Chapter 11 Hazel
Hazel
An hour after I arrived at work, my phone continued to buzz with new information Skylar had found on Milton.
Unsolicited and most likely wildly inaccurate.
Skylar: He grew up in Northern California and doesn’t have any known siblings.
Skylar: Looks like he was a tight end on his football team back in high school, which seems fitting, haha.
Skylar: It also looks like that’s when they started their band. That’s crazy that they’ve been playing together that long! And so wholesome that they’ve gotten this far since.
Skylar: Loves puzzles?
That one made me laugh. I hoped it was true.
Skylar: Ooh! He’s a bit of an artist himself, just like you! Found some old stuff he posted from a few years ago. He’s really good actually. Lots of charcoal drawings.
Skylar: His favorite smoothie shop is in East Los Angeles, near a private gym where someone has seen him go in and out of. Maybe you need to start lifting weights there too …
I sighed at every new text that came through, willing her to stop, but I still couldn’t help but read each one with shameful interest. It felt invasive and stalkery.
I knew that there were countless untrue things about him on the internet, given that he was a popular musician.
And yet, with every small, ordinary detail Skylar sent me about him, it reminded me of how much of a normal person he was.
That night, under the bridge, he hadn’t been this famous rock star drummer with thousands of fans chanting his name. He was just … Milton.
Every moment since then, I’d been painting over that image—that feeling of norm and safety and realness—with a fabricated version. A version of him I wasn’t worthy of having because I was me and he was, well, him.
My phone vibrated on the table beside me again.
Skylar: I found a picture of him and his mom from a few years back on Mother’s Day. She looks adorable! I haven’t come across anything with his dad yet though.
I finally had a minute after I finished wrapping up my walk-in’s rib tattoo to reply and asked her to put the digging to a rest. Learning about a smoothie shop felt a lot less icky than diving into his relationship with family.
Those were things, if ever given the chance again, I’d like to learn from him personally, not from my bestie’s scary detective skills.
Skylar reluctantly listened, with one final text that made me pause.
Skylar: Fine, fine. But I’ll leave you with this. You’re welcome.
I dragged my lower lip between my teeth as I took in the screenshot following her text. It was of Milton, posing on the front cover of Forbidden Notes Magazine, with a tag line below his picture that read:
THE MAKINGS OF A DRUMMING LEGEND AND WHAT MAKES MILTON TICKETT “TIC”
He had one hand running through his disheveled and slightly greasy blond hair while looking up from under his brow at the camera with a charming yet daring smirk.
His other hand loosely held a pair of drumsticks between two fingers.
It was almost unreal how handsome and perfect he was, every inch of him faultlessly striking.
Sharp jawline and hard muscles, mixed with warm eyes and a soft smile.
I’d give credit to the magazine and whoever had styled him or told him how to pose, but I’d been in his presence to know the credit belonged to him alone.
The floral tattoos on his neck stuck out from beneath a tattered, familiar-looking gray T-shirt that clung to his chest and biceps.
I zoomed in on the collar, noting the three tiny holes gathered by the seam on the right side and a larger one just below the shoulder.
The T-shirt I had worn home from the Ballads for Hope Fest, tucked safely away in my duffel bag at Skylar’s, had the very same ones.
A smile spread across my lips, just as something small, black, and rubbery flung into my view.
I jumped, unsure of what it was for a split second before thinking it was a real spider. Then I picked up my boss’s fake spider, which he liked to prank us with, and threw it right back in his face.
“Dammit!” I narrowed my eyes at him, watching him bend over in laughter. “Stop throwing those around! You know I hate spiders!”
Brian was one of the kindest men I knew, but damn him and his obsession with bugs and all things horror.
I never knew when I was going to walk into the shop and find a bloody eyeball prop in my drawer, a life-sized clown doll in the bathroom, or scarily accurate critters hanging from the ceiling.
He celebrated Halloween three hundred sixty-five days a year, and I loved and hated him for it with equal measure.
“What on your phone has you smiling like that?” he asked, wiggling his brows.
I cocked my head with a deadpan expression, annoyed at his suspicion.
“What?” He shrugged innocently. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you smile that big. Whatever it is must be pretty good.”
