“I’m sorry,” he says when he notices me watching. “It’s just—it’s just your face, Eden. High pain tolerance, huh?”
“Distract me,” I order. Fuck, it hurts.
“Uh.” He glances quickly around the small room, searching for something to talk about. I’m holding his hand so tight that I’m surprised I haven’t given him a cramp. “What’d you think of that one?”
I follow his gaze to some artwork on the wall. It’s a ridiculous portrait of a clown with a full set of pointed teeth. “Awful,” I answer.
“Hey,” Liam says. He stops working to shoot me a stern look, but he’s kidding, because he laughs before returning to finish the second word. Two down, one to go. Thank God it’s only a small tattoo.
In the final few minutes it takes for Liam to finish up the entire quote, going back over it to fill in any faint spots, I can’t help but wonder how everyone is going to react to the new addition to my skin. Dad hated this tattoo the first time around, and that was without him even knowing that it was associated with Tyler, so I doubt he’ll be impressed when he eventually finds out that it’s made a reappearance. Mom, on the other hand, loved it once I told her the real meaning behind it. She liked that it was in Tyler’s handwriting. Very personal and very cute, she said. I think she’ll be pleased when she discovers it’s been restored.
“And you’re done,” Liam announces, wheeling back his chair. “What do you think?”
My eyes flicker open as I sit up, releasing my firm hold on Tyler’s hand. Tilting my arm toward my face, I run my gaze over the fresh ink, and it fills me with such satisfaction that, inevitably, I’m grinning like a damn idiot. There’s some blood trickling over my skin, but that’s okay. “I love it.”
“Looks sick,” Tyler says. He’s leaning over my shoulder, peering at my arm with an approving nod. Our eyes meet, and immediately a grin that mirrors mine captures his lips.
Liam smothers my skin in ointment before wrapping a bandage around the fresh tattoo. Then I swiftly twirl out of the chair, beaming from ear to ear, relieved that it’s over and that now it’s Tyler’s turn.
While Liam is getting set up for him, he asks over his shoulder, “So how long have you guys been together for?”
I glance sideways at Tyler and I can’t help but roll my eyes. I even press my lips firmly together and take a step back, leaving it up to him to be the one who has to explain that we’re not actually together, that we’re really stepsiblings.
“Something like three years,” he tells Liam. My eyebrows knit together and I shoot him a questioning glance, but all he does is smirk while offering me no explanation besides a shrug.
“Nice,” says Liam. He spins around in the chair and points to the piece of paper in Tyler’s hand, the one with my handwriting. “Can I get that?”
Tyler hands it to him, and then he gets to work again, doing the exact same thing all over again. Scanning, editing, printing, tracing, transferring. Soon Tyler’s in the chair with his shirt off and the stencil on the right side of his chest, prepped and ready. He’s extremely easy on the eyes as I watch from the bed with my legs dangling lazily over the edge. I can see guerrero on the back of his shoulder.
“Would you like to hold my hand?” I ask once the buzzing begins, batting my eyelids at him.
“Sure,” he says, chuckling, “but because I want to. Not because I can’t handle the pain. My tolerance is so high.” I swat his arm and he laughs, right before slipping his hand into mine and rubbing those soft circles on my skin again.
When Liam begins, I’m paying more attention to Tyler’s body than I am to the development of the tattoo. I’m holding his hand, my lips parted as I fall into a trance at the mere sight of the defined contours of his abs. I blink after a few minutes, snapping out of it and praying he hasn’t noticed. He hasn’t flinched, hasn’t even tensed up, only pulls his phone out and nonchalantly scrolls through his texts. I’m not trying to pry, but I do happen to catch him send Ella a message. Emily gets one too, and within the space of ten minutes, his new tattoo is finished, cleaned and wrapped. Of course I’m biased, but I think my handwriting looks pretty damn awesome on his chest.
“I like the concept of having it in each other’s handwriting,” Liam comments as Tyler pulls on his shirt. He’s moving around the small studio, rearranging things and tossing stuff into a trashcan. “Send me over some pictures later of them both when you take those bandages off.”
