by D. N. Hoxa
“When are you going to tell me what that tattoo of yours means?” I asked him. My head had already started to heat, and I was only on my second glass of wine.
“You never asked. I never told,” he said.
“Well, I’m asking you now.”
He laughed a little and put his arm on the table. “Okay, it all started with a snake.” He pointed to the snake I’d missed. It started around his wrist, then went up and under his shirt. I couldn’t see the head. “I was lying on the ground when I was a kid, and I heard this hissing sound so close to my ear, I almost fainted. It was a snake, all right. A snake going after a spider that had been right next to my arm. A black widow.”
“Oh, no.” I was terrified of insects, spiders in particular.
“Yeah. That snake saved my life. Two years later, I tattooed him just to make sure I’d never forget. Sometimes, who you think of as an enemy can turn out to be a friend,” he said in wonder.
“Wow,” I said. “I would’ve probably had nightmares for life if a snake hissed right next to my head, but wow.”
“I did have nightmares, but they stopped about a week later,” he said grinning. “And these here are trees. Poplars. There’s a wood filled with them in my backyard. I spent a lot of time in there as a kid. Still do.”
“A place to escape,” I said. “I always wanted one of those. Especially after Dad died, but I’m not sure I would’ve dared to go into the woods, all alone. So many bugs.” I shivered at the thought of it.
“No, it’s really nice in there. Especially with this weather. It’s always chilly and so quiet,” he said, then smiled. “I’ll take you there one day.”
“You will?” Going with him, I didn’t think I would mind the bugs.
“Yeah,” he said, but his smile faltered.
“What about the rest?” He looked uncomfortable all of a sudden, and I wanted to take his mind off whatever he was thinking.
“The rest is just bits and pieces out of everything I’ve seen. Words. Latin words, because they sound amazing to me. Up here,” he said and touched his chest, “is a bird I got in memory of my mother.”
“Tell me about her,” I said. I wanted to know his family, too.
“She died when I was four, so I don’t remember much. But Dad and my brothers said she had the voice of a canary,” he said. His sadness looked beautiful on his smile.
“I always wanted to get a tattoo.”
“Why didn’t you?” he said.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I never really dared to take that step. What if I end up not liking it? Or what if I look weird?”
Adrian laughed. “Who cares? If you want to do it, just do it. There’s lasers now. If you don’t like it, you can have it removed.”
“Yeah, I don’t know.” Having ink on my skin like that felt so final. “Anyway, the tattoo I always wanted to do is kind of pathetic.”
“What is it?”
“If I told you, you’d run screaming on all fours,” I said, though my cheeks hurt from the big smile on my face. From so close up, I could almost smell his scent of pine and rain.
“I promise I won’t run screaming on all fours,” he said, grinning. “Come on, tell me.”
I sighed. “I’ve never told this crazy idea to anyone except Zoe.” She had laughed at me for days, because it was a stupid idea, but I couldn’t say no to him. “I always wanted to do a Harry Potter tattoo.”
“A Harry Potter tattoo,” Adrian said like he was tasting the words on his tongue. “Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“Can I ask why? There’s a thousand things you can tattoo on your skin. Why would you want to tattoo a fictional character?”
At least he wasn’t laughing. Or running.
“It’s not like that. At least, not for me. Harry Potter isn’t just a fictional character. It’s like a door that opened for me when I read the books. It widened my horizon,” I said. I’d never tried to explain this to anyone before, so I could only hope it made sense to him. “Before I didn’t know imagination could stretch so wide. I knew what I saw and that was it. But that story, the world in it, taught me that there really isn’t a limit to what you can think of. What you can dream. What you can want. It woke me up. It made me a different person.”
“Uh…are we talking about the same boy that runs around with a stick in his hand?” Adrian said, and I burst out laughing.
“Yes. And it’s called a wand.”
“You should do it,” he said.
“No…”
“Willow, you should do it. You should remember everything you just said to me forever, because it was damn beautiful.”
“I don’t know.” I kept shrugging at him and at myself, because I didn’t know how to tell him that I’d never had the guts to pull it off before. Probably never would.
“Yes, you do. Things like this…you should hold onto them. Tightly, before you forget,” he said.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Thinking about it is going to kill all the fun. You have to do it. Tomorrow.”
I laughed. “Are you crazy?” Things like that took time. And planning.
“I’m not kidding, Willow. Just go to a tattoo artist, and get it done. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”
“Why do you insist I do things so much?” I said, and for a second, he froze. “I mean, not that I mind or anything, but I’m just curious. Nobody has pushed me the way you do, and honestly, it’s kind of weird because we’ve known each other less than a week.”
Adrian looked away from me. I bit my lip and cursed myself in my head for having said that. It was weird, yes, but it was also the best thing that had happened to me since Dad died. I liked how he pushed me. I wanted to be pushed. Now, who knew what he’d make out of my words?