I quickly glanced back down at the picture, unable to disguise the immediate grin tugging at my lips.
Brian lunged across the short barrier between us and grabbed my phone out of my hand, stretching his arm out of my reach as he examined the image. “Well, well, well,” he signed. “Who is this guy you’re drooling over?”
“Give me back my phone,” I demanded.
He read the caption out loud to himself, answering his own question.
Looking back at me, he arched a brow and repeated Milton’s name. “You know the drummer for A Quiet Peril?” he asked.
“Wait, do you?”
His hand finally lowered, and he passed me my phone back with a smile.
“Yeah, of course. I mean, I listen to their stuff sometimes. They’re in a few of the shops’ playlists I shuffle through.
They’re pretty sick. It took me a second to recognize him with that hair, but yeah.
Tic is what that says he is—a legend in the making. ”
A strange giddiness stirred in my chest.
“There’s that look again.” He pointed. “What’s going on? Why are you looking him up?”
I rolled my eyes and chewed on my lip.
I’d only been here for a little over two years, but Brian could read me as well as Penelope, his spitfire fourteen-year-old daughter.
She hung around the shop after school most days.
There weren’t many people she gave the time of day to, and she was rather difficult to get to open up, but she loved me, and I took extra pride in that.
We had a similar level of hearing loss, and she was a fan of acrylic painting, like me, so I guessed that was why we’d clicked so easily.
All it took was one crinkle in Brian’s forehead to make me break, and I told him everything. The festival. The outfit malfunction. The motorcycle.
He curled his lip in disgust when I got to the part of the night where I’d kissed Milton, so I hurried to the end, where he and I had gone our separate ways.
“Wait, wait, wait. You had an epic night with Tic from A Quiet fucking Peril, and you didn’t even give the guy your number?”
“I told you, both our phones were dead.”
“So? Write it on his arm! Make him memorize it before you leave! Carve it into his damn skin with your nails!”
I shook my head at him. “You sound like Skylar.”
“Well, I guess we both think you’re a fool. Him too for not securing another way to see you.”
I lifted my shoulders and tossed my phone down, beginning to agree with him. “Yeah, well, I’ll tell you what I told them. If it’s meant to happen, it’ll happen. Okay?”
“It did happen! What do you mean?” His eyes were wide as he gawked at me. “You’re looking for a sign? A silver lining to all the shit you were handed this year? The universe sent you a fucking famous drummer!”
I read a string of curse words on his mouth, but couldn’t make out half of it.
Nash, from the front desk, peeked his head around the corner, waving to get our attention, just in time to cut our conversation short. He waited until I was looking at him and then hooked a thumb over his shoulder.
“Sorry to interrupt, but there’s someone here to see you, Hazel.”
He always overenunciated, stretching his lips awkwardly and speaking to me slowly. But he was so kind to me, even when I took clients close to closing time when I knew I shouldn’t. He’d only begun working here a few months ago, so I hoped, with time, our conversations would feel easier.
Gazing down at my watch, I frowned. My last client of the day wasn’t supposed to arrive for another twenty minutes.
“Maybe they’re nervous? Have questions?” Brian suggested, seeing the confusion on my face.
Giving Nash a nod, I gathered my tablet and my prepared stencil and followed him to the front.
My heartbeat soared into an erratic pace as I rounded the corner, my eyes landing on the one person I never expected to see in the waiting area.
Not just because he hated tattoos and the fact that I was a tattoo artist, but because he had finally signed the papers.
It was done. Sure, we had to wait until the court filed everything, and I still had to gather the rest of my belongings from our house.
But I hadn’t received a text from him since he’d told me he’d signed them. It was done. We were done.
I’d thought Devan had finally come to his senses and was giving me some peace.
Devan. His name formed dryly on my lips.
“Hey, Jelly Bean.” He said my nickname as if it were the most normal thing in the world. But it wasn’t, not now. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?”
His eyes were visibly soft and warm, like they used to be when we had been younger. Back when one look at me could make me swoon with adoration, blurring out everything and everyone between us.
Funny how time could change all that.
It was the same eyes I’d looked into for the last eight years, only I could see the facade and know what was hidden beneath the surface. His deceiving stare felt cold and severe. The world no longer blurred around us, but became a device to manipulate in his favor.