obsessed over them for years, torturing herself with old messages, circular conversations, and tarot cards, trying to figure out whether or not they liked her when the answer was obvious—a bit, but not really, dipshit. Engaged but indifferent, that was her actual type. The same dude over and over.
She never talked to Sam or Nix about Jonah or Mika, pretending not to care while she hired literal internet witches to perform love spells that left her feeling beyond pathetic.
As tequila spiked through her blood, she admitted that Toby Tennant had long since joined those ranks. It was why she hated him so hard. It was why she was terrified to go to his house despite her hard work on the design and the promise of thirteen thousand dollars.
She wanted the money but didn’t know how to be around him any more than she’d known how to smile at Mika’s new girlfriend when he brought her to Silver Daughters Ink one day.
“Hey Tabs, is Sam around? Nori wants a tat.”
The difference was that neither Jonah nor Mika was a part of her life before or after they dated—leaving her free to nurse her feelings in secret. She and Toby had history. Too much history. So here she was, caught between a rock and a shit place. She had terrible taste in men, bad hair and bad ideas. And was already a tequila in on a Tuesday.
She thought of Jo, single at fifty-something, and wondered if that was what was coming for her. If she’d always be pretending not to care when the truth was that the men she went crazy for never seemed to care about her.
Unwilling to sit and watch Vince spread it around, Tabby picked up her bag and slipped through the door before he could spot her leaving. She needed to get moving, to Toby’s place, to Cartagena, and the future.
She needed this to start so it could finally be over.