by Jove Belle
“Hi.” Angie wasn’t sure what to do. What was appropriate tattoo-parlor etiquette? Should she offer to shake hands? Bump knuckles? Grunt? She settled on a shy finger wave and immediately felt like an idiot.
Luna’s smile was like the hot sun on cool, fresh-from-the-swimming-pool skin, and Angie was captivated. She wanted to bask in this woman, which shook her. She usually kept her emotions tight to her chest. Extreme, immediate reactions didn’t fit into her stable, workaday life.
“I bet you’d look great with a tattoo.” Luna gestured toward the drawings on the wall and moved closer to Angie—close enough to touch.
“Uhm” was all Angie managed.
Luna took a hold of Angie’s hand, turned it palm up, and traced a circle on the inside of her wrist. “This is a great spot for a small, intimate tattoo. Something special, perhaps?”
Angie shivered. Between Luna’s captivating smile and her touch, Angie was trapped. She knew she should step back or respond. Anything. But she was completely vapor-locked. She just wanted to dip her tongue into the dimple on Luna’s left cheek. Every well-thought-out argument against tattoos evaporated with the heat of Luna’s gaze.
“Or maybe here?” Luna’s voice dropped to a lower register. Already whiskey rough, the tone promised all manner of naughty fun. She didn’t release Angie’s hand as she ran her fingers over the defined edge of Angie’s bicep.
Angie’s brain misfired, and she barely registered the sound of someone entering from the back room.
Luna released Angie. She took a step back and smiled—a sexy smile that melted a place Angie had all but forgotten about.
“Hello, lover.” The woman had brown hair so dark it was almost black, cut in a perfect hard-lined bob. After she stole into the room and wrapped her arm around Luna’s waist, she stared at Angie, her eyes flashing with unmistakable jealousy. Angie got the message loud and clear. “You almost ready?”
“I’m not sure.” Luna gave the woman a brief, yet excessively intimate kiss. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll let you know.”
Angie’s rush of envy was followed by relief. Luna had a girlfriend. The temptation was off the table.
The woman looked at Tori and Angie, her gaze lingering on Angie. “Well, if it isn’t June Cleaver in the flesh,” she purred, the words half threat, half invitation.
“June Cleaver?” The assessment torqued Angie. Yes, she looked like every other soccer mom she’d ever met, but she wasn’t the one wearing pearls. The woman clinging to Luna had a string of obviously fake ones around her neck. Big and gaudy, they rested between the broad red lapels that framed her neck. Her shirt was open several buttons past decent, and her skirt, with its wide matching belt, swirled around her legs a la sexy pinup girl. She looked like the quintessential 50s housewife on porn.
“Honey, I didn’t say it was a bad thing.” The tone of her voice assured Angie that she thought it was terrible.
“Ruby.” Luna placed a restraining hand on Ruby’s arm.
Angie swallowed a growl. She didn’t know what upset her more, Ruby’s—her name was a perfect match for her cultivated harlot look—tone or Luna’s physical proximity to Ruby.
“Don’t make me wait too long, lover.” Ruby dragged a finger over Luna’s shoulders, prolonging contact as she eased away, finally disappearing into the back room.
“I apologize about that. Ruby can be a little…overbearing.” Luna’s smile was sad around the periphery. “Now, about that tattoo?”
Tori checked back in to the conversation. “It’s for me.” She had been simply staring back and forth between Angie and Ruby, with the occasional glance at Luna. Watching Tori’s head move from person to person was making Angie dizzy, and she wasn’t even the one switching focus rapidly.
Tori and Luna ironed out the business details, confirming design choice and colors, and Angie listened, unsure if she should intervene. Tattoos—or any other permanent alteration to her body—made no sense. It wasn’t like Tori would be able to trade it out for an updated version in a few years.
“Wait.” Angie had to make one more plea. She loved Tori too much not to do that.
“Ang, we’ve been over this.” Tori patted her arm. “Just hold my hand and tell me distracting stories.”
