Harder (Stark Ink Book 1)

by Dahlia West

  He pulled a black T-shirt over his head, found a clean pair of jeans that were only slightly spattered with ink and headed down the wooden steps to the shop below. It was still early yet and Jeannie wouldn’t be in until much later. Adam had never really been a morning person and his business hours certainly reflected that. He crossed the tile floor in his bare feet and picked up the telephone at the reception desk. The notice from the school was still where he’d left it last night. He checked it twice and dialed the number listed. He squinted at the name on the bottom of the paper. Calla Winslow. Awesome. A blue-haired biddy with bifocals who was going to require all sorts of documentation about Ava’s absences. God forbid he’d reach someone who actually gave a shit and would just mark them excused without any fuss. He doubted Mom and Pop had to jump through all these hoops when he and Dalton were kids.

  On the second ring, Calla Winslow answered with a breathless, “Hello?” Adam noted that she might not actually be an old biddy. In fact, she sounded quite a bit younger than that, though possibly not in the greatest shape as she huffed into the phone.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m— this is Ava Stark’s brother.”

  There was a pause at the other end. “Her brother?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m calling about a notice we got at the house the other day. Though I don’t know exactly when it came,” he admitted. “Things have been a little… chaotic.”

  Calla Winslow made a small noise of sympathy. Adam had grown used to hearing it over the last week.

  She sniffed a little. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Stark. I had heard that your mother passed.”

  Adam nodded though she couldn’t see him. “So, it’s been pretty difficult for us,” he said matter-of-factly. “And you can understand why Ava’s missed a few days.”

  Ms. Winslow cleared her throat and Adam could hear her shuffling papers on her end. “Actually, Mr. Stark, if I could talk to… Mr. Stark.” She seemed fairly flustered.

  Adam recalled Pop’s vacant stares, his unwillingness to talk. “I don’t think that’s going to be possible right now,” he told her. His gaze swept around the room. He had mail to sort, other calls to make.

  “Mr. Stark, if Mr. Stark could— I mean Mr. Stark, Mr. Stark—”

  Adam sighed loudly and drummed the fingers of his free hand on the desk in front of him. “Adam,” he prompted. “Call me Adam.”

  She paused again. “Oh. Well, I’m not sure that’s appropriate.”

  He sighed again, even louder this time. He was above getting overly snippy with a woman over the phone, but he wanted her to know how annoying, distracting, and frankly inappropriate it was that he was being forced to have this conversation right now. “If you don’t call me Adam, Ms. Winslow, what are you going to call my father?”

  She took a moment to consider this and then appeared to give in. “Okay. Yes. Adam. If your father could contact the school, we could set up a conference—”

  “My father is in mourning, Ms. Winslow,” Adam said harshly. “He’s not up to any conferences right now. His wife, Ava’s mother, just passed away. Rather suddenly, in fact. Missing a few days of school is hardly—”

  Ms. Winslow cleared her throat loudly. “Mr. Stark. Adam—” she corrected herself. “It’s not just a few absences. I’m sure you saw on the Parental Notification form that this is the second notice that’s been sent to your house.”

  “It’s not my house,” he told her. “I don’t live there.” He knew he was nit-picking but he was irritated.

  Ms. Winslow plowed on as though she hadn’t heard. “It’s the second notice,” she repeated. “Ava’s missed more than a few classes, Adam. The final tally shows she’s missed nearly four weeks’ worth.”

  Adam stopped drumming his fingers on the table. “Four weeks? No. That’s got to be a clerical error, Ms. Winslow. It’s been seven days, not including the weekend. You’ve miscalculated.”

  “No, Mr. Stark,” she said a bit more firmly. “Ava’s missed the last class on her daily schedule every day for the last two months. We would have contacted you before now, but it appears as though Ava has recruited a friend, uh…” There was a pause and more shuffling of papers. “Sienna Rhodes? Yes, she’s enlisted Sienna Rhodes to mark her as present. Sienna volunteers in the office in the afternoons. The attendance sheet shows Ava as present, but her teacher has noticed her absence. And the last assignment Ava’s turned in for those classes was approximately four weeks ago.”

