4. Chapter 3 – Lex
Chapter 3 – Lex
“ Y our four o’clock is here.” Paisley, the receptionist for the shop, popped her head in my room, surprising me and dragging me out of the headspace I’d been in while sketching the giant backpiece I had scheduled to tattoo tomorrow morning.
Scowling at her, “I don’t have a four o’clock. I have a five, but there’s no way she’s early.”
“Not a tattoo.” Paisley walked in and leaned against my wall. “The journalist for the Nashville paper.”
“Ugh.” I groaned, tipping my head back in impatience. “I forgot all about that.”
“Dallin didn’t.” She tapped her fingers on her arm. “He told me to make sure you were on your best behavior. Seems like he knows her and she’s doing him a favor by letting the story be about you, not him.”
“Hmm.” I laid my tablet down and stretched my sore neck. “How kind of him to pass off his responsibility onto my shoulders and then demand I behave.”
Paisley smirked and rolled her eyes. “It’s like he knows you or something.” She peeked out the door to the reception area and then lifted her shoulder in a shrug. “And I’m guessing he wants to protect her innocent little soul from your wild side as much as possible.”
“Innocent?” I cringed. “I taint innocence for the fun of it. Why would he sign me up for the assignment, and not Parker, if there was so much at risk?”
She tittered and backed out of my room, “I don’t know, but I’m going to enjoy the show. ”
“Give me a minute to put my cloak of goodliness on.” I joked and then cleaned up my design space.
I mentally counted to ten and then ten again before looking in the mirror on the wall, taking in my appearance.
My wavy black hair was long and the bleached money pieces in the front highlighted the black ink on my face and neck. The piercings in my cheeks that accentuated the deep dimples there added a bit of femininity to the rest of my edginess. My black crop top band tee and cut-off jean shorts with silver chain embellishments set the look paired with the black combat boots that the biker commented on.
I loved every bit of it. I’d spent years figuring out my style and identity, and I didn’t regret a single piece of it. But I didn’t have any illusions about what vibe I gave off either. Nor could I figure out why Dallin would want me to be the ‘face’ of the shop for his big article.
“Well, here goes nothing.” I mused and walked out after Paisley to the reception area.
I clocked the journalist immediately. She stuck out so much that it was almost painful to see her in the edgy tattoo shop. She was probably in her late twenties, but she had one of those faces that would always leave her looking young and fresh.
Untouched.
She had light strawberry blonde hair, tied back in a tight knot with a few wisps blowing in the fan's breeze. She wore a business-savvy white dress that collared at her neck with sleeves down to her elbows. It just touched the tops of her knees as she stood by the front door and her sensible black flats screamed middle-aged mom.
But what stood out the most to me was every inch of her blank, untouched skin visible around her modest dress.
A virgin.
Tattoo virgin at least. I’d bet money that she didn’t have a speck of ink on her soft white skin and something about that—called to me. God, I was the worst .
“Ah, here she is.” Paisley nodded to me, catching the journalist’s attention. “Lex, this is Hannah Kate. Hannah, this is Lex.”
“Hi!” Hannah walked toward me with her hand extended and a bright cheery smile on her face. “It’s so nice to meet you! I feel like I’ve spent the last week stalking you and your work so extensively that I know you inside and out by now.” She laughed at her joke while I raised my brow in surprise. “Sorry.” She grimaced. “I’m a blabber.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I nodded, shaking her hand and staring straight at her as she shrunk a bit. We were probably the same height, but with my heeled boots on, I towered over her slight frame. Everything about her was small. Dainty, even. “Come on back and we can get started.”
She fell in step behind me as we went deeper into the shop, passing rooms where tattoos were in progress. As we neared Parker’s room, she glanced inside and her step faltered when she saw the massive man in Parker’s chair, getting his stomach tattooed. “Ouch.” She murmured to herself, before running to catch back up with me.
I motioned for her to walk in ahead of me and then slid the door closed behind her, expecting and then catching the feminine floral scent as she brushed past me.
