“And she knows what an idiot you can be.”
I jerked my thumb in his direction, “No faith in this one. None at all.” For the next hour I found myself the butt of all the jokes on the hour long ride to the airport hotel.
18
Kristen
“Thank you so much for inviting me to come along. I’ve never actually been to Vegas before.” Lia flipped a braid of dark hair and purple dye over her shoulder before putting her carryon case in the trunk. Whittaker’s new girlfriend was younger than I realized. Not even twenty-one, but he only agreed to help Damien with his kidnap Hunter plan if I brought her along with Taylor and me. It kind of put a kink in my plans to take Taylor to see Thunder Down Under. Who wouldn’t want to see hot Australian guys stripping off their clothes and strutting their dingle berries across a stage? I guess this was his subtle way of enforcing crowd control on us. Good thing I still had my fake ID from college. Lia could almost pass looking like me in dim light and good makeup. We were so going to see that show if it killed me.
“That makes three of us. I think Kristen has been waiting for this day since junior high school.” Taylor got into the passenger seat of the car giving me a wink.
“Close, more like sometime after the gumbo incident and before Prom.” I chuckled.
“Is that what your Top Secret Pinterest account says?” Taylor teased.
“Shush.” I tell her driving directly to the airport. Our flight is later than the boys so I don’t bother renting a hotel in Albany because we’ll fly directly to Las Vegas.
It didn’t take a ton of coordination between Damien and me. It was amazing what we could accomplish between the two of us when it had nothing to do with us, just our best friends getting married. I still wanted to spirit the rings away, but Damien advised against it. I guess we would be saving Elvis for another couple in our group
I hated when he was right.
.
So this weekend would be the six of us, me, Taylor, Lia, Hunter, Whit, and Demon. I had plans for us to visit the Wax Museum, the Shark Aquarium, the Spa and all the clubs we could fit into the next three nights with pampering. I knew I wasn’t going to convince Taylor to not marry Hunter and instead move in with me and adopt twenty cats, but I could at least try to be happy for her.
It was the happy part I struggled with because I still didn’t feel reassured my bestie wasn’t dumping me just like Evan.
“Hey are there any tattoo parlors near the hotel?” Lia asked while she played on her phone from the back seat.
“I’m sure we could find one,” and I turned my wrist over glancing at the scar that polka dotted my arm from the stainless steel screws that used to hold bone together.
“Uh?” Taylor gave me the side eye and I knew what she was thinking, which one of us was going to have to sign the parental okay for this kid to get a tattoo. I shrugged because she was at least 18 so that wouldn’t be a problem for us but it was cute that Taylor thought so.
“What kind of tattoo would you get?” She asked still flipping through her phone.
“Something to cover up this scar.” I rose up my arm so she could see in the rearview mirror the deep puckers left behind.
“Oh wow.” She crawls up from her seat to look at it closer from the awkward angle while I’m driving.
“It doesn’t hurt. It’s just an ugly reminder from an accident years ago.” I said. Taylor gets quiet and flips through her purse pretending to look for something. We didn’t talk about the fall, the break, or the fragile state of my heart following what happened. I think she senses I won’t talk about it but that that’s not entirely true. I mean, how does one talk about something that was profound to an adolescent but makes less sense as an adult. I guess you can’t, not really anyway.
“Well, I want to get a small camera tattoo, your arm almost looks like a wing.”
“A wing?” I asked.
“Yeah, I know you’re driving but those puckers branch out, almost like a feather. Totally looks like you could have a huge angel wing on your arm.” I couldn’t see it, but Lia seemed to have an eye for these things I remembered Whit telling me at Easton’s she was getting into photography.
“Well, why stop at one?” Taylor husked and I felt a calling toward the idea. If she got all snarky I might even do it out of spit and partly because my mother would hate the idea of ink insidiously lying under my skin.
“You know what, you find the place Lia and I’ll do it.” I said as I pulled into Albany Airport’s long term parking garage. Two sets of eyes snapped up to look at me.
“Uh, what just happened?” Taylor regarded me from reorganizing her purse’s compartments.
“Tattoo talk, you in or out?” I said to Taylor.
“Out. I’m getting married and I would have no idea what to get that my dress wouldn’t hide.”