  Adam sat down in Jeannine’s chair with a thud. His damp hair dripped onto the Formica of the desk. Ava had skipped that much? It didn’t seem possible. Ava was a good kid. Sure she had a foul mouth on her occasionally and she’d thrown a punch or two on the playground over the years, but he couldn’t picture her doing anything like this. And Sienna? Hell, no. Sienna wasn’t some kind of hellion running loose on the streets of Rapid City. Sure, Sienna’s mother was MIA more often than not, but Ava and Sienna just wouldn’t take things that far.

  “Look, Ms. Winslow,” he said firmly. “I don’t know what’s going on here. Or what you think is going on here. But you’re wrong. You’ve got it all wrong. I know Sienna Rhodes. I’ve known her since she moved to Rapid City when she was nine years old. She and Ava, they’re… sometimes…” He struggled for the right word. To paint Ava as a handful—and God knew she was more than that—would be to give credence to this woman’s absurd accusations. “They’re…”

  “Mr. Stark, Sienna and Ava are about to be suspended.”

  Adam froze. “Suspended?”

  “Yes. But we need to have a conference with Sienna’s mother and with Mr. Stark, your father, Ava’s father, so we can fully determine just what is going on here and whether or not anyone else is involved.”

  Adam sat silently, gripping the receiver tightly in one hand while running the other through his tangled, brown hair. He pictured the old man, staring like a zombie at I Love Lucy reruns, mostly grunting responses, if he acknowledged anyone at all. He pictured piles of laundry surrounding the man when previously, he’d meticulously cared for the Stark’s lawn while Adam’s mother kept the inside of the house spotless.

  “Ms. Winslow,” he said, all trace of sarcasm and sharpness now vanished from his tone. “My father really can’t handle this right now. My mom… well her death hit us all pretty hard. He just… there’s just no way.”

  Ms. Winslow sighed on the other end of the phone. It wasn’t an irritated or angry sigh. She genuinely seemed to feel terrible about the circumstances. “Can you come?” she finally asked. “She’ll probably be suspended. And she’s so behind in her classwork that she might have to retake it next year and extend high school an extra semester.”

  “Jesus,” Adam muttered. “I just… I had no idea. I don’t know what… This can’t happen. Coming at her now, with both barrels. I don’t know what’ll happen.” Adam had little experience with teenagers, especially teenage girls. Weren’t they prone to erratic outbursts, crazy behavior? He could definitely picture Ava going off the deep end at this and he was in no way equipped to deal with something like that.

  “Come to my office this afternoon,” Ms. Winslow told him. “We’ll discuss it, formulate a plan from there. This really is serious, Mr. Stark. Though I don’t think I need to stress that,” she said gently. “Please come.”

  Adam picked up a pen and clicked it. “What time?”

  Adam scribbled the time and room number on his palm and gently hung up the phone. There was no way Mom and Pop had had any inkling of what was going on with Ava. Mom was loving and gentle but firm as a drill sergeant when she needed to be. He supposed she’d gotten that from raising himself and Dalton. And Pop would have had Ava’s ass in a sling if he knew. Her list of chores and homework assignments would have been so long that it might take more than an extra semester’s time to finish them all.

  Adam briefly considered calling her, but she would be getting ready for school at the moment. That was, if she ever planned on going again. Though Ms. Winslow had said
that Ava only missed the last class of every day. Maybe there was a legitimate reason, though Adam couldn’t think why she wouldn’t have told anyone if that were the case. He pulled out his cellphone and switched it on.

  We need 2 talk. Face 2 face, he texted her. He had to wait a few minutes for her reply.

  Can’t. School, she sent back. Adam wondered whether or not to believe her.

  Tonight. He didn’t bother to explain. He’d just be giving her time to come with a lie to cover her ass. He’d confront her tonight, in person, and get to the bottom of whatever this was.

  K.

  Next Adam texted Dalton, asking if he was awake, but got no response so he slid the phone back into his pocket.

  He didn’t know what any of this was about, but he wasn’t about to let Ava fuck up her life. And Dalton had to be summarily kicked off whatever cloud he was floating on at the moment, because there was no way Adam was handling this shit alone.

