by MV Ellis
I hadn’t been optimistic about my likelihood of success, but I would have tried, because Noah’s safety was all that mattered to me. More than my own ever had or ever would. I’d fight to my dying breath to be there for him, and if that had meant putting a bullet in Tommy, then it would have been a small price to pay—the hardest decision I’d ever had to make, but worth it. Everything was worth it for Noah. Still, I was so grateful that Kota and Spider had stepped in and I hadn’t had to.
I felt terrible about the exchange with Spider in the bar. Watching the confusion and doubt cloud his silvery eyes had pricked at my conscience so much that I’d almost given up the lie halfway through and acknowledged that I knew who he was. That despite trying to erase the events of that day from my mind, every second—no, every nanosecond was woven into my memory forever.
Even more so, I recalled every moment that had passed between Spider and me. In that sense, Tommy hadn’t been wrong about what was going on between the two of us. There had been an instant connection as soon as he met us in the reception area of the tattoo studio. The feel of him lying on top of me, literally laying his life on the line to protect me, was something I would never forget.
I regretted having lied to him, but growing up the way I had, it had become second nature. When my father was the monster I feared in the night, and I lived in a real-life house of horrors, lying was necessary to make it through each day.
I’d lied to everyone: my teachers, my school friends, even people at our local church. But then I’d learned from the best—my parents led the way in presenting the lie of a happy, well-adjusted family to the world. I’d just followed in step behind them.
Still, those were all just excuses. I knew that. One thing I’d never quite managed to master the art of was lying to myself, though I’d tried pretty damned hard over the years. Maybe my childhood wasn’t so awful. Maybe Tommy wasn’t a total asshole. Maybe I wasn’t complicit in marring Noah’s childhood just like my parents had marred mine.
Maybe at some stage in my life, everything would be okay, and I’d make it to the light at the end of the long-ass tunnel. The light I’d been trying to reach for what seemed like my whole life but never quite made it.
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe not.
Not.
Undulating waves of fear and revulsion swept over my body and settled in my gut. My skin became clammy, and my mouth filled with saliva. I rushed to the bathroom, knowing that no amount of fresh air would stop me from vomiting this time.
I made it to the bowl just in time to hurl the contents of my stomach into it, then stayed there until there was nothing but bile left, burning my throat as it tore its way from my body in ragged heaves. When there was nothing but dry retching, I gagged and choked on thin air. My head ached. My stomach ached. My heart ached.
I lay on the cool, soothing tiles of the bathroom floor until my hip bone was so sore I was certain I would have a massive bruise. Then I dragged myself up and headed for the front room. Even though I felt more woolly-headed, heavy-limbed, and achy than I had when I was hit by a virulent strain of flu the year before, I knew sleep wouldn’t be visiting me that night.
Chilled to my bones from the stint on the bathroom floor, I padded toward the couch, grabbing the thick wool blanket we always kept there and wrapping it around my shoulders. The handknitted blanket was one of the few positive associations I had from my childhood. I tucked my legs up beneath me and reached into the drawer of the side table that nestled against the arm of the sofa. My fingers alighted on two familiar items—a thick leather-bound journal and a weighty, good-quality pen.
Writing had always been my thing. My solace. My escape. And I’d needed that escape way more than most growing up. For some people, reading was the way out of the harsh reality of their lives, but for me, it didn’t work that way. Immersing myself in worlds created by someone else wasn’t enough. I needed to create the exact antidote to detract from the grim reality of my life at that specific time.
I created heroines who were just the right amount of brave as I was timid, who slayed dragons and demons that mirrored the real-life monster I lived with. I created heroes who were the exact opposite of the villain who dominated my reality: strong, smart, kind, patient, loving, and supportive.
As an adult, the habit had never gone away, but then that wasn’t much of a surprise. I wrote to escape, and I still had plenty to run from, even if I was no longer the little girl hiding in her closet hoping the big bad bogeyman didn’t get her. The content had changed, but the method had altered little over the years.