“Adrian—”
“No, you’re right,” he said. “It is weird. I just…” he sighed and rubbed his face furiously like he was mad all of a sudden. “I just hate to see you waste your time doing what people want you to do, instead of doing what you want to. It makes me sick to see you so scared of doing the things that you want for some fucked up reason I don’t think I’ll ever understand because you don’t need to be scared. We only get this once. Who knows when it will end? I don’t want you to wake up when it’s too late and regret all the things you could have done while you still had the chance.”
“I’m twenty years old, Adrian. I don’t think it’s going to be late any time soon.”
“You don’t know that!” He pushed his beer to the side. “None of us knows that, Willow.”
“I don’t understand why you’re so mad. It’s just a stupid tattoo,” I said, and my voice shook.
Suddenly, I wanted to cry. Because he was right. Every word he said hit home. He was right, I was scared. I lived the way people wanted me to live. The way my mother wanted me to live. I was stuck there, wasting the best years of my life, when I should’ve been in college. Going to parties. Making memories.
And it hurt to have those things said out loud, because now they were clear. I could think them as clear thoughts when before they were just a mess of unfinished sentences in my head, and they didn’t have enough power to hurt me. They didn’t demand I do something about them. Now, they would.
“Willow, I’m sorry,” Adrian said. “I didn’t mean to be an asshole. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, but I wished he’d take it all back. I wished he’d never said those words to me.
“I was just…I just want you to…”
“To what?” I said, when I saw that he didn’t plan to finish his sentence.
He waved me off and turned his head to the side. “Nothing.”
“To what, Adrian?”
I stared at his profile for long enough that I memorized it in detail, until he faced me again.
“To live.”
Two simple words that meant the world to me.
“I will,” I said.
I did
n’t know it yet, but that was a promise. The most important promise I ever made. To myself, and to Adrian.
So when the time came for us to leave, and he said goodnight as he leaned against the hood of his car to just look at me while I walked away, I didn’t. I stayed. I walked to him, and while the tornado inside my stomach spun without mercy, I kissed him.
Adrian Ward
She kissed me. I spent the whole night holding myself from those tormenting thoughts of tasting her, and she went and ruined it all by jumping in my arms and bringing her lips to mine.
I should’ve resisted. I should’ve moved away. I should’ve done a lot of things.
Instead, I did the one thing I shouldn’t have done. I kissed her back.
How could I not when she tasted like freedom?
Her lips were a thousand times softer than they looked. Her breath was sweet, and her tongue the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted. My arms were around her, tightly, like they would never let go of her.
We moved like we’d kissed a million times already. My hand moved from her back to her hair. She’d let it loose for the first time since I’d met her, and I’d wanted to touch it all night long. It was soft, like the rest of her, and I couldn’t get enough. I kissed her like I never kissed anyone before. She kissed me in a way I was never kissed before, either.
It was perfect.
It was wrong.
It ended too quickly.
She didn’t smile as she walked away. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. Her eyes said it all, as mine probably told her everything. We went too far. It was too good. It was going to be too hard not to do it again.
The next day, I didn’t go to see her. I was afraid of what I might do. It wasn’t fair to her, what I was doing. How could I kiss her when I knew what came next? How could I allow myself to think about doing it again?
The day dragged on forever. Her face was all I saw, her name all I heard, her kiss all I thought about.
I went to the bar with my brothers to see if I could make myself forget. If I could make myself focus on another girl hard enough to want to kiss her. I focused on a beautiful brunette with everything I had.
And when she came to our table to say hi, I left.
When the boys came home, I pretended I was asleep, because they wouldn’t have left me alone otherwise. I’d never done that before. I’d never turned down a girl like that. Ever. They would want an explanation. What could I possibly say that they could understand?
I thought about it all night, yet when the morning came, my excuse was pathetic.
“Her breath smelled,” I mumbled.
We were at the kitchen table, having breakfast together like always, when they asked.
“Cut the bullshit, pretty boy,” Doc said. “What the hell’s the matter with you these days?”
Dad raised his brow at him as a warning.
“If you think it’s bullshit, don’t ask me,” I said.
“Give the kid a break, will ya?” Alan said.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Doc said, and Dad threw a tomato slice at his face. It was impossible not to laugh, no matter my mood.
“Sorry, Pops,” Doc mumbled. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Alan said, and Doc finally realized that Dad was there. So he shut his mouth.
At noon, Willow texted me.
Can you meet me? It’s an emergency.
I stood up from the couch. “I’m going out,” I said to Dad and the boys, and ignored their calls and questions.
Where? I said as I ran to my car. Something must’ve been wrong. Willow wasn’t someone to make a big deal out of things. If she said emergency, something must be wrong.
At the barbershop two blocks from Treat Yourself.
On my way. Are you okay?
She didn’t reply. I drove like crazy. I almost called her when I thought, what if George decided to take things in his own hands? What if he did something to her?
But no. She wouldn’t have texted me if that had been the case.
By the time I got there, my headache had worsened from too many thoughts. And when I got there, I cursed under my breath.
Willow was in front of the barbershop, wearing a baby blue dress, and her hair down. Right next to the barbershop was a tattoo shop.
