Moments in Time (20 page)

“I ran into this woman who knows my family. She recognized me, so she started talking. Said she’d see me next week at my sister’s wedding.”

Jason looked at the ground, then closed his eyes. His fingers clenched and unclenched, and I could tell he was doing one of his breathing exercises to calm down.

Swallowing hard, he looked up at me. “Rachel’s getting married next week, and no one even told me.”

The exercise might have calmed him down, but it did nothing to mask the hurt in his eyes. I wondered if I shouldn’t suggest he go for a walk or even take the night off. I could cover his tables if I had to. We could say he’d puked or something.

“Do me a favor?” he said.

“Sure.” Plans for covering for his absence were already swirling in my mind.

“Come with me after our shift is over. I need to do something, and I don’t like going by myself.”

“Okay. Sure. What do you have to do?”

Jason held out his arms, nodding at the collage of tattoos that decorated them. “Tats are kinda frowned upon in Jewish tradition, so when my family cut me off, I went out and got my first one. I was all melodramatic about it at the time, but it wasn’t just a rebellion thing. It was like a way of me making my own decisions about my life. Ever since then, if I get left out of a family event or family decision, I get a new tattoo. Kind of stupid, I guess. But it makes me feel like I’m owning what’s happening rather than just letting it happen to me, you know?”

“That makes sense.” It did. I liked it. Liked the symbolism and the permanence of the statement. “I’ll definitely go with. Hell, I may even get one.”

Jason’s eyes bugged. “Get one? I thought you hated needles.”

“I do, and I’m a bad Catholic, but I’m still a Catholic. The pain will be like penance. I can take it.”

“Cool. We’ll head out as soon as the dinner shift ends.” Jason bit his lip. “You don’t, uh, I mean Tanner won’t be pissed, will he?”

“About me getting a tattoo? Nah. He’s pretty open to anything. I wish you had a chance to get to know him better. You’d like him.”

“All I know is he’s one lucky bastard to have hooked up with you.”

I couldn’t keep from grinning. Taking compliments still made my face burn hotter than a stove coil, but for the first time in my life, I’d started to let kind words be felt on the inside too. I liked people thinking Tanner’s lucky to have me, even if the truth was that I’m ten times luckier to have him.

Dinner was slow that night leaving me with plenty of time to debate what kind of tattoo I wanted. And where. Where was definitely the harder thing to decide. I didn’t want it anywhere superobvious, but I didn’t want it somewhere it would never be seen either. Tanner would probably be shocked. Would he like it? Think it was stupid? Sexy?

Anticipation built in my stomach, and by the time our shift was over, I was wound like a top.

“You sure you want to do this?” Jason asked. “You can just tag along, not get one. Lots of people bring a friend just for company.”

“I’m doing it.”

Jason gave me a smile I’d never seen from him before. Was he proud of me for making a bold move like this? Appreciative of the show of solidarity, so he wouldn’t have to get it alone? He stayed quiet for most of the boat ride across the bay to Long Island.

The tattoo parlor was a tiny storefront in an old wooden house. Inside, everything was neat and tidy. The walls were covered with artwork, and rows of design books filled three long shelves and a big coffee table.

“What can I do for you boys?” A woman who couldn’t have been much over thirty looked us up and down. “Y’all gettin’ your girlfriend’s names tattooed on your arms? Or your mama’s birthdates?”

Jason and I both laughed. “Not even close,” he said. “Does Billy still work here? He’s done my others.”

Jason rolled up his sleeve, and the woman whistled with appreciation. “Oh yeah, Billy’s still here. I bet he’d love to add on to what you’ve got goin’ on there. Hey, Billy, you got a repeat out front.”

I don’t know why, but I expected Billy to be some biker-looking huge dude with a bushy beard. He was actually a wiry, nerdy-looking guy, who I’d have guessed was a physics teacher, not a tattoo artist.

“Dude.” He greeted Jason with a hug. “What are we doing?”

As Jason described what he wanted, I caught the spiky-haired blonde eyeing me again. “What about you, sugar britches? You here to watch, or you gettin’ some ink too?”

“Ink. Black. I want a phoenix and a date underneath.”