“Sure,” Tyler says.
Liam leads us out of the studio and back into the main waiting area, where there’s already a girl in her early twenties waiting with a pair of headphones on, and we thank him for fitting us in. Tyler lets him know that he’ll be back in a few weeks to get some touch-ups to his existing tattoos. At that, Liam looks at me, as though expecting me to say that I’ll be back too, but honestly, I don’t think I want any more tattoos for a while. So I tell him, “Maybe.”
On the short walk back to the car, I think both Tyler and I are running on nothing but adrenaline. We’re on a total high, laughing every time we so much as glance at one another, and I can’t stop staring at my arm, wishing I could tear off the bandage and show my new ink to the world. Even my heart is beating abnormally fast against my chest, and I have to accept the fact that it’s down to the thrill of getting not only a new tattoo, but a matching tattoo with Tyler, of all people. In theory, it’s undeniably cliché and statistics could probably tell us that we’ll regret it three months from now, but in practice, it’s perfect and it’s right and it’s the best thing we could have possibly done today. I don’t think Tyler is even thinking about what went down this morning.
We clamber into his car, and I get back in the passenger seat. Tyler has been back in the driver’s seat since we left Multnomah Falls, so he looks at me expectantly as he awaits my next plan of action.
But the thing is, I don’t have a plan. I’ve been making decisions as I go all day, so I quickly rack my brain for what we could do next on this spur-of-the-moment adventure. It’s just after 5:30PM, and although sunset isn’t for another few hours, the sun is already beginning to dip, creating an early evening glow that’s hazy. Pretty summer skies call for pretty sights.
I pull on my seatbelt and then look to Tyler. Suddenly, I know exactly where I want to go next. “You know where Voodoo Doughnuts is? Third Avenue?”
“Ah,” Tyler says. His smile grows wider as he turns to face the wheel and puts the car in reverse, glancing over his shoulder as he backs out of our spot. “I think I know exactly where we’re headed.”
“Surprise ruined,” I joke. The truth is, where I want to go, I don’t care if it’s a surprise or not. Tyler is bound to have already seen it. You can’t live in Portland and not know about the mural. It’s smack dab in the middle of downtown, too.
And because we’re already downtown, it doesn’t take us too long to get there. The flow of traffic is a little thicker at this time, with everyone heading home after their day at work, so we do get stuck in a couple traffic jams en route, but we hardly even notice. Tyler’s too busy singing along to the radio again and I’m too busy laughing out loud as I film him with my phone. He was never this easygoing, never as carefree as he is now. And I can’t get enough of it. I can’t get enough of him.
Over on 3rd Avenue, the line for Voodoo Doughnut is out the door. I always remember it being like that during the summer. Mom would drive past and there’d be flocks of people lining the sidewalk, desperate to grab a misshaped doughnut with bacon on it. But it’s not the doughnuts we’re here for. It’s for the iconic sign on the opposite side of the street that I haven’t seen in years.
I don’t even have to tell Tyler to pull into the tiny parking lot, because he’s already doing that after having figured out where we were going. The parking lot really is small, with limited spaces, and he reverses into a spot that faces the mural we’re here to see.
On the wall of the back of a building, there’re three huge words, painted in block capitals an
d in yellow graffiti. They have been the slogan of this city for the past ten years. A slogan we’re proud of, a slogan that we live by: KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD.
Portland’s always been weird and unusual, quirky and eccentric. In any other city, a guy riding a unicycle while dressed in a Santa suit and playing a set of bagpipes that are on fire would be considered bizarre. In Portland, it’s acceptable and almost normal. People can do whatever they want in this city without being judged for it, and that’s something I’ve missed. In LA, the pressure to live the perfect life is growing unbearable, because it’s impossible. People only want to fit in. Here, people want to stand out.
“C’mon,” Tyler says. He shuts off the engine and steps out of the car, and I watch from inside as he makes his way around the front of vehicle, appearing at the passenger door and smiling through the window at me. He opens up the door and reaches for my hands, pulling me up and out.
