Freefall

by Tess Oliver

  “That’s what I thought. Are you sure you want me to do this?” I stared down at her. Other than the incredibly long scar, her skin was flawless, like everything else about her, she was perfection and it seemed a sin to do anything to disrupt it.

  She remained stretched out in front of me, every damn incredible inch of her, and I wondered how I was going to get through this knowing that once it was done she would be gone forever. Hammond popped in again. He looked at the stencil, and he seemed to think it was the actual tattoo. “Oh, you’ve gotten pretty far.”

  I looked at him over my shoulder. “This is just the stencil.”

  He looked embarrassed, and it was obvious he hated that. Thankfully, his phone rang again and he walked out.

  “This table folds up in the middle. You can straddle it with your legs and lean forward on the other half. It’s more comfortable than staying on your stomach.”

  She lowered her shirt and sat up while I propped up the table. I could hear Hammond arguing on the phone in the front room.

  “He gets a lot of calls,” I said. “Must get kind of annoying.” I knew the only reason I brought it up was to bad mouth the guy and show her that he was an ass. It was stupid, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  She wrote something on her paper. “I prefer him to be talking on the phone.” She crossed it out after I read it. I held back a smile.

  “All right, spin around and throw your leg over the side then you can lean against the table.” Her long leg crossed the table, and she straddled it and then leaned forward and pressed her cheek against the pad. I stared at her profile. She looked as if someone had painted her. Only an artist could come up with an image as amazing as the girl in front of me.

  “I can safety pin your shirt up if that’s all right with you.”

  She nodded, and I slid the shirt up her back. I’d taken so much care to not touch her while applying the stencils, and then, without thinking, my fingertips grazed her skin as I lifted her shirt. A shallow, soft, almost imperceptible sound came from her lips.

  “Sorry.” I tightened my fingers into a fist for a second to stop the sensation from climbing through my arm and to the rest of me. It took a minute for my pulse to slow.

  I pulled on a new pair of gloves and opened the needle package. Having my familiar tools in my hand helped me focus on my task. “I’m going to start,” a warning I gave all my clients, but this warning was more for me than her.

  My radio in the background and the buzz of my gun helped lull me into a work state of mind. The only way I was going to get through this was to block her from my thoughts as much as possible. I concentrated on the patch of skin and ink lines in front of me.

  After about twenty minutes, I’d gotten most of the outline in. “Did you want to take a break before I put in color?” She nodded, sat up, and swung her leg around. Her little pad of paper came out and she wrote. I’d already memorized the style of her handwriting.

  She looked around the shop and held up the note. “You’re so young to own all this. Impressive.”

  “Nah, not that impressive,” I said. “An inheritance paid for most of it.”

  She shook her head and wrote again. “But you work hard. Good rep.”

  “Thanks. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t started this shop. I was getting into some stupid things.”

  Her blue gaze seemed to be assessing me.

  Hammond popped in. “Done already?” The guy seemed to always be on edge, and he was definitely antsy about getting this finished.

  “Just a break before we put in color,” I answered tersely.

  “I’m going down the block to get a coffee. Do you want something, Nix?” he asked.

  “No, I’m good.”

  He looked at Scotlyn. “The usual, Babe?”

  She nodded.

  “Whipped cream?”

  She raised a smooth brow at him, and I found myself mesmerized by her expressive facial gestures.

  “Of course you want it. What was I thinking,” he said and turned to leave, but she tapped the table to stop him. He turned back around and she held up a paper that said, “sprinkles”.

  “Right.” He walked out, and I heard the door shut.

  “Do you live here?” she wrote.

  “At the shop? No. Actually, I live on a boat.”

  Her blue eyes widened. She made a wavy motion with her hands and looked at me questioningly. Another look she’d perfected.

  “Yeah, the Zany Lucy is on the water down at Southland Mist Harbor.”

  “Fun,” she wrote.

  “Sometimes. Scotlyn is a unique name. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before.”