I still wrote in journals, even though I’d never maintained a journal in the true sense of the word. Who in their right mind would want to keep a daily catalogue of that misery? Though I sometimes had cause to question my sanity—like today when I’d pretended not to know who Spider was—I was mostly of sound mind and had zero desire to reflect on the details I’d much rather forget.
I’d never had the urge to go digital with my scribblings, and I had no real need to. They were just for me. My version of therapy, which I’d avoided at all costs despite being advised at several points in my life, including most recently by Officer Roberts, that I could benefit from it.
I couldn’t think of anything worse. Years of sitting in various school counselors’ offices, finding increasingly creative ways of lying my way out of the horrendousness of my life—bruises, black eyes, broken bones, countless school days missed—had turned me off the idea of airing my soiled laundry in front of a stranger. No, thank you.
The result of my many years of jotting away was a suitcase full of journals under my bed, with enough material for about twelve novels that would never see the light of day. Still, they worked for me for therapeutic purposes, so they were exactly what I needed them to be. Writing was much cheaper and less humiliating than a therapist, too, so it was a win-win. I figured I’d scratch away until I got tired enough to rest my eyes for a while and nap on the couch, or until Noah woke up, whichever came first.
14
Spider
The weekend crept by at something slower than a snail’s pace.
I’d stayed at LS&S for the rest of Friday night, drinking, chatting, and laughing with everyone—minus Kota, who’d eventually had to concede defeat and was poured into a cab about a half hour after proclaiming herself “sober as a judge”—but I was both there and not there. A few times I’d looked up to find Harley staring at me with a quizzical look on his face. He knew what was going on and wasn’t fooled by my “everything’s all right” routine. I just hoped my discomfort wasn’t obvious to the rest of the team.
The part I hated most about the whole situation with Emi was the constant feeling of powerlessness. One thing I’d always had in my life was agency. Other things or people didn’t control me, I controlled myself. But with Emi it was different. The day she’d come crashing into my life, Tommy had been the puppet master with the gun in his pocket.
Then when everything had come to a head, the police had been the ones taking charge, and I’d had to stand by and let them deal with the situation. My logical brain knew that was the right way, but the caveman in me had wanted to throw reason out the window and rip that asshole limb from limb with my bare hands, then stick the gun down his throat, pull the fucking trigger, and watch as his innards scattered everywhere.
Once the chaos of the SWAT team ensued, I hadn’t even gotten the chance to speak to Emi, settling instead for palming my card to Officer Roberts and hoping for the best. I hadn’t even known for sure if she’d passed it on to Emi or not. If she had, Emi’d been ignoring it and me for over a year since the incident.
Then that night at the bar, I’d had to resort to the same thing again—handing her my details with nothing in return and no way of knowing whether she would contact me. Not that I could have done anything else under the very strange circumstances. The fact was that either she was an accomplished actress and had played me, or she was s
uffering from some kind of memory loss. Maybe Harley’s outlandish ideas about her being undercover or not even a human being were more feasible than, or even preferable to, the truth.
It was Murphy’s Law that just when I needed to operate on autopilot while my concerns for and about Emi took up every available space in my mind, I had one of the busiest and craziest weekends I’d had in a long time in the studio.
First up on Saturday morning was a pair of nineteen-year-old identical twins who put the Kardashians to shame in their sheer lavishness. They were blinged, primed, plucked, ironed, pumped, filled, buffed, straightened, glossed, primped, and preened to within an inch of their lives and dripping in designer labels. That was their right, and I had no problem with it. However, their behavior was as over the top as their styling, and, in so far as it interfered with my ability to do my job, that was my problem. And boy, did it get in the way.