It’s still so hot outside even though it’s getting later. I wish I hadn’t worn jeans today, and I’m starting to become aware that I look like a complete idiot with this huge bandage covering my right arm, the sleeve of my sweatshirt rolled straight up past my elbow. Quickly, I roll up the other sleeve so that they match.
Out of nowhere, Tyler slides himself onto the hood of the car, then immediately flinches and pulls his hands away from the metal. “Alright, it’s a lot hotter than I expected it to be,” he admits. “Come on up.”
I’m not sure what the point of this is, but I like that we’re continuing the theme of doing whatever the hell pops into our heads first. So I attempt to join him, but the slope of the hood and the heat of the metal makes it difficult, so eventually Tyler has to grab onto my wrist and yank me up himself. We settle down and get comfortable, with him leaning back against his windshield, legs outstretched in front of him, and me sitting with my legs crossed and my hands in my lap. The mural is directly in front of us, with only a row of cars separating us from it, and the sun is still relentlessly beating down over the city. It’s nice sitting here, basking in the warmth of the summer air with Tyler right next to me. I never want to take these moments for granted.
“Not quite the Hollywood Sign, huh?” Tyler comments. I cast a glance at him. He’s analyzing KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD with great intensity, the same smile he’s had on his face all day still there upon his lips. He’s right. The Hollywood Sign is much more glamorous, calling for attention, visible for miles over the LA basin yet so far away. Here, this mural feels a lot more humble, more down-to-earth, more like the people of Portland. A simple mural in graffiti on the wall of an old building in the middle of a tiny parking lot in the busy downtown area, accessible and viewable by everyone and anyone. I think having it so close to us makes it feel like it’s ours, and for that reason alone, I think I prefer it over those dumb letters up on Mount Lee that take an hour alone just to get to. The Hollywood Sign feels so disconnected from everything else.
And the more I think about this, the more I realize that actually, I prefer Portland as a whole over Santa Monica. I never thought I would, but I do. I seriously miss this city and everything it stands for.
“I think we fit in better here,” I muse, my own gaze resting on the wall, on those words. Weird is all Tyler and I have ever known, because it’ll always be weird to fall for your stepsibling. People will always be taken aback at first. People will always take a minute to understand. But weirdness is embraced in Portland, and I’m starting to believe we’d gain a lot more acceptance here than we would back home. People here would think we were awesome and edgy for doing something different and risky.
“That’s because we do,” Tyler says.
I look at him. My smile is gone now for the first time in hours, and I have no choice but to ask the question that’s repeating itself over and over again in my head. “So you’re really staying here?” I murmur. “You’re never coming back to Santa Monica?”
Tyler heaves a sigh, and his smile disappears too, because both of us know exactly how this will all eventually end: he will stay here, and I’ll go back to Chicago for my sophomore year of college. We’ll be apart, which is what we’re all too well accustomed to. It’s starting to feel extremely unfair.
“I did plan to come home, Eden,” he says, sitting forward. “I’d always planned to come back. You know that. But I don’t think I can now, and honestly, I’m not sure if I want to. My entire life is in Portland, except for the part that involves you.” He pulls his knees up to his chest and rests his arms over them, pressing his lips together and locking his eyes on nothing in particular. “And I know that makes everything so much more complicated than it already is, me being here and you being halfway across the country for another three years, but it’s just the way things are right now.”
Carefully, I shift closer to him, so that my hip is against his. Everything around me goes quiet, even though there’s traffic and voices from across the street and the sound of birds echoing from the trees. All of that seems to tune out, and the only sound I’m left with is that of my heartbeat, pumping in anticipation of what I’m desperate to do next. “I think we’re used to complicated by now,” I say, but my voice comes out as a breathy whisper. “We could make it work.”
