by S. M. Shade
“I love that kid,” I laugh.
Veronica grins despite herself. “I don’t know where he comes up with half of the stuff that comes out of his mouth. Anyway, I’m going to get him to bed, then we’ll go.”
“Sure.”
Neal and I hang out in the kitchen while Veronica deals with an unhappy Aiden. “So, how is everything?” Neal asks.
Neal is ten years older than me and a good person to go to for advice. Maybe it would help to have him agree that I need to keep things with Becca platonic. “Pretty good, but I have a question.”
“Shoot,” he says, leaning against the counter.
“Have you ever had a girl get stuck in your head? Like, someone you can’t have, but can’t stop wanting anyway?”
Neal’s scrutinizing gaze almost makes me regret the question. “Yeah, I have.”
I lean on the doorway, making sure we aren’t overheard by Veronica. “What did you do?”
“I married her.”
That’s not exactly helpful.
He grins and hands me a drink from the fridge. “Is this about Becca?”
“That obvious, huh?”
“What happened?”
My hands find their way into my pockets as I confess. “I may have, accidentally, kissed her.”
“Accidentally?” Amusement is clear in his voice.
“We were both high. I mean, I talked to her, and we both agreed it didn’t mean anything and we’d just continue to be friends, but…”
“That isn’t what you really want,” Neal finishes.
“I don’t know what I want. I don’t want to chase her away and I don’t want a live-in girlfriend, which seems to be the only outcomes if I tried to get with her. And she really needs a place to stay so I can’t screw that up for her.”
“It sounds like your mind is made up.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
The tone of my voice makes it clear I’m not happy about it.
Neal looks me in the eye. “I’d keep two things in mind, Dent. Just because you can’t have what you want now doesn’t mean you never will. You’re young with so much time stretched out in front of you. You don’t know what your situation might be even a year from now. And two, if it’s the person you were meant to be with, it’s going to happen no matter what precautions you take.” He smiles toward the doorway when we hear Veronica talking to Aiden. “We fought it like hell, but here we are.”
Slumping against the wall, I sigh. “So, you’re telling me to wait and see? Hope for the best?”
“If you really want to get her out of your head, try to focus on other things, or even see other people. See if the thoughts go away. There’s nothing saying you won’t end up together when the time is right, but in the meantime, live your life and try not to drive yourself crazy mourning something you may not actually have lost. Patience solves a lot of problems.”
Live my life. He’s right. There really is no choice to be made here. We’ve already made it. I just need to move on and stop worrying over what’s going to happen. “Thanks, man.”
He nods, and I grin as I ask, “Now, between the two of us, did you teach Aiden that climbing out of hell line?”
Neal bursts out laughing. “No, but I plan to use it at some point.”
Veronica peeks her head in the door. “Aiden is in bed, but he wants to say good night.”
Neal starts toward her and she adds, “To Denton. You’re on his shit list along with me tonight.”
“A couple of Nyquil Jell-O shots would save you a lot of trouble,” I tease.
“Don’t tempt me,” Veronica says, grabbing her purse.
Aiden’s room is softly lit by a night light, and he’s lying in bed beside a stuffed armadillo. No teddy bears for this kid. “Denton! Will you read me a story?” he asks.
“Aiden! You had your story! What did I just tell you?” Veronica calls from the hallway.
Aiden grins and whispers, “It was worth a try.”
“Good night, buddy.” I tuck the covers around him. “We’ll have fun next time if you stay out of trouble.”
“Okay. Good night.” As I start toward the door, he calls my name, and I glance back, expecting to hear the typical “I have to pee” or “I’m thirsty” excuse. “Why does it smell worse if you fart in the bathtub?”
I should know by now to have no expectations when it comes to this kid. “Uh, I’m not sure. Might have to Google that one.”
My first interview is today, and I’m too excited to be nervous. I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted something as badly as I want this internship. The guys are asleep when I step into the living room, dressed in my suit and tie. I’ve just had a haircut and shaved off all my stubble. I look damn good, if I do say so myself.
Becca sits on the couch with a cup of coffee in her hands, her hair mussed and faint shadows under her eyes. She’s really been working too hard. She glances up at me, then does a double take. “Hey, you look…presentable.”
“Presentable? Is that the best you can do?”
She shrugs and sips her coffee. “I’m tired.”
“When do you get a day off?”
“Sasha will be back tonight. I don’t have any appointments scheduled for tomorrow and she’ll handle walk-ins over the weekend, so I just have to zombie through today. Then I’m going to come home and sleep for about twelve hours.” Her gaze moves slowly over me, and her tongue darts out to wet her lips.
I spin in one direction, then the other.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving you the whole show. You can’t check me out and not see how great my ass looks in these pants.”
Her attempted glare softens into a chuckle and she stands up. “You’d better hope a big ego is a quality they’re looking for. Good luck with your interview.”