  Chapter Five

  Adam gave up on trying to reach Dalton. There was no guarantee his brother could help anyway. He wondered if Calla Winslow was as uptight as she sounded. If so, it might prove more difficult than necessary to convince her to cut Ava some slack. He picked up a scrap of paper, transcribed the appointment time on it and stuffed it into his pocket. He shuffled across the tile floor and grabbed his boots at the bottom of the back staircase. He couldn’t imagine what Ava was doing every day that had her skipping school, but he doubted it had anything to do with drugs. Mom had managed to keep both himself and Dalton on the straight and narrow growing up, minus a bong hit here or there. There’s no way she dropped the ball with Ava, who despite her brashness had never given Mom and Dad any real trouble.

  He headed back through the lobby and toward his workroom. As much as he liked meeting people and hearing their stories as they sat in his chair, he liked the quiet of the shop just before it opened as well as after it closed. When he’d bought the place, he’d had Dalton divide up the ground floor into four rooms surrounding the lobby. Two tattoo rooms, though for now he was the only artist, a room for piercing once he could afford to hire someone to do it, and a storage room toward the back. He set up his ink and wiped down the counter in his workroom, though it didn’t need it because he was meticulous about cleaning. It was something to do before Jeannie came in. He probably didn’t need her today, either. He could answer the phones himself, but Jeannie had bills to pay like everyone else.

  An hour later he heard the jingle of the bell that hung over the shop’s front door. He tossed his cleaning rag on the counter and headed for the lobby. His receptionist bustled in balancing a coffee, danish, and the set of keys he’d given her to the shop. In her mid-twenties, Jeannie had purple spiked hair and a smile like a razorblade. She was brash but did her job well, and Adam supposed brash worked in a tattoo parlor. Before he’d hired her, she’d been working as an office temp downtown, with a decidedly more muted hair color.

  She’d come in one night as a customer, hoping to have her nose re-pierced. She’d removed it so many times to comply with the dress code of her stuffy office job that it had grown shut. Adam had told her he didn’t have a piercer yet. Jeannie had let loose a string of obscenities that would make a sailor blush but her tiny pixie frame and cute, slightly upturned nose made it impossible to be offended. She’d apologized, blaming the constraints of her nine-to-five. She’d opted for a new tattoo instead and while he had her in the chair, he’d discovered she was an excellent typist, knew her way around a copier, and rarely cursed at people when she answered the phone.

  She’d come in for a piercing and walked out with a job as the receptionist for Stark Ink.

  Jeannie eyed him cautiously now and sniffed. “I’m so sorry, Adam,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. Jeannie may have been brash but her tough exterior hid a heart of gold.

  He nodded and took her coffee from her. He set it down on the counter of the reception desk while she stuffed her purse in a drawer.

  “It’s awful,” Jeannie lamented. “Just awful.”

  Jeannie had never met Adam’s mother in person, but they’d spoken on the phone often enough. Mom had called almost every week to make sure he didn’t get so busy that he forgot about Sunday dinner, which he did anyway and had for the last year. Over the phone, Mom couldn’t see Jeannie’s spiked hair and silver nose stud, not that it would have mattered. Mom got along with everyone.

  “Yeah,” he said lamely because he really didn’t want to discuss it. “Listen, I’m going to do inventory.”

  Jeannie wrinkled her nose, probably because inventory was her job, but she patted his arm anyway and nodded. “Okay, hon.”

  Despite the fact that Jeannie was ten years younger and he was her boss, she’d taken to calling him ‘hon’ or ‘sweetie’ pretty much her first day on the job. He had to hand it to her, Jeannie had carved out her place in the world at only twenty-five. Within minutes of meeting her, she’d inform you what kind of relationship you were going to have with her and what the hierarchy would be. It was no surprise to Adam that Jeannie was always on top.

  He ducked into the supply room and closed the door behind him. He liked the young woman well enough, but he was still tired. He was glad he had the day off from tattooing to recharge. He began mindlessly stacking boxes of latex gloves and lining up bottles of ink, label out. Not the most intellectually stimulating work, but a comforting numbness set in and it was early afternoon before he resurfaced.

  He heard the jingle of the front door again and decided he’d been a hermit long enough. He stepped out of the stockroom and a smile played on his lips as he recognized the small, tatted blonde standing just inside the door.

  She held out a large envelope. “As promised.”