“Okay.” She nodded in approval. “I like a man who knows what he wants.”

She ran her fingers across a row of thick green binders and pulled one off the shelf. “Flip through these and see if you find what you’re lookin’ for. I can size the designs up and down, but I need to know what you want.”

“Sure.” I flipped through the pages, getting a little discouraged when I reached the halfway mark and nothing had caught my eye. Then there it was. Black scrollwork on the bottom. Sharper lines to the phoenix head up top. And the perfect size to fit from my hipbone to my ribs. I held the book up. “Page twenty-seven, design C.”

“Nice. That’ll look real good on your pale skin.” She ran her finger over the design and took the book. “Where’d you say you’re gonna be wantin’ this?”

I gestured around my right hipbone.

She cringed. “You ever had ink before?”

“No.”

She picked up my wrist and ran her finger over the knobby bone. “Places like this, where the skin is thin over bone, they hurt like a son of a bitch. You sure you want that? There are other places….”

“I’m sure. I can take it.” In fact that seemed the most fitting way to get it. Suffer a little. You can’t take the Catholic out of the boy. I chuckled, and the blonde woman just shook her head.

“I’ll get you your consent forms while I go make up your template. That’ll give you enough time in case you change your mind.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t.” I took the clipboard and started filling out the forms.

“S
ON OF a bitch” was a bit of an understatement, but a few hours later, Jason and I were heading back to the island with brand-new tattoos.

Jason had gotten a group of small black doves scattering from his shoulder to his neck. A symbol of both weddings and freedom….

“How long does it take to heal?” I asked.

“It’ll be sore for a few days, then probably a bit itchy. Then you’ll forget you even have it.”

I couldn’t imagine forgetting I had it. And I didn’t want to forget. It was part of me now. A permanent reminder.

“It’ll peel too,” he added. “It’s kinda gross, but it’s supposed to happen.”

“Good to know.” I smoothed my hand over the bandage, surprised I’d had the nerve to go through with it. “Thanks for asking me to go with you.”

“Anytime.” Jason smiled and held my gaze. Whenever there was eye contact, it had that same weird quality I couldn’t quite place. Whatever it was, it seemed things between us had changed. Like we were brothers now, or something. Maybe I was just delirious from spending the last hour in pain.

“You working tomorrow?” I asked.

“Nope. Not until the weekend.”

“What do you do on your days off?” I knew he lived in a studio apartment. Without Tanner and the other housemates, I didn’t know what I’d keep busy with on the island.

“Read. Watch movies. Sleep.”

“Nice.” I hadn’t done much of any of those things recently.

“Sometimes I head over to a club in Cherry Grove.”

I knew that was one of the gay towns. Bryan’s band played there sometimes, and he’d been saying he wanted to take me and Tanner with him sometime this summer. The idea intrigued and scared me in equal parts. I’d looked it up online, and it seemed like a 24-7 all-gay version of Mardi Gras. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be either.

“You been to any of them yet?” Jason asked.

I shook my head.

“You should. Take a walk on the wild side.”

The boat docked, and I twisted to stand up, hissing as the tattoo stung. “I think I’ve had my share of wild for the week.”

Jason laughed. It was good to see him in a better mood than he’d been at the start of the night.

“See you in a few days.” I turned up the street toward my house, running my hand lightly over the bandage.

As I headed up the driveway, I saw someone sitting on the front porch.

“Hey,” Tanner said.

“Hey.” I trotted up the stairs. “What are you doing out here?”

He raked a hand through his damp hair. He must have showered after work. “Just don’t feel like being in the house right now. And our room is like a sauna. I put the fan in the window so it’ll cool off a little.”

“Good idea.” I took a seat next to him on the wicker couch and sucked in a breath when the rawness of the tattoo pinched.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” I shifted carefully, trying not to pull the sensitive skin. “I just… I got a tattoo.”

Tanner’s eyes bugged, and he shook his head. “No way. Really?”

I liked that he was surprised. Predictability isn’t exactly exciting. “It was a last-minute sort of thing.”

“Well, can I see it?”

His eyes raked over me, and I could tell he was trying to figure out where it was. My cock attempted to point him in the right direction.