Predictable.
Yet not in a bad way.
“Thanks so much for making the time for me in Dallin’s absence,” Hannah said, looking around my private room. “This is so stinking cool.” She had an awe-struck look on her face as she took it all in, and I tried to imagine seeing my space through her eyes. The room had a cool vibe with matte black walls and fancy gold accents on the chairs, lighting, and décor. The floor glowed with pink up-lighting, and an ivy plant with light pink petaled flowers completely covered one wall. I only kept the plant alive because it pissed Trey off the most. He hated plants in any form and took personal offense to the small ivy plant when it was in a lattice pot on the floor. So of course I let that bitch free to grow up the wall. I even went as far as having Parker help me hang a support lattice for her to twist around, simply because I could. And it made one hell of a photo backdrop for the before and after photos of my clients. And let’s be honest, social media presence was everything. “I feel so unworthy of being in here.” She contemplated and then shook her head with a goofy grin on her face. “But I’m totally loving it.”
“I’m glad.” I motioned for her to sit in the comfy black chair in the corner that I sketched in and then took my office chair and turned it toward her. “You’ll have to forgive me; Dallin was pretty vague on the details of this piece and what you needed from me, exactly.”
She smiled and rolled her eyes, waving me off. “I’m not surprised. This piece is a feature piece on the shop itself as well as on you,” she motioned to me before placing her hands in her lap, all prim and proper. “My plan when I had originally gotten the okay to do it with Dallin, was to interview him, then shadow for a few appointments, get some up close and personal photos of his work, throughout the process, and then do a feature shoot here at the shop and in a studio.” She grabbed her laptop bag off the floor and pulled a tablet out, flipping the cover off and showing me a cover of Inked Magazine. It was an edition from a few years ago that I recognized because the woman on the cover was one of the most successful women in the tattoo industry. “After he switched and told me I’d be following you, I dove deep into researching ways to highlight not only your strengths as an artist, but also as a woman. And this is the vibe I was going for. Something fun yet powerful.” She bit her bottom lip and waited for a reply, like she was afraid I’d veto the entire thing.
“I’ll admit, I’m impressed.” I leaned back in my seat, as my head spun with the details she shared in such a short amount of time. “And intrigued.”
“You’re one of the most sought-after tattoo artists in all of Nashville, and you’re a woman. Those two titles rarely pair up in any industry, but especially in one that would rather the women be the canvases and models, instead of the designers.”
“You did dive deep into the research.” I praised her and she blushed a little as her shoulders sagged in relief.
“I never do anything half-assed. And if I’m being honest, which I always am,” she giggled at herself and I smirked, “I’m truly looking forward to this piece far more now that it revolves around you and this angle than when it was about Dallin.” She held her hand up. “As great as he is, which as Reyna’s friend, I know he’s great. Even so, I like this far more.”
Pieces started fitting together as I found out that Hannah was a friend of Rey’s. As much as I loved the wife of Dallin, Trey, and Parker, she was still a cute little vanilla girly girl in public, and the pairing made sense.
“Well, I’m at your mercy then, I suppose. Interview away.” I held my arms out and crossed my leg over my knee.
Hannah smiled brightly and flicked through some pages on her tablet and then pulled a voice recorder from her bag and held it up. “Is this okay?” I shrugged, giving her the go-ahead, and she turned it on and set it down on the table next to her. “Okay, so how about we start with how you decided tattooing was the medium of art you were interested in?”
“Geesh.” I thought back and smirked. “It wasn’t so much that I decided on tattoos, as much as it was tattoos chose me. My dad is a tattoo artist. A damn good one, too. And when I was a kid, I used to love watching him tattoo and wanted so desperately to get one of my own. He, of course, had the opinion that my skin would never, ever feel the sting of a tattoo gun if he had anything to say about it.”
Hannah listened intently, like what I was saying was the most interesting thing in the world, and I hated how it warmed my frigid heart to feel important in the moment. “Let me guess, Daddy’s girl?” She asked knowingly.
