Page 6 of Sing For Me

Will

Thirteen Years Later

I do not hatemy job,I tell myself, for probably the tenth time in as many minutes.

It’s kind of hard to convince myself, though, when I’m staring down a pile of paperwork.

“You’ve got that look on your face again,” my cousin notes from the other side of my desk. Rose is lounging in a big leather armchair—mybig leather armchair, the only comfortable seat in this office—with her feet up on the desk, her textbooks spread out, crowding out my paperwork.

“Isn’t there like, a library or something you can go study in?” I grumble, pushing a psych book away.

“Yes, but then I wouldn’t have your charming company, would I?” she says drily. I flip her off.

“Seriously, Will, what’s with the face? You look like you’re being force fed Brussels sprouts.”

“I like Brussels sprouts,” I point out.

“And this is why you’re crazy.” She swings her legs down, brushing a mane of white blonde waves over her shoulder as she plants her elbows on my desk, eying me. “What’s your problem?”

I gesture at the paperwork. “I hate this shit. Wasn’t the whole point of becoming a tattoo artist so I didn’t have to sit in a boring office all my life?”

“Sure, if you would have stayed a tattoo artist,” she says. “But you just had to go out and start up your own shop.”

I don’t respond to that, because I don’t want to have the same fight with her again. Rose is convinced I only bought the shop—at a pretty young age—to try to prove something to my dad. Rose may know me better than just about anyone in the world, but she’s still full of shit.

“You know what you need, Will?”

“A bottle of whiskey and an office manager,” I mutter.

“You read my mind on the office manager, but we both know you aren’t going to make that hire any time soon. So, we need to think of something else to deal with this little problem.” She spins her pointer finger in front of my face.

“What little problem?”

“River and I have started to call it WAS—like PMS, but worse.”

I hold her eye contact, refusing to ask her to explain. There’s no point—I can never get Rosie to stop talking, even when I want her to.

“Will Asshole Syndrome,” she says proudly, like she’s just told a hilarious joke. I keep my expression flat, staring at her, and she groans, throwing a wadded-up piece of paper at my head. “You stomp around the apartment all the time. You snap at River pretty much every day—”

“Because your brother is a pain in my ass.”

“Well, yeah.” She shoots me a quick grin. “No one’s arguing that. But that still doesn’t mean it’s pleasant to be around you when you have a giant stick up your ass.”

“Thanks for the insight.”

“Will.” She leans across the desk, expression grave. “You need to get laid,”

“Jesus, Rose.”

I close my eyes as she giggles. If there’s one thing in the world my cousin enjoys, it’s giving me shit.

I’m self-aware enough to admit she has a point about some of this. It’s not like my default is sunshine and roses, but lately I have been having a harder and harder time keeping the full-out asshole side of me at bay.

The thing is, there’s not a lot I can do to change the situation. I’m dead set on the shop turning a profit this year, and I’ve been working my ass off to make that happen. It usually takes a lot longer for a new business to get the start-up money paid off, but I’m impatient. The sooner I can start to support myself fully, and pay my uncle back, the better I’ll feel.

But the only way to get to that point is to keep my nose to the grindstone and get the work done. Even if it sometimes feels like I spend more time in this fucking office than I do with a tattoo machine in my hands. I definitely spend more time in this building than I do my own home.

And as far as getting laid goes… yeah, let’s not even go there.