Pricked

by Winter Renshaw

  “Maybe I should set you up with my mentor ...” She lifts a finger, tapping it at the side of her mouth.

  “You wouldn’t.” The last thing I need is to be set up with some Pollyanna goody-two-shoes volunteer.

  Dev stands straight, hooking her bag over her shoulder. “Actually, yeah. You’re right. I wouldn’t. She’s too good for your lame ass.”

  13

  Brighton

  “I brought you something,” I say to Devanie when I meet with her the next week. It's our third time getting together. Last Thursday we met up and I took her to the mall where we got Starbucks and mostly window-shopped, though I almost bought her a lotion and body spray from Bath and Body Works. I don’t want to get into the habit of buying her things every single time we get together. That creates entitlement, and I’m here to help her gain confidence, to motivate and positively influence her.

  “What’s that?” Devanie stares at the filled-to-the-brim Saks bags in my hands as we sit down in the social hall of the Boys and Girls Club.

  Last Thursday at the mall, I couldn’t help but notice how tight and ill-fitting Devanie’s clothes were.

  She’s a bit more mature than most girls her age, a bit more developed. Longer legs too. It’s as if she hit a growth spurt and she’s trying her best to make her current wardrobe work. Her tight jean shorts were clearly cutoffs and her wrinkled t-shirt was tight in the shoulders but loose around her waist, as if she’d tugged it in an attempt to stretch it out.

  On a few occasions, we passed some groups of teenage girls who all gawked at Devanie, and not in a good way.

  She didn’t notice. Or if she did, she pretended not to.

  But it broke my heart knowing that such a sweet girl like her would make for such an easy target for bullies like them.

  I know her mom’s a single mom who works a ton, and I’m sure money’s tight and back to school shopping is still a couple of months away, so over the weekend I went through my closet and collected anything and everything I thought she might like.

  I hand over the bags and watch Devanie go through a few of the items on top. They’re mostly casual dresses and tank tops, a few pairs of shorts. I’m a little bigger than she is, but I threw a couple of belts in there to help with that until she grows into some of this stuff.

  “Are these … for me?” she asks, holding one of the dresses against her torso.

  “Yep.”

  “All of it?”

  I nod.

  “For real?”

  I nod again, laughing, and she drops the dress before flinging her arms around my shoulders.

  “If you don’t like some of the things, don’t be afraid to say so," I say. “We can donate them.”

  “You’re the best.” She squeezes me tighter. “Thank you so much.”

  “Of course, sweets,” I say. “You want to get Fro Yo? I passed this new place on the way here that looked good.”

  “Um, duh!” Devanie gathers the bags in her hands and we head outside to the parking lot, where she all but sprints to my car like an excited puppy. I love this. I love everything about this.

  Twenty minutes later, we’re sitting at a table for two at the Lemon Leaf Fro Yo Bar in a little town next to Olwine.

  “So what are your friends like?” I ask.

  “They’re nice,” Devanie says, stirring the M&M’s into her brownie batter frozen yogurt. “I have, like, a group of ten friends, but Mally and Cadence are my best friends. They both live across the street from me, so we hang out all the time.”

  “Nice.” I take a bite of mine. “Have you been friends a long time?”

  She glances at the ceiling for a second. “Like five years I think? We moved to our house when I was in second grade, so … yeah.”

  “Do you like school?” I ask.

  She snarls her lip and rolls her eyes. “Does anyone?”

  I did.

  I loved school.

  But I’ve always been blessed with the gift of curiosity and an overachieving spirit.

  “School is … school,” she says. “I like art class though. And music.”

  “So you’re creative.” Good to know. There are some pottery and painting places in Park Terrace I can take her to.

  “I guess. Sure.” She takes another bite. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  I laugh through my nose. “I do not. Why do you ask?”

  She shrugs. “You’re just so beautiful. I thought maybe you did.”

  Pointing my spoon at her, I say, “It takes a lot more than looks to land a nice man.”