“Not for another hour or so. I’m supposed to keep it covered a bit, then wash it and put some stuff on it.”

One side of his mouth had lifted into his sexy grin. “I never really thought of you as the tattoo type.”

I shrugged. “Me neither. It just seemed… right.”

“I didn’t even know there was a place on the island.”

“There might not be. Jason took me to see the guy who’s done his. It’s over in Bay Shore somewhere, I think. I had no clue where we were.”

Tanner’s smile flickered, but just for a second. “So you went with him?”

“Yeah, he wanted another one. It’s kind of a ritual for him.”

Tanner nodded, then moved closer, tilting his head. His eyes surveyed my body again, sending a fresh wave of heat rolling over me. My abs clenched, and I sniffed in a short breath. With his hair still wet, the scent of his shampoo was even stronger than usual, sweet and heavy in the thick night air.

“You gonna tell me where it is? Or do I have to find it on my own?”

My cheeks heated. We were on the front porch. Not that that was particularly public, but still. Tanner’s hand grazed my arm, then raised the sleeve of my T-shirt. Goosebumps tickled their way over my skin.

“Not even close.”

Tanner chuckled and moved his hand to my neck. He leaned way closer than was necessary to look. His hair felt slick and cool against my overheated cheek as his lips moved over my ear.

“Warmer?”

“No.” The word came out more like a groan. I could hear people talking inside the house, probably not fifteen feet away from us, right on the other side of the open screen door. Instinct told me to move away from Tanner before someone saw us, but everything else in me pulled me closer.

His hand slid down to my chest, moving so slowly it felt like torture. The edge of his thumb brushed against one nipple, then slid across to the other. “No?”

I shivered and shook my head, wishing we were playing “find the tattoo” up in our room rather than on the creaky porch couch. Instead of running his hand down my abs, he placed it on my hip. Down the length of one leg, up the other.
Jesus.
My cock strained against my pants, begging to give Tanner a personal set of directions to the tattoo or anything else he wanted.

“Not the arms, neck, pecs, or legs.” Tanner’s voice rumbled low in his throat, meaning he was just as turned on as I was. He palmed my bulge, giving a light squeeze that sent air rushing from my lungs.

“I think it’s been two hours. How about if we go upstairs so I can show it to you?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” He kissed me hard and fast, letting go of my dick and cupping the back of my neck as he drew me up off the couch with him.

Tanner pulled away, eyes heavy lidded and lusty, mouth back in that fucking irresistible grin. “You’re gonna have to keep your check holder in the other side of your apron for a while.”

Fuck. “You knew where it was?”

He laughed as he pulled the screen door open. “Yep. You flinched when you sat down. Figured it had to either be there or on your ass.”

“You’re such a dick.” I shoved him through the door, grabbing the spot just under his ribs where I knew he was most ticklish.

He laughed harder as he headed for the staircase. The rich sexy sound tugged me right behind him.

I
KNEW how anxious Tanner was to get a look at the tattoo. So was I, to be honest. It all went so fast at the tattoo parlor, and then it had been covered up. I knew it would be red and probably a bit puffy, but I hoped it was still easy to see. I wanted Tanner to see it.

Taking my time in the bathroom, I changed the gauze pad. It didn’t look too bad, and it only stung if I pressed on it or twisted at my waist. Tightening those muscles pulled the skin and made it feel like flexing when you’re badly sunburned. That pinchy, tearing feeling like your skin can’t stretch as far as you need it to go. The writing looked great, though. That was my biggest worry, that it would be too small or illegible. It was perfect. Hidden alongside the bottom of the phoenix in scrolling black ink, the month, day, and year. Only one person in the world knew the significance of that date, and I hoped he remembered what it was.

I walked up the stairs to our room, moving slowly. I was a bit sore, but it had also occurred to me that Tanner might not like it. Might think it was stupid. Entering our room, I took a deep breath, then turned to close and lock our door.

Tanner was on the bed. Not just sitting there—lying back against the pillows, shirt off, pants undone, stroking a very firm erection.

“Am I interrupting?” I asked, moving closer.

“Yes. My boyfriend’s about to show me his new sexy tattoo, and I’m so turned on I can’t fucking stand it.”