chapter seventeen
Interpersonal Communications took on a decidedly more romantic vibe the next day. Now instead of awkward in-class activities, Liam and I spent the time flirting with each other. Even Markson managed to keep his snarky commentary to himself despite catching us holding hands under our desks. I felt a bit like I was back in high school—giddy and wild and hoping Liam would press me against a locker after class. Too bad there were no lockers on campus.
“What are you doing tonight?” he asked me, knitting his fingers through mine as we exited at the end of the hour.
“I received a cryptic text from Cassie directing me to meet her at a tattoo parlor,” I told him.
“You should get one right here.” He patted me on the butt. “On second thought, don’t mar that perfect ass.”
“No ink?” I didn’t add that there was no way I was subjecting myself to a needle willingly.
“Nope. It’s cool,” he added. “Vivian begged me to have dinner with her tonight at the house. She wants all the dirty details about this weekend.”
“You aren’t going to tell her...everything, are you?”
“I’m a gentleman,” he said. “I’ll tell her we went to the movies and that I kissed you finally.”
“Yeah, ya did.” I bobbed my head enthusiastically, as memories of the number of kisses we shared this weekend flashed through my mind.
“Of course, she knows I wasn’t home all weekend,” he said.
“Tell her we kissed a lot.”
“I like that, because it’s not a lie.”
Liam walked me all the way to my next class, stopping at the door. “I have class over in Williams.”
“That’s on the other side of campus,” I pointed out.
“I’ll run.” He leaned over and kissed me full on the mouth, leaving me too breathless to say anything when he turned and jogged away. I watched as he ran away from me, clutching the doorframe, and wishing for the next kiss.
The tattoo parlor’s walls were covered in prospective art ripe for Cassie’s choosing. I couldn’t help but notice a fair number of “Just Divorced” options, many featuring broken balls and chains. I guess you could celebrate any event in your life with a permanent reminder. Cassie was busy filling out the medical release form, and despite the fact that she was about to willingly let someone drag a needle repeatedly through her flesh, she seemed calm.
“What ya thinking, hon?” The tattoo artist—who introduced himself as Jimmy—asked as he laid a variety of painful-looking instruments onto a stainless steel table.
“I have something with me.” She dropped the clipboard onto her lap and rifled through her purse. It was a bit of a surprise. Cassie hadn’t struck me as the tattoo type, and when she called to ask me for moral support, I sort of expected her to chicken out. But here she was with art in hand.
“This is nice,” he said. “You draw this?”
“No.” Cassie’s eyes flickered to me. “My boyfriend did.”
“Shit, Cass, you aren’t getting his name tattooed on your ass, are you?” I couldn’t keep the annoyance out of my voice. She had it bad enough for Trevor to do something stupid. I could only hope she wasn’t about to do something that she would regret every time she caught her reflection in a mirror for the rest of her life.
“Fuck you, Jills,” she said in true Cassie style, which elicited a laugh from Jimmy. She handed me the paper, and I was surprised to see a tastefully drawn image of a sparrow with the words “live free” penned under it.
“This is pretty,” I said, giving it to Jimmy.
“Don’t sound so surprised.” She finished signing the paperwork and left it on the counter.
“No one’s drunk, right?” Jimmy asked. “I can’t ink you if you’ve been drinking.”
That should have been my first clue that Cassie was serious about getting a tattoo. I’d suggested a round of drinks first, but Cassie had rejected the idea. She had actually done research.
“You sure you want to do this?” I asked her. I had a hard time wrapping my head around getting something permanently etched into my body.
“Fuck yeah.” Cassie’s enthusiasm spilled out of her and onto me. She was literally bouncing on her heels waiting for Jimmy to call her into the chair.
“You know it’s going to hurt like a bitch, right?”
“Jills, you suck at moral support,” she said, adding a groan for emphasis.
“Jess would be worse,” I pointed out.
“Jess would be checking that everything was properly sterilized.”
She had a point. I peeked back into the room where Jimmy was prepping his tools. The artwork was unfolded on the table and he was studying it carefully. I was more than a little amazed that he was going to transfer the intricate drawing onto Cassie’s skin.
“Looks good to me,” I said, like I’d done a brief inspection.