  “I know,” she says. “But you’re pretty, nice, and smart. What more could a guy want?”

  She’s the sweetest. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple.”

  “Have you had a boyfriend before?”

  “I have,” I say. “Just broke up with him last month, actually. His name was Eric.”

  “Why’d you dump him?”

  I almost tell her the real reason, that he was too much like my father, and then I remember that hers isn’t around.

  “We wanted different things in life,” I say. And it’s the truth. “What about you? Do you have a boyfriend?”

  Devanie’s creamy cheeks turn a shade of pink and she hides a smile behind her spoon. “No. Not yet. My brother would straight up murder me if I had a boyfriend.”

  I chuckle, thinking back to my own older brothers. Graeme is thirteen years my senior, Eben eight years older. Neither one of them were around all that often in my teenage years, but I always daydreamed about being one of those girls whose brothers chase off any guys who dare look her way.

  “Your brother sounds like a good guy,” I say.

  She blows a spiral of blonde hair out of her face and tucks her chin against her chest. “More like obnoxious.”

  “Well, it sounds like he cares about you very much.”

  “Too much.” She wipes the corners of her mouth with a napkin and shoves her empty cup to the middle of the table before sinking against the back of her chair. “I’m so full. I feel like I’m going to explode.”

  She did fill her cup clear to the top with yogurt and various toppings. I laughed at first, thinking it was cute, and then I realized it wasn’t cute at all.

  It was kind of sad.

  In retrospect, she acted like she was starving.

  Maybe as we get a bit closer, I’ll see if I can find out if she has food at home. I just want to make sure she’s not going to bed hungry at night and waking up famished every morning.

  “You want to go swimming Thursday?” I ask.

  “Yes!” She sits up.

  “Might need more than two hours since Park Terrace is a thirty-minute drive from here. Just get permission from your mom and have her let the center know, okay?” I ask. “Should we get going?”

  We clean up our table and head outside to my car.

  “Can you just drop me off at my brother’s work?” she asks when we pull out of the parking lot a couple minutes later. “He just texted me and said he’s going to be late picking me up, and I really don’t want to sit around there for another half hour doing nothing.”

  “Of course,” I say. “I’ll have to walk you in though. And meet him. Just to be sure … not that I don’t believe you, but ...”

  “I get it. You don’t have to explain,” she says.

  “So where are we going?” I ask. “Do you have an address?”

  “It’s called Madd Inkk,” she says.

  The four little words sink my stomach and turn my blood into an ice bath. My palms moisten against the steering wheel and my throat constricts.

  “It’s on Fifteenth Street,” she says. “Just off the square.”

  I don’t tell her I know where that is. “All right.”

  The rest of the drive there is a blur, and I run the air conditioning on full blast because I can’t stop feeling like I’m two seconds from overheating despite the fact tha
t it's a breezy eighty-one degrees outside.

  Devanie’s nose is buried in her phone. She doesn’t notice, thank goodness. And as we pull up, I remind myself that she didn’t say her brother owned Madd Inkk—just that he worked here.

  We pull up to the shop and I park the car. “You ready?”

  “Yep.” She climbs out, bags in tow, and darts toward the front door despite the sign outside that clearly states minors aren’t allowed in. I guess when you know someone who works there, the rules are a little more flexible?

  She’s already inside before I so much as reach for the door handle, and I peer in through the glass just in time to see her disappear in the back, behind a drawn curtain.

  By the time I step inside, Devanie emerges from the back … dragging a dark-haired Adonis by the hand as she makes her way to me.

  “Brighton, this is my brother, Madden,” she says. “Madden, tell her you’re my brother.”

  “Hi.” There’s a glint in his coffee-brown eyes and the tiniest hint of a smirk on his full lips. His hands move to his hips and he studies me.

  “Tell her,” Devanie says, nudging him.

  “You’re Dev’s mentor?” he asks.