  Adam reached for it with no intention of taking out the art to check it. Daisy had been working on spec for him for quite a while now. He knew she was reliable. Whatever the client wanted, she delivered, custom tattoo art with her own personal touch. She had an eye for 50s kitsch that, in Adam’s opinion, was unparalleled, at least in the Dakotas.

  They’d gotten to know each other, traded war stories, and showed off bad tattoos. Daisy’s wasn’t so bad but Adam’s was spectacularly awful. In a fit of teenage rebellion, he and Dalton had driven to North Dakota where the laws were a bit more relaxed. Dalton had walked out of the only shop they could afford with a horseshoe on his arm while Adam had chosen a tribal tattoo, popular with frat boys across the US in the late 90s. Neither one of them had been particularly pleased with their ink a few months later. The first tattoo Adam had ever done for Dalton was to cover up the horseshoe with a cross. Adam's tribal tat circled his nipple and Dalton had forever nicknamed it the "Tribal Tit." It was still there in all its (in)gloriousness. Adam had never bothered to fix it.

  His hand slid past the offered envelope and caught her wrist. He turned it carefully.

  “What?” Jeannie called from across the lobby. Possibly, she thought Adam was in the throes of a breakdown or something.

  “Hang on,” he called back. “I need a minute. I’m temporarily blinded.”

  “What?!” Jeannie shrieked and came around the desk. Before she could get too worked up, Adam stepped to the side.

  “Light bounced off this meteorite and now I’m seeing spots,” he declared.

  Jeannie stopped up short and nearly crashed into them both. “Oh my God!” she shrieked. Jeannie was fond of shrieking.

  Daisy blushed.

  “When’s the big day?”

  The petite blonde shrugged. “No rush,” she told them both. “Maybe at the end of the summer.”

  Jeannie swept Daisy into a hug. “Congratulations!” As she stepped back, her face soured a bit as she seemed to suddenly remember. “Oh, did you hear—”

  Adam caught her gaze and shook his head sharply. There was no sense in spoiling Daisy’s engagement announcement. Plus, he didn't really want to get into it. Daisy was a bright spot of sunshine and he wasn't about to cloud her day. No one w
anted to hear about that kind of shit, anyway.

  “Hear what?” Daisy asked.

  “Summer weddings are best,” Jeannie blurted out as she shot Adam a sheepish look.

  Daisy grinned and nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Thanks for this,” Adam said, indicating the envelope. “And congratulations. Send me an invite.”

  As he watched her walk away, he waved goodbye and smiled a smile that he didn’t really feel.

  Chapter Six

  Adam angled his Harley into one of the visitors’ parking spaces near the front of the high school. As he slid off the bike, he scanned the lot. It was packed with sensible Toyotas and the occasional minivan—the typical rides of the employees of an American high school. He couldn’t recall ever having parked in the front lot. Behind the school was the student lot which, if memory served, would be filled with cheap beaters, rusted out trucks, and compact cars with various scrapes and dings. At times, Adam was grateful he’d never gone mainstream. He almost felt sorry for the kids who eventually grew up to trade their shitty Ford for a sparkly Camry in a trendy color. He may not have been rolling in dough, but he preferred his ink, his bike, his muscle car, hell his life, to anything else a college degree could have gotten him.

  He headed toward the front doors of the two-story building and stepped inside. The walls had been painted in the years since he’d graduated. They were now bright red and accented with steel gray, an upgrade from the dingy, institutional white he remembered. No one roamed the halls. Then again, class was in session. Adam’s boots echoed on the title floor as he made his way toward the office. He didn’t need anyone to tell him how to find it.

  Ms. Calla Winslow’s office was across the hall from the main office, at least according to her directions. Adam had never had occasion to visit the school’s guidance counselor. With no money for art school and no point in college, he’d flown under the radar here—at least as far as academics had been concerned, an average student with an average future. He rapped on the closed wooden door, over a poster warning kids about the dangers of underage drinking. Adam knew all about it. He and Dalton had once split a six-pack and climbed a water tower. Dalton had gotten dizzy halfway up the ladder and stomped on Adam’s hand, not his drawing hand, but he still broke a finger. That sort of thing should really be on the list, he noted.