Page 81 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

He kisses his mother’s cheek in front of everyone before letting her go.

“Mama worries too much,” he says warmly, and the women smile because they understand mothers, and they understand good men trying their best.

TWENTY-TWO

AUGUST

I wanttonight to be special.

I’m trying not to think too hard about how good this thing with Lennon is going. Or what that might mean. That shit freaks me out.

But like Dr. Delaney says, what’s important is staying grounded in the now. And in the now, while yeah, the rollercoaster has been riding high, I haven’t let myself chase the dopamine hits to keep riding it higher and higher until it pops off the rails into freefall.

I keep my routine.

My weekends with Owen stay focused.

I don’t miss an exercise routine.

God knows I can’t miss a shift at work, with my back-to-back bookings. With my art, I’m starting to build an actual…reputation.

All because of her.

Dr. Delaney reminds me not to sprint 100 steps ahead, as tempting as that is.

I really, really like sprinting.

Especially when my brain feels like it’s painting with brilliant neon fire, every speedy little rabbit thought I have.

Suddenly I see how I can have this amazing career, expanding where I’m at until I’m able to save up enough for my own shop.

And I could hire guys like me, who’ve had some struggles and are fighting to get their lives straight. I wouldn’t expect them to operate at 100% all the time, and maybe we could all have a community around being a little goddamn kinder to each other. Mack’s really been a mentor in that way—he never lets his guys that rent out chairs in his shop to get too competitive. And he looks out for us.

Even when I had a big boost, we worked together to help share so that everyone could get more exposure and work.

Like, a lot of the tattoo culture is super hypermasculine and cut-throat, always somebody ready to yank the chair right out from underneath you.

But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if, as, like little collectives, we worked to support the whole person so that we could all thrive better?

As Dr. Delaney is always saying, it’s not fucking pie.

Just because I get a piece, it doesn’t mean there’s one less piece for you.

What if instead, we work from a rising-tides-lift-all-boats? And just fucking support each other, wanting the best for each other because we know, supporting each other together, we canallthrive because god knows there’s no shortage of folks wanting tattoos.

So let’s get our minds and bodies right, and rock the hell out of our fucking craft, right?

And it all seems possible because of her.

Possibilities seems possibilitywithher, too.

Because this shiny, sparkly brain that’s sprinting down a thousand trails at once, feeling like I understand the whole fucking universe sees, for the first time in forever, how I could actually have a future with someone.

Like a forever kind of future.

Yeah, we had a fucked-up beginning.

But it’s not like things ever turned out the way they said it was supposed to.