  A sweet grin deepened the dimple on her cheek, and she bit her plump bottom lip as she quickly drew something. A few seconds later she held it up. There was a stick figure drawing of a man with a briefcase and tie. The name Scott was scribbled underneath it. Next to the man was a stick figure of a woman with a purse and floppy sun hat. The name Lynne was scribbled beneath.

  “Ah, it was a combination of your parents’ names. Nice. And you’re pretty skilled with that pen and paper.” My phone buzzed and I looked at it. “It’s my grandmother. I’ve got to answer it. She lives alone.”

  A pair of dimples reappeared and she nodded.

  “Nana, is everything all right? I’m not coming tonight. Yes, tomorrow. Did you turn off the stove? Go lock the front door right now while I’m on the phone with you.” Scotlyn was smiling at our conversation. She picked up her writing pad. “All right, Nana. No I’m not coming tonight. Sleep tight.”

  “I’ve never met her but she seems adorable,” the paper read.

  I smiled and nodded. “She raised me during my teen years. She had to put up with a lot of crap.”

  She wrote again. “Does she have dementia?”

  “You could tell, huh? Yeah. She used to be the most brilliant person I knew. She was a college professor.” I looked at Scotlyn. She was listening intently, and there was genuine sadness in her face.

  And then she stopped the note writing and gestures and she gazed at me. Every emotion showed on her face, sadness, loneliness, and even a touch of hopelessness. It was the same layers I saw when I looked at her picture.

  “Was it a car accident?” The words popped out.

  Her gaze dropped to the floor, and I wanted to kick myself for asking. Then she lifted the pad up and wrote. It wasn’t as fast and scribbly as usual. She moved the pen deliberately across the paper and then stared at her own words for a moment as if she was surprised she’d written them. Or maybe she just hadn’t ever written them before. She lifted the paper up.

  “I lost my whole family.”

  I looked at the neatly written sentence. As simple as it was, it took me a second to really comprehend it. I finally worked up the courage to look at her, but there was nothing I could say. Sorry didn’t work when someone had lost their whole family.

  She seemed to sense that she’d knocked me speechless.

  “Are you sure you want me to cover it?” My throat was as dry as cotton.

  She lifted her shirt and her long lashes shaded her cheeks as she looked down and touched the scar. Then she looked back up at me and without warning she reached up and dragged her fingertips across the stubble on my jaw. It was only the slightest, briefest touch, but the sensation of if stayed on my skin long after her hand dropped back to her lap.

  The door to the shop opened and shut. Hammond was back. Scotlyn’s posture stiffened at the sound of his voice. He stepped into the back room with the coffee. “Wow, I thought you’d be close to done by now.”

  Scotlyn took the coffee and sipped it. She shooed him out of the room and then swung back around to straddle the table. Still recuperating from her touch, I filled in the color on the vine and the flowers. I could have applied the color in half an hour, but it took me an hour. I didn’t want to let her go. I wanted her to stay there beneath my hands for as long as possible.

  When it was time
to leave, she walked slowly over to her sweatshirt and took it off the hook. She winced at the soreness on her side, and I walked over to her. No longer gloved, and completely done with self-control, I dragged my calloused fingertips along the smooth skin of her arms and across her shoulders as I helped her put on her sweatshirt. She did not pull away from my touch, and once again, a small breathy sound floated out from between her lips. She spun around, and I found myself just inches away from a face I knew nearly as well as my own. Her sweatshirt was on and we were done, but she stayed next to me and stared up into my face. I wondered if it showed. I wondered if she could sense that I knew her, that I’d had her picture folded up in my wallet for a year, that I’d imagined kissing her a million times.

  Hammond’s sharp, self-important footsteps sounded on the tile floor and we parted. “Great,” he said, “let’s get going, Babe. I’ve got to meet some people at the house.” He pulled his phone out and seemed to be searching his day planner. He was definitely a guy with a day planner. “Day after tomorrow? Same time?”

  “Yeah, I’ll write it down,” I said, as if I would need to remind myself.