  “I am.” My insides fill with swarms of butterflies at the mere sound of his velvet-smooth voice.

  Devanie looks between the two of us. “Do you two … know … each other?”

  He doesn’t answer. And maybe he can’t. Maybe there’s some kind of confidentiality or non-disclosure policy in place. So I do.

  “I was here a few weeks back,” I say. “Your brother did my tattoo.”

  Devanie splays her hands out. “Wait. You have a tattoo? You?”

  I chuckle. “A small one. Hidden. But yes.”

  Her jaw falls.

  “Anyway,” I say, returning my gaze to Madden. “She asked me to drop her off here instead of at the club. I hope that’s all right?”

  He licks his lips; his attention hasn’t left me once this entire time. “Yeah.”

  “I should get going,” I say. Heat creeps up my neck and if I stick around any longer, something tells me it’s going to be deathly obvious that I’m growing more flustered by the minute in his presence. “See you Thursday, Devanie. Same time?”

  “Yep!” She gives me a hug and I leave, making damn sure I don’t knock my head against the door on my way out this time.

  By the time I get to my car, I’m running on sheer adrenaline while simultaneously floating on a breeze. I resist the urge to glance back at Madd Inkk as I drive past, on the off chance that he’s watching from the window—not that he would. I highly doubt I’m remotely close to his type.

  I tried my hardest to keep my cool in there, but you never can tell what other people are going to pick up on.

  For all I know, the fact that just standing in front of him was getting me all hot and bothered might as well have been broadcasting across my forehead in big, bold letters.

  Taking a deep breath, I grip the steering wheel and continue home … with a giant smile on my face … because I’m sure I’ll be seeing a lot more of him after this.

  14

  Madden

  “You know child labor is illegal in this country.” Devanie spins in a swivel stool in my back room. Since she insisted on having her mentor drop her off at the shop and not at the club, I’ve decided to put her to work restocking bandages, grommets, and grips, and organizing the new shipment of ink bottles by color. “That’s so crazy that you know Brighton.”

  “I don’t know her, Dev,” I say. “She came in here once.”

  Twice actually. If I count her banging on my shop door at the crack of dawn because she left her ID here.

  “Really? Because the way she was looking at you ...” Devanie doesn’t finish her thought. “I’m getting dizzy.”

  “Then stop spinning and get back to work.”

  “Not unless you agree to pay me.”

  “Your cell phone is payment enough, don’t you think?” I unbox a package of needle cartridges. We can never have enough black on hand. This is actually Missy’s job, but she called in sick today. Sounded like ass. Hardly recognized her over the phone. She offered to come in, but I told her not to bring that shit into my shop.

  Dev stops spinning and places her hands out to brace herself between a nearby table and a storage shelf.

  “What’d you two do today?” I ask.

  “We got frozen yogurt,” she says. “Talked about stuff.”

  “Oh, yeah? What kind of stuff?”

  “Friends. Schools. Boys,” she says. “She told me about her boyfriend.”

  A flash of heat rushes through me, though I don’t know why. Of course she has a boyfriend. I’m sure he’s some pencil-dicked Ivy Leaguer with connections up the ass. I’ve got no business being jealous. Can’t compete with that, nor would I want to.

  “Ex-boyfriend,” Devanie says. “She dumped him last month.”

  The heat beneath my flesh settles to a tepid warmth. “Oh, yeah? How come?”

  “She said they wanted different things in life.” She spins to face me. “I knew you were going to ask me that.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Psh.” She bats her hand. “Don’t act like you weren’t checking her out. You were both staring at each other like … whoa.”

  “What does that even mean?” I slice through packing tape with a box cutter.

  “You think she’s hot,” Dev says.

  “She’s a very attractive woman, yes,” I say.

  “I’m going to ask her what she thinks of you on Thursday.”

  My stare flicks to her. “No, you’re not.”

  She fights a smile. “Why not? What if she feels the same?”