“But it’s just so…permanent. Think about when you’re sixty. What starts out now as a cute little pink teddy bear will look like a wad of bubble gum stuck to your ankle in thirty years.”
Luna arched an eyebrow, folded her arms across her chest, and quirked her lips into the cutest half smile. Her eyes said I dare you, but her mouth remained silent. She waited for Tori’s response.
“First, I’m not getting a pink anything. Second, I’ll deal with sixty when I get there.”
“Fine.” Angie didn’t think it was fine at all.
“Good.” Tori took Angie’s hand and said to Luna, “Let’s do this.”
Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff” played softly in the background, and it reminded Angie of every time she’d come home to find her father and his current girlfriend getting stoned at the kitchen table. She’d made the rounds through the house opening windows and doors, trying to air the place out, and learned early on that her homework came out for shit if she did it with a contact high.
Angie looked around for the familiar signs that someone had recently smoked up and thankfully found nothing. The last thing Tori needed was a stoner leaving an indelible fuck-up on her arm.
“I’ll watch the front.” The way Perez’s eyes lingered on Tori said she’d rather watch her instead.
Angie considered offering to trade places. The thought of a needle entering and exiting Tori’s skin in rapid-fire procession made Angie feel a little green. She’d much rather hang around out front and warn people away from a similar fate.
Luna led them to a semiprivate area that held a barber chair and a rolling cart filled with supplies. “This seat is for you.” As she waited for Tori to sit she said, “You need to lose the shirt if you want a tattoo on your shoulder.”
Tori sloughed off her shirt without hesitation. “Now what?”
For the moment, her over-the-top eagerness amused Luna. Time would tell if she deserved the ink Luna was about to give her. It also didn’t hurt that she’d brought along some total eye candy for moral support, which was a mystery to Luna. First, Tori obviously didn’t need someone to hold her hand through this procedure. She clearly knew what she wanted. And second, her friend was not a fan of body art, a flaw that Luna was willing to forgive providing that Angie continued to look good and stay quiet.
“Sure about this?” Luna selected the black ink and slipped the protective covering from the needle. “We’re about to hit the point of no return.”
Angie paled, but didn’t protest. Luna was impressed.
Tori nodded. “I’m positive.”
Luna pushed the button, relaxing with the snick-click as the gun engaged. The low-grade hum as the needle pistoned in and out comforted Luna, the sound so engraved in her routine that the stresses of life receded when she heard it. She let her hand have its way, guiding the needle across Tori’s skin with easy, steady progression.
“Angie, sweetie, I need you to let go of my hand.” Tori’s voice sounded strained, and Luna paused.
“Everything okay?”
“Will be when I get Angie to turn loose.”
Angie gripped Tori’s hand, her knuckles white with the pressure. She stared at Tori’s shoulder with her mouth slightly open. Finally she looked and jerked her hand away from Tori’s. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “Didn’t realize.”
Tori shook her hand out. “It’s okay. Nothing a little minor surgery can’t correct.”
Luna resumed her work. “Angie, tell me why you came with Tori today.”
“She asked me to.” Angie’s gaze was again riveted to Tori’s shoulder.
“I figured you’d see it’s no big deal and get one with me.”
Angie shook her head and backed up quickly. “Nuh-uh.”
“Stop being such a baby. It doesn’t hurt at all.” The tremor beneath Luna’s fingers belied Tori’s casual dismissal of the pain, but other than that, she hid her discomfort well.
“You’re not wearing a tank top at my house ever again.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Luna didn’t think Angie was kidding at all.
“The last thing I need is Oliver asking for one of those.”
The mention of a male who obviously shared Angie’s home piqued Luna’s interest. Angie gave off distinct dyke vibes, so who was the mystery guy? Maybe she was a bi-curious lesbian-virgin desperate for Luna to turn her out. She’d given up playing tour guide years ago, but the thought was full of sexy possibility.
“He’s seen tattoos before, Angie.”
“Well, he’s not allowed to see yours.”
“Who’s Oliver?” Luna immediately wanted to take her question back. She was not a part of their conversation and had no right to interject herself into it.
