“Take it,” I commanded. “Put your hand around it.”
I forced Aurnia’s quivering fingers around it. Her hair had fallen over her face, over her dark-lined eyes. She glanced down at the tattoo gun she held loosely at her shaking chest.
“Like this,” I said quickly. “You want to hold it like this.”
I manoeuvred her fingers which no longer fought against me. Hers were ice, mine felt like fire. The calluses of my palms scraped against the smoothness of her flesh; I could hear it over my desperate pants. Aurnia was watching me now. I could sense her eyes on me behind that curtain of black silk.
I did not meet her gaze. My fingers moved fast over hers.The rising and falling over her chest was returning to normal, but mine was quickening. A calm washed over her, but I felt nothing but panic.
“How does that feel?” I asked in a hushed, frantic whisper.
Aurnia just nodded. Hunched over her small frame, I began, in that same hushed, frantic whisper, to explain the different elements of the gun. How it worked. The amount of pressure needed. Different models. Different inks. What to do if your hand cramped on a particularly long project. I was all over the place. I wasn’t even sure I was making any sense at times. I spoke so quickly. So softly. Could she even make out a single word I was uttering like my last confession?
Whether she could or not, Aurnia listened. The whole time she kept her eyes on me. When I moved her hand here or there, she relented. She said not a word herself. She just watched me. She just watched me and listened.
The more I explained to her, the more I felt I needed to explain. The faster I spoke, the faster I felt I needed to speak. A terror was washing over me now that Aurnia was back with me.How was it that I was more frightened with her here than when she was gone?
When I’d told her all I could about the tattoo gun itself, I took it from her fingers. I took it gently. With a gentleness I didn’t even know I was still capable of. My own fingers shook as I took her hand in mine. She followed me without question as I guided her around the shop. I whispered to her over the pages of our design book. I nudged her closer like it was a pool she could see to the depths of if only she could step a little closer. I moved to stand behind her. My arms encompassed her small frame as I reached around to flip the large glossy page. Her hair was against my nose. I breathed her in as I spoke fast, faster.
I was desperate that she understand this style and that. Abstract. Watercolour. American. Black and white, like mine. I explained histories and trends and evolutions. I darted from one to the next. No coherence. No direction. Just more. More. All that mattered was that I gave her more. That I gave her all.
With her back against my chest, I felt her heartbeat. The steadier hers became the more mine seemed to beat out of control. She let me guide her by the shoulders to the supply closet where I talked in the shadows about inks. About needles. About stencils. I pulled out half the contents of the closet. Tossed it onto the floor. Didn’t bother to pick a goddamn thing up.
I was sweating through my shirt. My heart was erratic. My chest fluttered. My palms were slick on the small of Aurnia’s back. I didn’t feel like this even on my most challenging sessions at the boxing gym. On those nights where I attacked the bag in my garage with all my self-loathing, even then, I didn’t feel like this.
I don’t know how long this went on, my crazed explanations, my deranged teaching. We went from the supply closet to the chairs, from the chairs to the cabinet of bandages and ointments, from thecabinet to my drawing desk. All I know is that Aurnia put up no fight. I was the only one with flailing fists. With exhausted muscles. With a heart on the verge of giving out. Her little feet followed after me without protest. She moulded to my touch like wet clay. I kept my hands on her the whole time and she only leaned further and further into me. Her eyes, for the whole time, were on me.
At the drawing desk, I showed her how to sketch some basic designs. The page quickly became filled with anything and everything: flowers and tribal designs, coy fish and Chinese symbols, geometric shapes and foxes with jewels for eyes. Drawings overlapped drawings. The whole time I whispered into Aurnia’s ear. The whole time she listened.
“Here,” I said breathlessly as I bent to retrieve a new drawing pad and pencils from the bottom drawer. Standing was a fit of strength like none before. I opened Aurnia’s arms, the arms of a pretty little doll, and put them all against her chest. I folded her arms back across my gifts like I didn’t trust them not to fall straight to the floor. I whispered quickly, “Here, here. Please. Please.”
At last I met Aurnia’s eyes as she gazed up at me in the pale light of the pink neon. There was no quiver in her voice when she spoke. No panic. No terror. She was steady as a rock. Calm as the moon hidden behind the shifting fog.
“Thank you.”
I collapsed against her, my forehead against hers. I shook my head slightly.
“Don’t say that,” I said, my voice ragged from speaking for so long. It had been years, years since I had said so much. “Don’t say that.”
Aurnia was there. The cool of her forehead like a damp rag against my feverish brow. She was there and I understood the panic I felt. I’d felt what it was like to lose her. I’d felt the pain. The guilt. And I knew. I knew I couldn’t go through that again. I wouldn’t survive. Aurnia had returned and she had raised the stakes impossibly.
“Please,” I begged, grasping at her body as I pulled her to me in desperation, “don’t thank me.”
“Then what?” Aurnia whispered, the notebooks and pencils, her little wrists caught between us. “Then what, Conor?”
It was the one thing I wanted. The one thing I needed.
“Stay.”