  “It wouldn’t matter. I don’t date,” I say. “And if I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t date someone like her.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  My mouth opens before I speak. I need to word this in a way that my twelve-year-old sister can comprehend, a way that doesn’t completely crush her spirit and her naive view of reality.

  “She’s not my type,” I say, opting to leave it at that. “And I'm not her type.”

  “You don't know you’re not her type.”

  “Yeah, no. I’m pretty sure on that one, Dev.” I slice another box open and stack it next to the others. “Here you go. Sooner you get these done, sooner I can take you home.” I glance at my watch, realizing the time got away from me. “Actually, I’ve got someone coming in in fifteen minutes. Take your time. You’re going to be here at least another couple of hours.”

  Devanie shoots me a look and grabs a box of cartridges, but she doesn’t say a word. I think secretly she likes being here with me. And she likes having responsibilities.

  I read an article in some doctor's office magazine once about how teenagers secretly like discipline and responsibility because it represents the fact that someone cares about them.

  Pierce pops his head behind the curtain. “Uh, boss. Your appointment’s here.”

  “’K. I’ll be up a sec,” I say.

  “Um. The, uh, name on the books doesn’t match up though,” he adds.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It says Ron.” His eyes shift and he pulls the curtain a little wider. “But it’s, uh, Veronica.”

  Devanie rises from her chair, attempting to steal a look, but I place a hand on her shoulder and stop her. I don’t need my kid sister getting involved in any of this.

  “You tell her to leave?” I ask.

  “I can,” he says, forehead lined. “I wasn’t sure what you wanted me to do. Thought maybe you two were patching things up?”

  Pinching the bridge of my nose, I gather every ounce of calmness I can muster and push past Pierce. Marching to the front of the shop, I find Veronica paging aimlessly through one of the design books.

  “The hell are you doing here?” I ask, thankful the place isn’t too packed. She’s lucky it’s the middle of the afternoon, though I don’t
think she’d have the balls to show up here on a busy Friday night.

  “I … I wanted to talk,” she says, rising. Her dark hair is cut shorter than it was last time, stopping at her jawline, but she’s still wearing that tired cat eye and bold red lip—her “signature” look as she always said. I always thought it was too much for her. Too much makeup. Too much drama. In the end though, it suited her perfectly.

  “I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

  “I know.” Her mouth quavers and her hand is outstretched. “I just … I was hoping we could sit down and—”

  “It’s been three years, and now you want to sit down and talk?” I laugh at her audacity. “Little late for that. Not that I’d ever entertain the idea of talking to you about anything.”

  Her green eyes glass over and she looks away, arms hugging her sides.

  Poor thing.

  The last time I saw her, she was on her knees, blowing one of my piercers (whom I wasted no time firing). The image of smeared red lipstick around her mouth and his short, chubby cock thrusting between her lips is one I’d pay good money to forget if I could.

  But alas. It’s there forever. Ingrained. Etched. Burned for all eternity.

  Veronica’s the only woman I’ve ever dated in the traditional sense. And at one point in time, I was almost certain I was beginning to fall in love with her. I say almost certain because honestly, I wouldn’t know what love was if it smacked me over the head with a two by four. I only have ideas, notions.

  “Get the hell out of here,” I tell her as I walk to the door and hold it open for her. “And don’t you ever darken my doorstep again.”

  She leaves in tears.

  I do that to people. Make them cry. Tell them things they don’t want to hear. Hurt their feelings. Break their hearts. But this one’s all on her.

  15

  Brighton

  Friday night at the Iron Castle is so quiet my footsteps echo in the hall.

  All the staff left hours ago, shortly after dinner cleanup. I pass the living room, where my mother is drinking a glass of chardonnay, lost in a book, her mother of pearl reading glasses perched on her aquiline nose. She’s so engrossed she doesn’t so much as look up, so I keep going until I pass my father’s study, where the light from his laptop glows blue against the strong lines of his face.