They turned up fifteen minutes late for their appointment, which they’d insisted on having earlier in the morning rather than later. Not ideal given that I was a little hungover from my attempts to drown my sorrows the night before. After what had gone down with Emi, I’d decided that beer wasn’t cutting it and I needed to lift my spirits and dull my senses with a couple gallons of Mexican mouthwash. At least I felt like that was how much I’d drunk by the time morning rolled around.
Tia and Tiara’s specialized skill seemed to be bringing the drama. They were trouble with two capital Ts. They swept into the studio in a clatter of sky-high red-soled heels, faux fur, and more perfume than a sultan’s harem. Kota visibly wilted as they tore through the reception area like a jingly-jangly tornado. By the time they moved away, she was green around the gills.
“Hey, Kota,” I called over my shoulder as I showed the girls to my treatment room. “Breakfast is on you, given you lost our bet last night. And make it something big and greasy. I’m thinking a Big Bite Breakfast from Mr. Big with extra bacon, onion rings, sausage, and three fried eggs.”
If she was green before, now the color had all but drained from her skin. She made a groaning sound that didn’t sound good at all.
“You didn’t win shit. The bet, I remind you, was that I wouldn’t make it in today. Yet tadaaa!” She waved her arms with a flourish. “Here I am!” She winced, clearly regretting her enthusiasm with the waving and yelling. I could imagine how sore her head was.
“Oh, true, true. Okay, so you can buy me breakfast with your winnings. I’ve changed my mind, though. I’ll go for an Irish breakfast: nice fresh oysters, the plumper and juicier the better, heavy on the Tabasco, all washed down with a pint of Guinness.”
If I wasn’t mistaken, she had to gulp down the vomit rising in her throat. I was a bastard, and it would probably be a while before she forgave my antics, but that was half the fun with the faux rivalry between us.
I hoped I wouldn’t regret poking fun at her like that. The last thing I needed was her spraying chunks all over the reception. Though it wouldn’t have been the first time someone had done that: Zed had met the love of his life through a vomit-related incident, and a whole lot of back and forth, right there in the reception, a couple of years earlier.
Still, if Kota were to hurl, I couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t do the same. Despite ribbing her, my stomach felt a little fragile also.
Once I made it into the treatment room, dealing with the twins was like herding cats using a staff made of snakes. Just as I had one settled, the other would get rowdy and distract her. I managed to get Tiara—the elder twin by six minutes—to sit still in the chair and commit to being first. It was a decision I would come to regret, sooner rather than later as I listened to her nasal drawl.
“Okaaaay, so it’s our biiirthday,” she began to explain.
“So we want to get a tattoo to like, celebrate, y’know?” This was Tia.
“Yeah, so like, it’s going to be awe—” Tiara.
“—some.” Tia.
Not only did they finish each other’s sentences, but words too. Speaking to them was like trying to keep up with a championship tennis match. Venus and Serena had nothing on their verbal volleys.
“Yeah, ‘cause, like we’re—”
“Geminis.”
“Which is funny ‘cause we’re, like—”
“Twins.” They dissolved into laughter for what had to have been a full five minutes, though I felt like it took five years off my life.
In retrospect, taking the booking to begin with was my first mistake, followed by agreeing to carry out the work once I’d met the twins in reception and seen what a circus working on them would be. I would rather have risked the bad Yelp and Facebook reviews from canceling them at the last minute than deal with their flaky asses. Hindsight was a total bitch that way.
It turned out that the tattoo was not only to celebrate their birthdays but was also taking place on the big day itself, and they wanted a matching graffiti-style double portrait based around the symbol for their star sign. The concept they had in mind was actually pretty damned cool and would be a good addition to my portfolio. I just wished the twins themselves didn’t need to have a hand in creating the damned things.
As if their general conduct in the lead-up to sitting in the chair hadn’t been bad enough, I knew as soon as the needle touched Tiara’s skin that I was going to be in a world of pain getting the work done. She screamed and hollered as though I was branding her with a hot iron, then spraying her skin with acid.
“Ohhhhhhhh. Emmmmmmm. Geeeeeeeee. You’re killllllllllllllling meeeeeeeeeeeeee.”