She smiled like she couldn’t have been happier.
“I’m going to do it!” she called while I was still on the other side of the road where I left my car.
All thoughts of giving her hell for scaring me like that left my mind, and I smiled back. She was going to do it.
“You’re crazy,” I said when I finally made it to her.
“I’m so sorry!” she said, laughing. “I couldn’t help myself. I knew you would be worried and probably mad, but it was just there! I couldn’t not do it.”
Her laugh was contagious. “I’m not mad, but I was worried.” If she only knew.
“I know, but I’ll make it up to you. That is, if you stay with me while I get a tattoo. I don’t think I can do it myself.”
“Of course I’ll stay with you,” I said before I could think about it. But seeing her like that, so full of life and so excited, I would’ve said yes to anything.
“Let’s go.”
She showed the artist the picture of a weird triangle with a ball in the middle, and below it, the word always. She wanted it done on her left ankle.
I did my job and held her hand while she squealed in pain, but I also laughed. The expressions she made were hilarious, and even the guy with the needle in his hands couldn’t keep it in.
“Why always?” I asked to distract her when she became too red in the face.
“Because it’s…it’s…oh, God, that hurts!”
“Tell me.” I squeezed her hand to make her look at me and stop looking at her leg.
“It’s the word that changes the story completely. You read all seven books thinking you know exactly what’s going on, then Snape says ‘Always’ and it blows your mind! It changes everything you thought you knew,” she breathed.
“That is so, so lame, Willow. Extremely lame,” I said, laughing. “Lamer than my lame jokes.”
“Nothing’s lamer than your lame jokes, Adrian. Don’t fool yourself.”
“That is. And if we were to ask this guy, he’d agree,” I said, and pointed at the artist, who pulled his lips inside his mouth to keep from laughing.
“Hey!” Willow reached out to slap him, but then thought better of it when she realized he had a needle close to her skin. “You haven’t even heard his lame jokes.”
“I’ve got another one for you,” I said.
“Oh, God. How lame?”
“From one to ten?” She nodded. “Probably twelve and a half.”
Willow breathed deeply. “Okay, I’m ready. Go.”
I had no idea what the hell I was going to say, so I picked the first thing that came to my mind. “So, if I saw a pretty girl, I’d go to her and say ‘I’m new in town. Could you give me directions to your place?’”
It was terrible. So terrible, I couldn’t stop laughing.
“Oh, God. God, no. This is so sad!” Willow said, laughing so hard, she didn’t seem to even notice the pain anymore. “Poor little Adrian. Did you ever use this line? If you did, how many times did you get slapped in the face with a shoe?”
“No, never,” I said, shaking my head.
“A heeled shoe?”
“I never used the line.”
“Are you absolutely sure? Do you have any scars you don’t know where you got? Because they’re probably from that,” she said.
She didn’t stop laughing until her tattoo was done, and the guy put a bandage on it.
“That was fun,” she said when we got out.
“Not really, no,” I said, grinning.
“Whatever. It was fun for me,” she said, but she knew I was teasing her. “Now, I’m taking you to lunch,” she said.
“Lunch?�
�� I’d completely forgotten about the fact that I wasn’t supposed to be there. I wasn’t supposed to see her at all for as long as I could. But now she was in front of me, the breeze blowing her hair back just slightly, and she looked like a dream.
“It’s still early, but we can eat, right?”
Right. We could eat. She took us to a restaurant I’d never been to before, but she promised they made the best beef in town. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her while we made our order. Her lips were there, on her face, and I wanted to fucking rip them off with my teeth, more so now that I knew how she tasted.
“I love Sundays,” she said after a while.
“What made you change your mind?” I asked. She knew I meant the tattoo.
Willow shrugged. “You did.”
I should’ve been happy that I made her do something she wanted to do, but I felt miserable instead.
“You were right, by the way,” she continued. “About everything.”
“Willow…”
She looked hurt when she said that, though she was smiling.
“No, it’s okay. It’s actually better than okay. I need to thank you. I wouldn’t have the best tattoo in the world on my leg right now if it wasn’t for you.”
“Well, that’s stretching it, but you’re welcome,” I said reluctantly.
“It is the best tattoo in the world,” she insisted. Then: “Can I ask you something?” I already knew what she was going to say, so I just nodded. “What happened yesterday?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I was busy with my brothers. Saturdays are always the busiest days of the week.”
What a fucking joke.
“Oh.” She nodded, but she didn’t seem convinced.
“I wanted to text you and let you know, but there was so much to do, and it slipped my mind.”
“It’s okay, Adrian. You don’t really have to tell me where you are or anything.” It was obvious that she hated to say that.
“I know I don’t have to. And I wanted to see you. I just…couldn’t,” I said.
I never thought a day would come in which I’d want to explain myself to a girl. Those I’ve been with in the past never had the power to make me anything more than horny. But Willow…she made me feel guilty. She made me feel good about myself on rare occasion. She made me want to talk. To tell her about me. Too weird to try and understand.