Her good luck wish worked because the interview is a breeze, and relief washes over me as I leave. The project I was so worried about couldn’t have been a better task. I’m supposed to set up a social media campaign to save a failing business. Fictional, of course. But they want me to show how I’d manage their account, work within a small budget, and predict the outcomes of certain campaigns. What works and what doesn’t work.
There’s a certain tattoo shop that is perfect for my research. How awesome will it be to do the project in real life, not as a simulation? I don’t have to guess at the figures. And Becca. I pause as I take a seat in my car.
Becca…probably wouldn’t like the idea. She works hard and calling Eternity Ink a failing business might hurt her feelings. It’s technically true. They’ve had a significant drop in clients over the past year, but business did pick up a bit with the flyers. The customers are out there, she just has to reach them. I’ve already volunteered to help. There’s no need for her to know I’m documenting everything. Once the place is revitalized and successful, I’ll tell her. For now, I’ll just keep it to myself.
Neal gave me the day off because of the interview, and I’m too excited to go home to an empty apartment. There are plenty of places I could go, but my car seems to have a mind of its own and I end up pulling into the Eternity Ink lot.
Becca peeks up at me when I enter, and my heart drops. “Lock the door and flip the closed sign,” she says, wiping her puffy eyes. She’s been crying and she’s not the crying type.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, pulling a chair over to sit next to her.
Her quick smile is bitter. “Oh, you know, another day, another chance for life to crap all over me.” She swallows hard and asks, “How did your interview go?”
“Fine, what happened?”
She frowns at me when I won’t let her deflect. “Zander is selling the shop. He’s moving to Japan to live with some chick he met online. The only reason I could afford to do this for a living and go to school was because he didn’t really charge us rent. He just got a percent of our earnings.”
“How much does he want for it?”
She looks at me like I’m crazy. “What differ
ence does it make? Unless you’re an incredibly philanthropic secret millionaire.”
“Right. Stupid question. So, you have to find somewhere else to do your work?”
She runs her hands through her hair. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll be lucky if my car survives another few weeks. I was already considering skipping a semester of school to work more and save to replace it. Now, that may not even be possible. It’s like I can never get ahead.”
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about women, it’s that this is not an invitation to solve her problems—not that I could—she just needs someone to talk to. It occurs to me that there might be a way to show her I understand her struggle.
“Are you done for the night?”
“Yeah.” She gets up and grabs her keys.
“Then ride with me somewhere.”
“I’m really not in the mood, Denton.” She locks the shop door behind her.
“I know, but I want to show you something. I promise it won’t take long.”
Chapter Seven
Becca
I’m not usually one to sulk or bemoan my bad luck, but damn, it’s really piling on lately, and I’m at a loss of what to do to get my head back above water. My thoughts are roiling, trying to grasp at anything that might be a good option, but I can’t focus.
The truth is I’m tired. So tired of thinking I’ve found some stability just to have it yanked out from under me again. What if I’m still playing this game when I’m thirty? Walking the edge of homelessness and poverty? I’m clearly not making the right decisions, but I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. It’s so frustrating.
All I really want to do is go home, close myself in my room and try to figure out my next step, but I agree to take a ride with Denton because I need to settle my mind a little anyway. He doesn’t say anything until we park near a small, run down house just outside out of town.
“Who lives here?” I ask.
“No one now. It’s been condemned. I lived here when I was a kid. Until I was eleven.” I take in the dismal surroundings, an empty field where patches of ugly grass sprout between bare spots. I can see the twinkle of the sun reflecting off shards of glass and debris scattered and smashed into the earth. “It pretty much looks the same as it did when we moved.”
Denton’s childhood has never really come up, and his parents seem to be a subject he doesn’t like to talk about. “Were you happy to move?”
He grins at me. “I was thrilled. This place was a shithole. Half the time we didn’t have heat or hot water because they didn’t pay the gas bill. It sucked.”
My childhood with distant, judgmental parents wasn’t ideal, but I never went without anything I needed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Let me show you where we moved to.”
Our next stop is a beautiful two story house in a very nice neighborhood. A fenced in yard contains a well-manicured lawn. A picnic table and swing set wait patiently to be put to use by the residents again. It’s a place I’d be happy to call home.
“I was so thrilled to move here, not just because it meant a nice, clean house and all the necessities, but because it raised my status at school. I wasn’t one of the dirt poor kids anymore. It was acceptable to hang out with me and I made a lot of new neighborhood friends.”
I’m not sure why he’s telling me all this. “Do your parents still live here?”
The smile that jumps to his face is strange, and he shakes his head. “No, we moved again four years later.”
Tires crunch over gravel as we return to the road. “One last stop,” he promises.
The light in the sky fades as he parks across the street from a dilapidated trailer on a dead end street. It’s backed up against railroad tracks, so close the trains must shake the hell out of the place. It’s even more depressing than the first house, if that’s possible, except there are lights on in this one. It’s clearly still lived in.
“This is where my mom lives, and where I lived until I was eighteen.”
Oh no. “What happened?”