“How thorough,” Cassie said. She was biting on her perfectly manicured nails now, and as Jimmy took his time, she began to pace. There were the nerves I was expecting from her.
“What about you?” Jimmy asked when he finally beckoned for us to enter.
I blinked at him. There was no way in hell I was getting a tattoo. “No, thanks. I could never pull one off.”
“A lot of girls your age get them here.” He pressed a doughy finger to the small of his back.
I stifled a laugh. A tramp stamp? He was definitely barking up the wrong tree.
“I’m on medication,” I said in an apologetic voice. There was absolutely nothing about my pills that would interfere with a tattoo, but it seemed like a good excuse to avoid the needle.
Cassie climbed into the chair, and Jimmy began prepping her arm, asking her a variety of questions about color and placement. She wanted it on her wrist. I refrained from telling her that there was no way she could ever hide it there. Jimmy started the outline after a few minutes, and Cassie’s eyes rolled up to meet mine as she mouthed “Fuck!”
I clutched her free hand and squeezed it. It oddly reminded me of sitting at someone’s sickbed, except Cassie was inflicting this on herself. The world was a strange place.
“Distract me,” Cassie ordered me. She squeezed her eyes shut and muttered a string of curse words as he began filling in the tattoo with color.
“Did I mention how much sex I’m getting these days?” I asked her.
“Careful,” Jimmy said. “You’ll distract me.”
Fantastic, a dirty old man was going to listen in, but if any topic could distract Cassie, it would have to be sex.
“Excellent. Details.”
I tried to share things that wouldn’t cause Jimmy to accidentally tattoo half of her arm. Mostly sweet things, but I ended it on news of Liam’s plan to slow things down.
“What the hell does that mean?” she asked me. “He’s not one of those secondary virginity types, is he?”
There was no greater offense to Cassie than guys who screwed you and then wanted to pretend like it had never happened. Each of us had experienced a guy like that in our time at Olympic State. Jess tried to tell us it wasn’t an insult, but I tended to side with Cassie.
“It’s nothing like that,” I reassured her. My hand was starting to go numb from how hard she was squeezing it. “But we sort of jumped into bed before we knew each other’s last names.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” Cassie asked through gritted teeth.
“Nothing, but I don’t know...he’s sensitive.”
“Hmmmmpfh.” It wasn’t even a word, but Cassie made the noise whenever she disapproved of something. It was a distinctly Tara thing to do. “Let me know how long that lasts.”
“It’s going well,” I told her.
“For how long?” It was a pointed question and I knew it, because Cassie had been there when I went on my first date with Liam.
“A few days.”
“Yeah, I give you a fucking week,” she said.
“Thank you for the vote of confidence.” If I was being truthful, I gave us less than that.
“Ok, new distraction,” Cassie begged.
I made the mistake of glancing at her wrist in time to see Jimmy wipe away the slight pool of blood forming over the newly inked skin. My stomach turned over a little, but I shot Cassie a brave smile.
“When did Trevor draw that?” I asked her.
“He doodled it in a notebook. I didn’t even tell him I was getting this,” she confessed. “He doesn’t like people to know he’s artistic.”
Trevor cultivated the image of the up-and-coming young business professional better than anyone I knew. He was always the first to grab for the check, and he drove a Lexus. I couldn’t picture him wasting time drawing.
“It’s a surprise for him,” Cassie said.
I held the groan trying to escape my mouth and nodded. It was totally unfair to judge Cassie for this. It was, after all, not his name on her ass.
“You chose a pretty one,” I said.
“I’m trying to loosen up a little.”
“Do you think if we dragged Jess up here, she would loosen up?” I suggested.
Cassie didn’t need the reminder to live free. She did it better than anyone I had known since my arrival in Washington. She managed to keep a strong GPA while running the Student Publicity Society. Cassie had single-handedly arranged at least ten concerts on campus in the last year. She could throw back a drink and hit the dance floor and still make grades.
“It’s worth a shot,” Cassie said thoughtfully. “Of course, she’d probably just get an MCAT study guide tattooed on her arm.”
“I wonder if that’s cheating?” I thought out loud.
“She’d probably have to bubble wrap her arm prior to the test.”
And she probably would, knowing Jess. She wasn’t the type to look for the easy way out, but if it sounded like a viable method of study, she would try it.