  “That’s going to be sore for awhile,” I told her, forcing myself back into my professional role. “Keep it dry and stay out of the sun. Call me if you have any problems.”

  She smiled at me.

  “Oh, or text me?” I asked hopefully.

  She pulled a phone out of her jeans and handed it to me to put my number in.

  Hammond reached for the phone. “Uh, I’ll just call you if there’s a problem.” He handed it back to her. She pulled her sweatshirt hood up over her head, and her long dark lashes swept down as she stared down at the ground, looking slightly embarrassed and plenty pissed. Controlling asshole that he was, I was surprised he allowed her to have the thing at all.

  “The shop is Freefall. You can Google it.” I made a point of talking directly to her.

  “Let’s go, Scotlyn. Hopefully, traffic has died down.” Hammond stopped at the wall and looked at one of the flyers Clutch had posted there about a car show. “Do you mind if I take this flyer? I’m looking to buy one of those vintage muscle cars.”

  “Sure, go ahead. There should be some great cars there tomorrow night. The guy who put that flyer there is a friend of mine. He’s got a few muscle cars for sale. You two should come.” I was fucking nuts of course, but I wanted to see her again, even if Hammond was hovering around.

  As he reached up to take the flyer off the wall, Scotlyn peered up at me. Every muscle in my body tensed as I stared at her face. And then she pulled her gaze away and walked out of my shop.

  I watched the Porsche peel away from the curb. So much for my theory of reality obliterating my obsession.

  CHAPTER 8

  Scotlyn

  The skin where he’d drawn the tattoo was sore, but the sensation of his fingers trailing up my shoulders was all I could think about. Lincoln drummed the steering wheel of the car, keeping beat with the music, music which he blasted annoyingly loud. Of course, it wasn’t like we could have a conversation. I rarely even wrote notes to him anymore.

  But tonight, for the first time in a long time, I longed for my voice. There was so much I wanted to talk about with Nix that I couldn’t possibly have written it all. Just sitting there for those few minutes, having the lopsided conversation with words and paper, I’d had the urge to tell him everything about me. I’d never written the words I lost my whole family on paper before. I’d avoided it, almost as if writing meant that I’d come to accept it. But there was something about the way he looked at me, the way he listened, that made me feel like I needed to write it. I needed to tell him.

  The song ended and Lincoln turned down the music. “You know, I think we’ll find a different tattoo artist.”

  I faced him and held up three fingers, my signal for ‘why’.

  “I just don’t like this guy. There are hundreds of tattoo shops out here. I’ll ask around and find a different one.”

  I was already scribbling away on my pad as he finished. “Then I’m done with this tattoo.”

  “What? You can’t have a half-finished tattoo on your body. It’ll look ugly.” I hated the sound of his chuckle.

  My pen was digging into the paper. “Ugly like my scar?”

  He glanced at the paper and then returned his eyes to the road. “Yeah, uh , I mean, no. Look, you’re making too much out of this, Scotlyn. I just want to find a different tattoo parlor.” He said it with his usual no-argument tone, and normally, I could have cared less. But I stood my ground this time.

  The pen was drying up, and I scratched it angrily across the paper to get the ink moving. “Freefall, or this tattoo is done.” I underlined done. They weren’t as cathartic, but underlining and exclamations were my substitute for yelling.

  He sighed. “Fine, we’ll finish it at Freefall.” He fell silent, and I was stunned that I’d won an argument. There was a long line of brake lights ahead of us. “Shit, I thought the traffic would be lighter by now. I’m going to take streets.” He twisted back and switched lanes and zipped through the traffic like a madman to get to the next exit.

  I clutched the armrest and held my breath. I hated it when he drove fast and crazy, and he knew it. This was apparently my punishment for not giving in on the tattoo. He peered out of the side of his eye at me, and his lip curled up in an evil grin. He was enjoying this, and I wanted to kick myself for showing fear. We finally reached the off-ramp, and he downshifted. I released the breath I’d been holding. I hated the man.