Tyler lifts his head and turns to face me, a sparkling glint in his eyes. I see the way the left corner of his lips starts to quirk up, forming the faintest of smirks. “Make what work, Eden?” he whispers in a challenging, teasing tone while leaning in as close as ever, his nearness making me lightheaded and giddy. He knows exactly what I’m talking about, but it’s like he wants to hear me say it.
And it’s so, so easy to say it, because for once, the thought of it doesn’t make me nervous nor does it scare the hell out of me. Actually, it excites me.
“Us,” I say.
Right now. Right now is the perfect moment I’ve been waiting for. The perfect situation, the right mood, the correct timing. This is my chance. This is my next time.
Pressing my hand to the soft stubble along Tyler’s jaw, I tilt his face closer toward mine, and I go for it. I don’t even think about it, I just do it. Closing my eyes, I capture his lips with mine and at first, it’s so soft and so gentle. Nothing but our lips together at last, after so long sincerely believing it would never happen again. I’m so relieved to be kissing him, to be the one to make the move, and soon Tyler’s hand is weaving through my hair, the other on my waist, pulling me closer. I can feel his relief too in the way he kisses me, slow and deep, his hold on me tight, like he never wants to let me go. It’s been a long wait for him too, and he’s fought hard to earn my forgiveness through the power of honesty and a sincere apology which I’m more than willing to accept. Sometimes people have to be selfish. Sometimes people have to put themselves first, and for that, I can never hate him.
Slowly, I feel him tear his lips from mine, but he doesn’t move away, his mouth lingering only a mere inch from mine. His hand’s still in my hair, his forehead against mine. “If you want to make this work,” he murmurs, emerald eyes piercing mine, “then let’s make it something. It’s been too long.”
Teasingly, I gently push his face back, my hand still cupping his jaw, and I dramatically widen my eyes at him. Inside, everything is somersaulting at once. I’m surprised my heart hasn’t lurched straight out of my chest yet. “Is Tyler Bruce asking me to be his girlfriend?”
Tyler can’t suppress his grin. I don’t think he wants to. It’s as wide as ever, reaching straight to his eyes that are brightened with a certain glow that only comes from raw happiness. “He just might be,” he says.
I direct his face back to mine, leaning in toward his lips. I’m never going to grow tired of admiring him up close, and I pause there with our gazes locked so that I can take a second to really appreciate the deep verdant green of his eyes that I truly am in love with. “Then I might just be saying yes.”
I press my lips back to his and sink into that feeling of his mouth against mine, swift and fast and eager and entirely enthralling. I
forget that we’re in the middle of downtown Portland, but it isn’t long until I hear some guy whistling at us. Another is cheering and whooping. Someone is saying Aww. And everything feels so perfect at that exact moment, like everything is finally falling into place. Everything feels so right, and I’m not even thinking about that fact that Tyler is my stepbrother, because I don’t care. It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s not wrong for us to feel the way we do. It’s not wrong for us to be together. From day one, we have never, ever been wrong.
Maybe these past three years we’ve been fighting so hard to get everyone else to accept our relationship when the only two people who needed to accept it us was ourselves.
And after all this time, I think we finally have.
20
I don’t wake until after 10AM. The past few days have been so crazy and I’m exhausted, which explains the deep slumber I’m pulling myself out of. Through a crack in the blinds, there’s a thin line of sunlight illuminating a tiny portion of the room. I’m in Tyler’s room, not the living room, and I’m in his bed, not on the couch. I’m wrapped up in his comforter, feeling way too warm and slightly hazy. Releasing a yawn, I roll onto my opposite side, expecting to see him there, his green eyes gazing back at me. I’m expecting to see him smile at me when he realizes I’m finally awake.
But the other side of the bed is empty.
Immediately, I blink and sit up, wide awake. Even though I’m alone, I cling to the comforter, holding it against my bare chest.
I glance around the room. At first I don’t even notice the words on the wall directly in front of me. When I do, I think maybe Tyler has taken some inspiration from the KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD mural last night. There waiting for me, scribbled in black Sharpie in large letters in the center of his bedroom wall, is a message:
Did I Mention I Miss You? Page 24