Tia then turned to me, peering over the top of her blinged up phone, through which she was filming every moment of the ‘ordeal.’ “You’re huuuuuuuuuurting us.”
Of course, because one twin was in pain, it distressed the other in sympathy for her sister. That took the form of Tia then collapsing in a fit of squealing, wailing, and hyperventilating right alongside Tiara.
Five hours and multiple threats to abandon the tattoos midsession later, and I was finally able to show the identically dressed nightmares the door, much to everyone’s relief. The shame of it was that the work looked amazing, though by the end, I could barely bring myself to photograph it for my portfolio. I just wanted them out as soon as possible.
I almost slid down the inside of the door as they left for a day of high-end primping and preening before hitting 12:AM Mass—where else but the city’s hottest club bar none?—to cap off their birthday celebrations. I almost felt like giving Harley’s brother Hunter, 12:AM Mass’s GM, a call to warn him about the whirlwind headed his way, but I figured that with it being the ultimate place to see and be seen by everyone who’s anyone—and quite a lot of people who weren’t—Hunter and the rest of his team at Arlo Jones’s superclub would have had plenty of practice dealing with much bigger fish than the Insta-famous duo.
When I’d recovered enough to put one foot in front of the other, I turned to Kota, who opened her mouth to, I assumed, gloat about my predicament with the twins. But I was in no mood for whatever shade she was intending to throw my way, and stopped her in her tracks with a raised hand.
“Don’t even. The way my head is pounding after dealing with those two, I can’t be held responsible for my actions right now. If I were you, I wouldn’t risk it.” I was only half joking, and pragmatist that she was, Kota didn’t tempt fate by pushing my buttons and hoping for the best. Wise woman.
The Cray_Zee_Twinzzz—their Insta handle—had set the bar for a high-maintenance, high-drama day, and by the end of it, I was wrecked. I practically crawled back to my apartment, picking up takeout on the way, and settled in for a rare Saturday night home alone. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spent a weekend night on Netflix, no chill. It felt weird and yet not altogether unpleasant not to be partying, then going home with or bringing home a new “friend” for some good times.
The fact was, I was still off my game from my encounter the previous night with Emi. I just couldn’t seem to shake her copper-colored eyes fr
om my mind or concentrate on anything else, despite my attempts to do exactly that. No matter how hard I tried to focus on whatever I was doing, thoughts of her would invade my subconscious. It had been that way since the hostage situation.
In the past year, I’d replayed every moment of that interaction over and over in my mind, and each time a different detail would jump out at me. The brush of her thick black eyelashes against her cheek as she looked down at the tattoo I was creating on her chest. The way she’d repeatedly popped each of her knuckles in turn, in a specific sequence, the sound putting me on edge.
I’d had to fight the urge to reach down and place my hands on top of hers to stop her. Not only would it have been crossing a line—physical contact with a client that wasn’t necessary to get the job done was a no-no—but I was certain it would have sent her psychotic boyfriend into a fit of rage. And that was before I’d realized he was armed and dangerous.
Other times I recalled the way she’d closed her eyes, pursing her lips and humming through the pain, never once articulating it or even showing it on her face. It was an unusual response—and I’d seen all kinds. It was rare for people not to acknowledge what they were feeling under the needle. She seemed to do the opposite, internalizing the pain and acting as though it wasn’t there. I was curious about why and how she did that, though there was no way I was about to ask.
As she pressed her lips together, I’d never wanted to kiss anyone more. As creepy as it would have been to act on my feelings, the number of times I’d considered just lowering my mouth to hover against hers was mind-boggling. Again, I’d resisted, though on Friday at the bar, more than a year later, I’d finally lost the battle with my willpower and given in to the desire. I’d felt like she was receptive, but it was such strange circumstances that I was also prepared for the eventuality that I’d misread the situation, and she was about to kick me in the balls.