“Very much so,” I admitted. “And he was going to preserve me as the sweet little innocent baby girl as long as he could.”
“Uh oh,” she grinned, “So you rebelled.”
“Hard.” I shook my head, remembering those years when my dad and I butted heads over what my future would look like. “One night, when I was fourteen, I snuck down into his studio after bedtime and tattooed my leg, intent on proving him wrong.”
“You did not!” She gasped with wide eyes, looking thoroughly scandalized. “What did you tattoo?”
“A rainbow.” I fiddled with a ring on my finger. “It’s the one tattoo from my early years that I never went back and touched up or covered.”
“Can I see?” she asked, biting her bottom lip .
Keep your shit together, Lex.
She was a fucking good girl, and she meant nothing sexual by it, but there was no way I could resist corrupting her and overlook such a sexual mannerism.
I nodded, and she walked over to me with that stargazing awestruck look on her face, I raised the frayed edge of my cut-offs to the spot where my leg and hip met and watched her face as she saw the squiggly, black-lined rainbow with little puffy clouds on each end.
“No way.” She whispered and flicked her big green eyes up to mine and my entire body heated like some schoolgirl. “That’s so cool.” She went back across the room to her chair, and I smoothed my shorts back down. “Did your dad find out?”
“I didn’t plan it very well because we were going on vacation the next week and two days in, he saw it while I was in my swimsuit.” I shook my head. “He was so mad, he refused to even speak to me for two days. Which was unhinged because we were best friends, so that silence did far more than any screaming or discipline could have. After some self-reflection and a few really long late-night conversations on it, he concluded that he exposed me to that life, and he could either nurture my interest in it, or I could do shady back-alley style tattoos on myself as I honed my skills. And neither of us wanted me to look like some bathroom stall, graffitied with messy work. So he started teaching me and I ended up in this life.”
“Wow.” Hannah sighed, mystified by it all. “That’s incredible. Does he still tattoo today?”
“He does.” I nodded, “He owns a big-name shop in Las Vegas, and has big name clients.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Why don’t you work there?” She hesitated and cringed slightly. “If you don’t mind me asking. I should have prefaced this whole thing with you are more than welcome to tell me to get lost at any point if you aren’t comfortable.”
I waved it off. “There isn’t much in life that makes me uncomfortable at this point anymore, Hannah. Don’t worry. My dad is wildly successful and talented, and with that comes a gigantic shadow to stand in. And I didn’t want to always live the life of following him, never making it for myself. So eight years ago I packed up and moved, first to LA, and then a few years later I moved here to Nashville, and I knew pretty much right away that this was where I was supposed to be.”
“Incredible.” She licked her lips, blinking rapidly as she focused on her task. “How long have you been here at Twisted Ink?”
“Five years.” I crinkled my nose. “I never planned to stay in one place this long after leaving Vegas, but the thought of leaving now makes me anxious. So I’ll stay a little longer, I think.”
Hannah was about to say something when there was a knock on the door, and Paisley appeared. “Sorry to interrupt, but your five o’clock is here.” I caught the pointed look on her face as she mentioned my next client, reminding me of the awkward situation I was about to find myself in.
“Right. Thanks.” I stood up, hating the way I was actually kind of bummed to have the private interview interrupted when an idea came to mind. Considering the warning I had been given about being on my best behavior around Hannah, I should have shut it down instead of speaking my idea into reality. I just wasn’t ready to end our interview.
Hannah stood up and looked from Paisley to me and back.
“Well, do you want to see what a coy fish on a spine looks like?” I asked, and her eyes rounded excitedly.
“Heck yes!”
Paisley and I chuckled as I motioned for her to follow me out to the reception area to chat with my next appointment.
I never allowed spectators during appointments outside of the client’s personal entourage, but I was far from ready to end my time with Hannah.
Even if I had no fucking clue why I was entertaining the innocent little church girl any longer than I needed to.