Page 122 of Fall For Me
“We’re just going up the street a couple of blocks,” I tell him.
He zips up my coat, his eyes never leaving mine, then laces our fingers together. As we exit the building, stepping out onto the crowded sidewalk, the smell of roasted chestnuts fills the air. It’s only a few days until Thanksgiving, yet Christmas music is already playing in the streets. We pass by a woman ringing a bell for the Salvation Army. Sean stops, takes a few bills out of his wallet, placing them into her tin bucket, then grabs my hand and begins walking again.
“How much further?” he asks.
I look both ways, then cross the street, dragging him along with me.
“It’s right here,” I say, gesturing at the tattoo studio with the red neon open sign flickering in the window.
Instead of following me inside, he stops in the middle of the bustling sidewalk, causing me to jerk back and bump into people.
I spin around to face him. “What are you doing, Sean? Let’s go inside.”
“What is this?”
“What does it look like? It’s a tattoo studio.”
“I know what it is, but why? I love you like you are,” he says, shaking his head. “If you’re doing this because of me . . . because you think?—”
“It’s just a consultation, but I’m doing this for me.” I pat my chest. “I want to look in the mirror and see the beauty of what I’ve overcome.”
“Okay.” He hooks a finger into my belt loop, pulling me to him, then lifts my chin. “If you were considering it for any other reason, we were gonna turn around and go straight home.”
Home.
Funny how in the weeks of staying with him, his place turned into my home too. I didn’t mean to move in; it just kinda happened.
Sean opens the door for me, and the bell above the glass door chimes.
“Be with you in just a minute,” someone calls out from behind a black curtain.
I glance around the room. Piercing jewelry is displayed in a glass case on the right, and beside it are notebooks filled with pictures of the artist’s work. I stride over to the counter and flip through them while we wait.
The curtain slides open, and a woman steps out, a beautiful, fresh tattoo adorning her left thigh. I love the work. My eyes flit over to Sean, gauging his reaction to the artist’s work, but the look on his face doesn’t appear to be a pleasant one. He watches the tattoo artist intently while he cleans up in the back. Shaking his head, Sean tosses a couple of bills onto the counter.
“Thank you for your time,” Sean says, grabbing my wrist and pulling me out of the shop.
I stumble out onto the sidewalk and throw my hands up. “What the hell was that?”
“He didn’t clean the chair.” He shrugs, setting off towards the parking lot back at the facility with me trailing behind him.
Didn’t clean the chair? What in the world? I think he’s just looking for excuses.
“Is this because he's a man and you don’t want him touching what’s yours?”
“No.” He spins to face me. “I have a tattoo artist in Vegas. I trust him, and I know he’s clean. I’ll give him a call and book the appointment for when we’re there. It has nothing to do with that artist being a guy.”
“Yeah. Okay,” I say, strolling through the parking area.
“I mean it. If he skips something as simple as the chair, then he’s probably skipping other things, plus he tossed the needle in the trash instead of a sharps container.”
Leave it to Sean to find every single thing wrong with a place.
“Fine,” I say, because what’s the use of arguing with him?
We reach my bike, and he grabs my helmet hanging on my handlebars, then places it on my head, and fastens the chin strap. “Was that sass?”
“Maybe it was. What are you going to do about it?” I sass again, loving this game we play.
