“Alright?” Diarmuid supplied.
I shrugged my shoulders.
Diarmuid drew up a stool and lowered himself onto it as he pulled a legal pad from his leather satchel. He chewed the lid from a pen. “Well, since we’re still working out the kinks of the Young Offenders Program, I like to drop by at the beginning to get a sense of how things are going.”
“I just said they’re fine,” I said, my irritability rising.
I could feel myself getting drawn into something I didn’t want to get drawn into. Aurnia herself was already a vortex. I didn’t need the state throwing me deeper into her depths.
Diarmuid gave me a pointed stare and said, “I kind of like to bring more to my supervisors than ‘fine’.”
“Really fine,” I grumbled.
Diarmuid ignored me and tapped his pen against the pad of paper.
“Now, Aurnia was saying that she’s already helped out,” he said, “can you tell me how?”
“I painted some art on the side alley,” Aurnia jumped in. “And just before you came in, Conor was telling me how much he loved it.”
“That’s fantastic,” Diarmuid said, jotting down notes.
Aurnia fixed her mischievous eyes on me. “He said that he loved the initiative that I took in making something beautiful out of such an ugly space. He said that I showed a lot of promise as an artist. He said vandals used to come and tag the wall, but that mine was nothing at all like that. Vandalism, I mean.”
Diarmuid looked up at me. “You didn’t ask her to do that?”
“No.”
“Well, wonderful job, Aurnia,” Diarmuid said, returning to his notes. I shot Aurnia a glare when he wasn’t looking. “That does show initiative. Conor was right.”
Aurnia beamed.
I repressed a growl.
“Conor was right,” she said.
Hidden inside my pockets, my fingernails dug into my palms. “Though we also discussed, just before you came in, Diarmuid, that I am Aurnia’s supervisor. And in future, she needs to run these things by me. Because my word is final regarding the shop.”
Aurnia narrowed her eyes at me.
It was my turn to grin when Diarmuid nodded along. “Yes, yes, very good,” he said. “You do need proper boundaries, Aurnia.”
“Oh, I agree completely,” my little thief said through clenched teeth, lying not coming as easily as I might have expected from her.
Then again, maybe it was all a bluff for my sake.
A second later she turned toward Diarmuid. “That’s why I made sure to ask Conor about the social media account for Dublin Ink.”
I was about to blurt out “Like fuck you did”, but I refused to be a child just because Aurnia was one.
Diarmuid looked at me, clearly waiting for my response.
I grumbled, “Everyone has been saying that we needed a social media presence.”
“See!” Diarmuid said, excitedly slapping the legal pad against his knee. “See, this is exactly the kind of benefits I’m trying to sell people on for the Young Offenders Program. Mutual gain for the community. Symbiotic growth. This is great to hear, absolutely great to hear.”
“And Conor promised to teach me how to tattoo,” Aurnia said, the little opportunist.
“Conor, how generous of you,” Diarmuid said, writing this down as well.