“What my—” I paused, then laughed, shaking my head. “She’s fine with them. Well, now, anyway. It wasn’t always like that. She was convinced I would never get a real job when I was eighteen and got my first tat.”
“And did you?” Fumiko pressed. “Get a real job, that is.”
Amusement twitched the corner of my mouth. God, these nosy old biddies were a trip. “I own a tattoo studio. And I do really well.”
Fumiko’s eyebrows—penciled black to match her midnight hair—arched. “And your mother—is she proud of you?”
I nodded. I didn’t want to get into the specifics with these strangers—my addiction, the years of disappointment and heartache I’d put my parents through, but I loved my mom more than anything, and I would willingly share that part of my life with them.
“Yeah, she is. For a lot of reasons, and it took a long time to get here, but now she shows her friends pictures of my tattoos and paintings. Brags about me to her sisters and cousins.” I smiled as I thought about it.
Anita reached out to my forearm, where a profusion of bright forget-me-nots spilled down to my wrist. Another artist at the shop inked them not long after my grandmother died, when I felt lost in my grief and wanted her favorite flowers etched in my skin. “May I?”
I nodded. “Sure.”
“I like them,” she said, her frail finger smoothing over the design. “Fumiko’s a little skeptical.” Then, she looked up at me with a smirk. “But mostly we were wondering why a badass like you is in a knitting class with a bunch of old farts.”
I chuckled, and not sure they’d understand the Itch, I deliberately misconstrued their question. “Would you believe that this class was the closest one to my house?”
Fumiko and Anita exchanged a look, then leveled me with a pair of speculative stares.
“You seem like a nice boy,” Anita finally said with a nod. “We think Sam will like you.”
“Sam?” I asked. “Who’s that?”
But before either of them could answer, the door to the community room opened and the rush of chatter suddenly quieted. And in the fresh silence, I heard the voice I’d been dreaming about for two solid days. My whole body went rigid before I turned to the front of the room to look, to confirm that my ears weren’t deceiving me.
It was her—the curvy goddess from yesterday, her blonde hair brushing along her shoulders, looking so beautiful that I could barely breathe.
“Hey guys,” she said, beaming as she scanned the room. “Sorry I’m late. Let’s get started.”