“I never understood where the money came from for us to move to such a nice house, but I wasn’t going to question it. Dad said he was an entrepreneur when I asked what he did, so that’s what I told the kids who asked me. And things were good. They were better than good. For four years I was happy and I pretty much forgot about the way we lived before.” He gives me a reluctant smile. “But nothing lasts.”
“I was getting ready to go meet my friends to play basketball, shoveling down a bowl of cereal, when the cops raided our house. Packed into my parents’ bedroom wall was a huge amount of meth. The garage that stood out back—the one place I was never allowed—was converted into a lab where Dad and one of his friends were manufacturing it. I had no idea. No one did. Neither Mom nor Dad looked like a meth head. You know, no missing teeth or bad skin. Not skinny or twitchy. Because they never used the stuff, only sold it.”
“Oh god. I can’t imagine.”
“Dad took responsibility, swore Mom didn’t know about any of it, which had to be impossible, but I think the officers didn’t want to have to shove another kid into the system if they arrested them both. It was a massive amount of drugs, Becca. It even made the front page of the paper. They touted it as one of the largest busts in the state. The cops seized everything. The house, all the money in their bank accounts, both cars, everything but clothes and household stuff.”
Stunned, I sit back. “They can do that?”
“Yeah, civil forfeiture they call it. Anything bought or suspected to be bought with money from the crime can be taken.”
I slip my hand into his. “So, you moved to that trailer?”
He nods. “My mom’s great aunt owned it and let us live in it. Mom got a job at the plastic factory in Rennin, and we did the best we could.”
“And your Dad?”
“Prison. He’s still there. Ten more years last I heard, but he keeps getting time added for dealing inside.”
“Jesus, Denton, I’m so sorry.”
A small smile lights on his face. “I didn’t bring you here to compare tragedies. Well, not exactly.”
“Why did you bring me here?”
His gaze meets mine, and I’m struck by the sincerity on his face. “Because that experience taught me something important. Things can go to shit in an instant and sometimes there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. But you also never know how or when they’re going to change for the better again. I try to keep that in mind when things get tough. I had hard years as a kid, but I also had some real good ones, and I guess I expect the same out of being an adult.”
He squeezes my hand. “I know things are bad for you right now. You just have to keep it in perspective and keep trying. Because you never know what surprises are coming, good or bad.”
Silence reigns while I fight to swallow the lump in my throat. I certainly never saw him coming.
“I don’t give up,” I finally utter.
His smile is warm and his tone sincere. “I know that.”
“I’m just not sure where to go from here, you know? The one thing I thought I could count on was my job.”
He pulls back out onto the road as we talk. “Maybe you can find a new space to work. I’m sure your clients would follow you.”
“Maybe,” I sigh, leaning back and gazing at the scenery racing past my window. “I just need to think about it. When it comes to school, I think that decision is out of my hands. Without going into a ton of debt, I just can’t afford it. Art degrees don’t bring in the big bucks. I have to take at least one semester off.”
“Do you need an art degree to tattoo people?”
His question catches me off guard. “Well, no, it’s not like anyone asks to see it.”
“Do most tattoo artists have a degree?”
It takes me a moment to consider it. “No, not really. You generally learn as an apprentice. It’s how I got started. An experienced artist agreed to work with me when he saw my d
rawings, and I worked for little to nothing sometimes, just to learn the intricacies of the business. When he told me he thought I was ready, I went and got certified.”
Denton parks beside my car in the Eternity Ink lot. “Do you have a long term goal? Because, you know, you aren’t exactly an old lady. It’s okay if you haven’t figured out what you want yet.”
“I know what I want.” And I was on my way toward it until today. “I want to own my own shop and be respected as a legitimate artist.”
Denton sits back and regards me. “And you need an art degree for that?”
Sighing, I lay my head back. “I need an art degree because I don’t want to be a college dropout. I don’t want to begin my adult life by being a failure.”
He gazes at me for a moment. “Do you feel that way about everyone without a college degree?”
Great. Now I sound like a judgmental asshole. “Of course not. I just…” My reasoning does sound stupid when I say it aloud. “I was going to be the first in the family to go to college. Show them I could be better. Do better. Not end up the housewife with a part time job and three kids they seemed to think I was destined for.”
I’m spilling way too much information. I need to stop talking. Get somewhere where I can be alone to think.
“Your parents?”
“Yeah, it was all that was expected of me, but it’s not all I want.” I open my door and get one leg out when Denton grabs my wrist.
“A degree doesn’t make you a success, Becca. Working hard and never giving up does. You’re already successful. You just need to adjust your plans to meet your end goal. Maybe this is an opportunity disguised as a setback. Your chance to make a run at that dream of owning your own shop.”
“I don’t know. I clearly need to do something differently. Thanks for the ride…and the talk.”
He gives me a small grin. “Anytime. But please don’t mention it to the guys. They don’t really know my whole story and it’s something I’d rather leave behind me.”