“I saw Brett down near The Jewel Box,” Cassie said in a conspiratorial whisper.
“Really?” I couldn’t quite figure out why we were speaking in whispers. I doubted that Jimmy had much interest in Jess’s boyfriend’s shopping trip.
“I almost followed him in, but then I thought that would look crazy.”
It would look crazy, but if anyone could spin following her best friend’s boyfriend around, it would be Cassie. She’d already found the perfect profession for her. One in which she could display her significant skills.
“It’s probably a Christmas present,” I told her.
“In October?” Cassie scoffed.
“Brett strikes me as the type that likes to plan ahead.”
That was the understatement of the century. Brett was two Volvos away from hitting his mid-life crisis. Of course, Jess had probably mapped out both their five year-plans.
“Jess, too,” Cassie said, reading my thoughts. “Do you remember that five-year plan we had to do our freshman year?”
“When Jess lost her mind that we weren’t taking serious classes?” How could I forget that? I’d gone along with it to calm her down. Thank god Jess had chilled out since then.
“And your entire plan revolved around turning twenty-one?” Cassie recalled, giggling so hard that Jimmy shot us a warning look.
“You’re going to wind up with a crooked bird if you keep up the laughing,” he told her.
“Sorry.” Cassie’s voice was full of sugar, and Jimmy responded with a grudging smile.
“It really has been downhill since twenty-one. I think I was onto something,” I said.
“Whatever! You have a boyfriend now.” Cassie fluttered her lashes and made a kissy face.
“You look like a fish when you do that.”
“A sexy fish.” She sucked her cheeks in more and widened her eyes.
“I’m sure you’ll catch a fisherman soon,” I assured her.
“I don’t need to catch anyone. I have Trevor and you have Liam and Jess has Brett. Our boy catching days are behind us!”
I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. Was Cassie that in to Trevor? From the sound of it, she might as well have dragged me dress shopping. And Brett and Jess weren’t that serious. Jess couldn’t actually wind up with Brett. He would bore her to death. As far as Liam and I...
“Why are you frowning?” Cassie asked me. “You don’t like Trevor.”
It was a fair accusation, but the truth was that I didn’t dislike Trevor. I nothinged him, but I couldn’t tell Cassie that. “Ohmigod, paranoid much? I was thinking.”
“You’re done,” Jimmy announced.
Saved by the burly tattoo artist.
He launched into the proper care of healing tattoos, and I checked my phone for messages. Liam had texted me, wanting to get together, an hour ago. My thumb hovered over the delete button when Cassie flung her arm out for my approval.
“It looks amazing,” I said, admiring the clean black lines of the art. “Does it hurt?”
“Not really. Feels like I scraped my arm repeatedly in the same spot.”
“That doesn’t sound bad at all,” I teased, pushing the sleep button on my phone.
“Come on.” Cassie linked her untouched arm through mine. “It’s Jillian’s turn to do something fun.”
“Maybe a nose ring? Or a couple of lip rings?” I suggested.
“I can do those,” Jimmy called from the counter.
Cassie barely smothered the smirk that leapt onto her mouth. “Let’s get out of here,” she whispered. “Bye Jimmy!”
He grunted a farewell. He didn’t look too put out that I wasn’t going to be shoving metal rods through my body today. I guess you win some, you lose some. The bell on the door tinkled as it shut behind us.
“That was an adventure,” I said to Cassie as we strolled through the hazy twilight in downtown. It was too early in the night for the night owls and bargoers, but long past the dinner hour, so we passed few people. Most of the shops were closed for the night, so we peeked in windows. I preferred being down here at this time of day since I had very little spending money. It was much more fun to look than to constantly go in stores and walk out empty-handed.
“What do you think Trevor is going to say?” she asked as I ogled a pair of knee-heigh suede boots through the glass of Taylor’s Shoes.
“About?”
“The tattoo,” Cassie said with a sigh.
I turned back to her and shrugged. “I guess I would be flattered, but I’m not sleeping with you. He’ll either find it hot or think you’ve gone all
Fatal Attraction
on him.”
“Thanks!” Cassie pressed her lips together into a flat line.
“I’m sure he’ll think it’s hot.”
“I hope so.” She dug her phone out of her purse, smiling as she read a message. “Speaking of...”