  He tapped casually on his steering wheel, obviously pleased that he’d exacted some punishment on me for standing up to him. “You know, Babe, I’m going to have my lawyer finish up that prenuptial so we can get married.”

  My body stiffened as it always did when he brought up marriage. “Sounds romantic,” I wrote with my dying pen.

  “Well, I know a prenup sort of puts a cold business feel to it all, but I’ve got to protect my assets. I mean, you’re basically penniless.” The cruelty hadn’t ended yet. I’d hurt his ego, and I was obviously going to suffer for it the rest of the night. But I didn’t care. There was nothing he could say to hurt me because nothing he said mattered to me.

  “I don’t want your money,” I wrote, and that was the end of the pen. What I really wanted to write was I don’t want you, with a triple line under you.

  “You won’t need it. I’ll take care of you.”

  I lifted my pen to show him that the ink was dry and the conversation was over. He turned the music back up. The Los Angeles streets were just as crowded as the freeway. We passed one dark patch of sidewalk where two homeless people sat on a ripped open appliance box. They had a dog sitting between them. Living on the streets brought a certain freedom, but every minute of that freedom was hardship and struggle. My life with Lincoln was without the hardship and struggle. Only with him, there was no freedom.

  Grady’s green Mercedes was in the driveway as Lincoln pulled up to the garage. The car was empty. “What the hell?” Lincoln muttered. We opened the back door and walked inside. Voices and laughter met us. Grady, two of his minions, and a third scary looking guy I’d never seen before had made themselves comfortable in the living room. Tension shot off Lincoln in hot sparks.

  “How the fuck did you guys get in here?” Lincoln asked.

  Grady motioned to the French doors that led to the pool area. “We just walked in. They were unlocked. You really ought to be more careful.” Grady’s tone sounded cold and distant, almost threatening. The stranger had a shaved head, an expensive black suit, and a face that not even a mother could love.

  “My alarm system is a joke,” Lincoln sneered. He walked over to his wet bar to pour a drink. He made a point of not offering one to his guests. “Next time wait for me.”

  Grady flopped down on the leather sofa. “Yeah, I’ll do that. Anyhow, I brought Samson along to discuss the deal.”

  Lincoln’s face snapped my direction. “Why don’t
you head upstairs, Scotlyn.”

  I turned and left the room. I was happy to go upstairs. I had no idea what was going on, and I really didn’t care, but it definitely seemed like Lincoln’s business dealings were getting shadier by the day.

  CHAPTER 9

  Nix

  “Where were you?” Clutch asked. “I thought you were coming right after work.” The giant parking lot was already filled with gleaming cars of every model and make. And all the usual people were milling about staring at the cars as if they were seeing them for the first time.

  “I had to stop by Nana’s house.” The whole day I’d been moving in a slow motion haze, my mind stuck on Scotlyn.

  “How’s Nana doing?” Both Clutch and Dray had grown up closer to my grandmother than to their own parents, and they’d spent more time at our house than their own too. Mostly because there was a constant flow of ugly crap happening at their houses and smiling and laughter were not only accepted but encouraged at Nana’s.

  “Physically, she’s fine.”

  “Yeah, that sucks.” He looked over at Rocky’s Burger Place. “Hey, the line is shorter. Let’s go, I’m starved.”

  “When aren’t you starved?” Rocky’s Burgers made better shakes than burgers, but if you shoved enough stuff under the bun and flooded it with ketchup, it was edible.

  “I sure hope I get a bite on the Firebird tonight,” Clutch said.

  “Hey, I had a rich client in the shop last night. Said he’s looking for a muscle car. One of those dudes with tons of money to spend but who probably doesn’t know shit about cars. He took the flyer with him.” I said it casually as if I hadn’t been wondering all day if I might see her tonight.

  “Yeah? Cool. Who is this client? Is he a regular?”

  I hadn’t told Clutch anything about the girl yet because I knew he would just pile on with Dray for a good laugh. But since I knew Dray would bring it up, I had no choice. “You’re not going to believe it when I tell you, and then you’re going to be an asshole when you hear it.”