Angie looked away from Tori’s shoulder, the constant progression of black ink into tanned skin, and met Luna’s gaze for the first time since entering the work area. She regarded Luna for a moment, then said, “My ten-year-old son.”
She didn’t look away, seeming to wait for something, but Luna didn’t know what that might be. What could she possibly say? “Oh.” Anything would have been better than such an insipid reply.
Angie smiled slightly and sat in the guest chair, no longer watching Luna work. Luna scrambled mentally for something to correct her blunder, to take away the look of disappointment from Angie’s face.
“Ten? How old were you when you had him?” Luna asked.
“Too young,” Angie answered. Her voice was flat, but her eyes flared. She obviously didn’t like the subject.
“Oh.” For the second time in as many minutes, Luna was at a loss. She didn’t know what to say and didn’t understand why she cared. Yes, Angie was hot, and terribly sweet to stay with her friend in a situation that obviously made her uncomfortable. She was also acting like the worst kind of tourist in Luna’s world: narrow-minded, judgmental, and vocal about it. Another white-bread American mom who thought she was above it all.
“At any rate, it’s not like he hasn’t seen tattoos before,” Tori said. “Sandy has at least five.”
“That we can see.” Angie didn’t sound impressed.
“Right, so why the objection?”
Angie sighed. “He looks up to you.”
Luna forced herself to continue working, focusing on the emerging pattern before her rather than the off-limits woman with a child at home and full measure of baggage to go with it. Not to mention her vanilla hang-ups about Luna’s passion. She acted like getting a tattoo was the first step in a rapid descent to hell and that her son would be able to run out and get a tattoo by himself tomorrow. Luna snorted. Yeah, right.
“What do you think, Luna?”
“What?” Luna switched guns, selecting purple next. “Don’t drag me into the middle of this.”
“There is no middle. Just tell Angie she’s acting like she’s a ninety-year-old nun and she needs to get over it.”
Luna laughed. She’d thought plenty of things about Angie in the past forty-five minutes that would earn an endless amount of Hail Marys and Our Fathers, but none of them included Angie wearing a habit and ninety-year-old skin. She smiled at Angie, putting her dimples to work for her. Women loved that shit. “She’s definitely not a nun.”
Heat flooded Angie’s cheeks and she cursed her damned fair skin. Even with a tan, she never could hide her embarrassment, or her excitement. She needed this field trip to hell to just be over. Why Tori wanted a tattoo was a mystery, more so that she insisted on dragging Angie along. The only redeeming part of the evening was Luna, even if she did tattoo people for a living. And despite her flirtatious nature, she already had a girlfriend. Angie better remember that.
She focused on the wall behind Luna’s head, blocking out the nausea-inducing noise of the tattoo gun. If she didn’t look, she could convince herself it wasn’t really happening.
“Almost done.” Luna’s low voice held a soft reverence and Angie glanced over despite her best intentions to resist. The mix of dark ink and blood smeared across Tori’s shoulder made her stomach lurch. Luna wiped it away with a gauze square. “What do you think?”
The completed design—a small black-lined triquetra, filled in with purple—was red and puffy, and not nearly as bad as Angie expected.
Luna spun the chair so Tori could see her shoulder in the wall mirror with the aid of a hand-held mirror. “Nice.” Tori looked completely pleased, unlike Angie, who still wasn’t convinced it was a good thing.
Luna covered the new ink with a bandage, gave Tori directions for care, and escorted them to the front of the store. Tori slipped her shirt into place as she went, moving with careful deference to her sore shoulder.
“Work should be fun until that heals,” Angie teased.
“Shit.” Tori grimaced. “Totally didn’t think about that.”
With their transaction completed, Tori zeroed in on Perez, leaving Angie alone with Luna.
“It was nice meeting you.” Angie wasn’t convinced but saw no reason to be rude.
“I enjoyed it, Angie.” Luna grasped her hand with the same intimate familiarity she had displayed earlier, before Ruby arrived. “Maybe we could do it again some time.”
