“What?” Tara pulled her phone out of her purse and looked at it. “It’s not 10 o’clock yet. Not even close. Your sign says you close at 10.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ll have to come back.”
Tara gave me a defiant look, but the expression that crossed Chloe’s face was hard to read—it was a mix between hurt and surprise, and I felt bad, of all things. What the fuck?
“You ... you won’t give me a tattoo?” she said.
I imagined her to be the sort of girl who always did the right thing, who was never told she couldn’t do something because she never wanted to do anything that would get her in trouble.
“I can’t,” I said. “Not now, anyway. Feel free to come back, though. Just don’t have a drink first.”
“Aw, come on,” Tara said. “I bet people come in here all the time a little drunk. I mean, don’t some people need that liquid courage just to go under the needle to begin with?”
“It’s not recommended,” I said. “And, it’s shop policy. Drunk people aren’t very good at holding still, and if you’re squirming around while I’m trying to ink you, it’s not going to come out very good. Which is a reflection of my own work, and I actually do take my work seriously.”
“That’s very noble of you.” She gave me a coy look. “So, am I to believe that you are actually going to deny us service? Isn’t the customer always right?”
“Uh, no, actually. I’d say 85 percent of the time, the customer is probably wrong.”
“Some businessman you are.” Tara sniffed. “Fine, I guess we’ll just have to go elsewhere. Come on, Chloe.”
Chloe followed her out, but not before she looked back at me with an apologetic expression. “I’m sorry for ...” she paused. “I’m sorry,” she said, and then she stepped over the threshold and the door closed.
Todd stared at them until they were out of sight and then turned to me. “I can’t believe you just threw paying customers out of your store. Have you gone blind? Those girls were hot! You’re a fool!”
“I’m not tattooing drunk people; I don’t care how hot they are.”
“You totally ruined their night. Those types of girls aren’t used to people not catering to their every whim.”
“And what type would that be? I like how you’re talking about them as though you actually know them.”
Todd waved me off. “Come on, Graham. You know exactly the type: rich and entitled and here for the summer. They’re usually the fun ones you can get into some good no-strings-attached scenarios with.”
“Feel free to go chase after them, then; I’m not stopping you. It might make you feel better about being stood up.”
For a moment, it looked like he was considering it. But then he shook his head. “Better not,” he said. “The way my luck is going tonight, they’d probably both turn me down. Or, they wouldn’t turn me down but I’d get a raging case of gonorrhea or something. Can you just close this shit up? I need a drink. But if those girls come back again, you better believe I’m going to go for it.”
“Sure you will,” I said, fully expecting to never see either of those girls again.
Chapter Six
Chloe
I woke up the next morning with a headache and a bad taste in my mouth, even though I thought remembered brushing my teeth before I went to bed. Or maybe I was thinking about the previous night? I couldn’t be completely sure. Either way, the sun streaming through the windows seemed way too harsh, and the songbirds I usually enjoyed listening to sounded cacophonic. I buried my head under the pillow, which helped with the searing sunlight but did nothing to ease my headache. I got up and gingerly made my way into the bathroom.
I felt a little better after getting a drink and splashing some cool water on my face. I’d only had two and a half glasses of wine—was that even enough to constitute getting a hangover? It seemed kind of pathetic.
I made my way downstairs and into the kitchen. I could see my mother through the window above the sink, sitting out on the veranda, sipping something. I looked at the clock, shocked to see that it was almost noon. Noon? How had I slept until noon?
I poured myself some orange juice and popped a slice of bread in the toaster. I tried to remember what happened last night. The memories came back like when you try to recall a dream you had—fleeting and hazy, and when you tried to grasp on to any one instance, it slipped away.
There was dinner and drinks. There was the club, later, and another glass of wine, which I hadn’t finished. There was the loud, throbbing music, a feeling of giddiness that I hadn’t experienced before. Then, a little bit later, Tara whispering to me that she’d just had the best idea and we needed to leave. We’d gone to a tattoo parlor. And the guy there said he wouldn’t give either of us tattoos, which, for some reason, bothered me more than it probably should have.
His logic for saying no made sense, after all. If anything, it showed that he took his profession seriously. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was that talk that I’d had with my parents earlier, but I had found myself wanting a tattoo more than anything. Nothing that big, and certainly not in a place that couldn’t be easily covered up by clothes—it would be like my own little secret, something that my parents would probably flip out over if they knew, but they wouldn’t ever have to know.
Before I lost my nerve, I got dressed and headed back down to the tattoo place.
*****