Ruby smiled over Luna’s shoulder, all predator and sex and not at all friendly. Luna obviously had no idea Ruby was there. Angie shifted, her palm sweaty in Luna’s hand, and watched as Ruby slipped out the front door. She didn’t know if Luna was hitting on her or trolling for more business. Either way, she needed Luna to let go, but she desperately wanted her to continue holding her hand. “Right.” She cleared her throat. “Um—”
“Ang, you ready?” Tori stood by the door, jacket in her hand. Angie would bet money that she had Perez’s number in her pocket.
“Yes.” She tugged on her hand, forcing Luna to release it. Luna resisted, then finally eased her grip. “Bye, then.”
Tori grabbed Angie’s hand and dragged her out of the shop, similar to how she’d dragged her in. As they exited Coraggio they ran into Ruby, who stood against the wall to the right of the door, exhaling plumes of cigarette smoke out her nose like a dragon.
“You can’t have her, you know.” Ruby didn’t look at Angie as she spoke.
Angie straightened her shoulders and did her best to appear indignant. “She’s all yours.” She led Tori away from Coraggio—and Luna—and hoped she didn’t sound as disappointed as she felt.
Chapter Two
Tuesday, July 14
It felt odd to Angie, sitting at the kitchen table doing homework again just like she did in high school. Except this time around it was all on her laptop, and this fall her son would be sitting next to her while she did it. She’d started her first—in what appeared to be an endless line—college course about a month ago. She hadn’t gotten used to the idea of being a student again. Still, unless she wanted to wait tables forever, she had to do something. A business degree seemed a good place to start.
“Taste this.” Her dad, Jack, held a wooden spoon to her lips. Angie had to sample what he offered or possibly choke on it. Thankfully, it was usually good. For a while he had decided chocolate should go in literally everything, but he blamed that on a bad case of the munchies. He hadn’t done it since, so Angie was willing to forgive.
Marinara, like nothing available in the store, but still lacking something. “Basil?”
Jack snapped his fingers, set the spoon on the counter, and wiped his hands on his apron. “I’ll be right back.” He rushed out to the back deck, his skirt swishing around his calves, and returned with a single basil leaf from his planter garden.
Oliver licked his lips. “Can I taste it?” At ten he was growing like crazy and always hungry.
Angie held out a hand to block Jack from handing
the spoon to Oliver. “What’s in it?”
Not that a small taste would likely hurt Oliver, but she’d rather not expose him to the wonders of cooking with marijuana quite this young. And with her father, you could never tell. Was he making the sauce for their dinner or to take to a potluck? Old hippies were big on social gatherings.
“Nothing to worry about.”
Angie pulled back her hand, Oliver tasted the sauce, and Jack waited. He took great pride in his cooking and his grandson. The boy’s opinion mattered. If Angie hadn’t insisted Oliver do some reading from his summer book list, he’d be at the stove cooking with Jack.
“Mom’s right. Basil.”
Jack nodded and chopped the herb. He stirred it in and returned the lid to the pot. “I have a date tonight, but I’ll be home for dinner.”
“I won’t.” Oliver threw the statement out casually and Angie resisted a laugh. That was the hardest part about being a parent—holding back laughter when her son said something absurd.
She put on her carefully practiced “mom” face—stern, loving, but no pushover. “And where do you think you’re going?”
“Rich and I plan to hit the mall.”
“You do, huh?” She arched a brow and waited for the theatrics to begin.
Oliver closed his book. “Mom, don’t act like it’s a big deal. His brother said he’d drive us.”
Rich’s older brother was a rolling disaster. Someone would get seriously hurt around him soon, or he’d end up in jail, or both. Angie no longer found the situation amusing. “No way.”
“Mom,” Oliver whined and Angie cringed. She’d take surly and argumentative over whiny any day.
“Don’t ‘mom’ me. I just canceled your plans.”
Oliver shoved his chair away from the table with much greater force than necessary. “Fine!” He stormed out of the room, and his bedroom door slammed a moment later.
