I pull out my phone and double check to make sure I’m at the right ‘Sea of Ink’. Then I remember he changed his last name.
“I meant Eric Slate.”
“Oh!” She smiles. “I didn’t know he had a little sister. Come on, I’ll show you to his studio.” She moves from behind her desk and leads me up a set of black steps and into a room that’s painted in hues of yellows and reds.
Sitting in a plush white chair with a doctor’s mask over his face, Eric is tattooing a guy who’s laying on his stomach.
“He’s all yours.” She pats me on the back and leaves.
“Can I help you with something, Aim?” he asks, not looking up.
“Aim? You called me Mia yesterday.”
“Slip of the tongue,” he says. “You’ll always be ‘Aim’ to me, you know that. What do you need?”
“Nothing, I was just stopping by.” I step closer and notice how intricate the designs on the wall are, how one school of goldfish is actually made up by twenty smaller ones. “How long did it take them to paint all the walls here?”
“Them?” He lifts the tattoo gun. “You mean me?”
“You couldn’t have painted all the walls by yourself, Eric.”
“I did,” he says. “Took me six months. I did the glass outside the building, too. Dean even helped with the permit for that.”
Good. He brought up Dean first...
I clear my throat. “Speaking of Dean—”
“Can you hand me that grey metal stencil?” He cuts me off. “It’s on the table behind you.”
I grab it and hand it to him.
“You’ve got to be still, man.” He warns the muscular guy on the chair. “We only have four hours left to go.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The guy mumbles, cursing under his breath.
“Now, what were you saying, Aim?”
“I was saying Dean.” I lean against a chair. “How exactly did you two meet?”
“At a bar, I think.”
“Oh, and from that moment it was long lost roommate at first sight?”
He laughs. “He was actually about to fight me.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” he says, pressing the gun against the guy’s skin again. “Said the girl I’d just broke up with minutes ago, an old college mate of his, ironically, had walked up to him outside, crying and told him I punched her.”
“Are you talking about Stacy?” His client asks.
“Unfortunately. Of course, it was Stacy.”
“Whoa. I always knew that bitch was crazy.”
“No, no, no,” I say. “Back to the story. So, he was about to fight you and then what?”
“The bartender confirmed that I never hit her and I offered him a drink. Turned out, he’d just dumped a crazy ex the night before, so we just started laughing about them both over beers. He found out I did tattoos for a shop I used to work at across town, I did his first sleeve, and the rest is history.
“Hmmm. How interesting,” I say, now wondering who the so called “crazy” ex-girlfriend Dean dated was.
I wonder if he screwed her over, too...
“Moving on...” I change my tone. “Do you remember how you said you’d do anything to make me comfortable while I’m staying at your place?”
“No.” He smiles.
“I figured. So, I want you to know that I don’t feel comfortable with Dean living there with us.”
“Well, tough shit, Mia. And yes, I said ‘Mia’. He was here first.”
“No. I was here first. Hos before bros.”
“It’s ‘bros before hos’, Mia.” He shakes his head. “Why are you so wound up about him anyway? You hardly even know him, so let it go. He’s a cool guy, I promise. You’ll learn to love him.”
I already did...That didn’t work out....
I’m not sure why I don’t automatically launch into a tirade on why Dean is like the plague to me, or how he shattered my heart into pieces and deserves to be beaten to a pulp by Eric’s fists, but I don’t. Something tells me to hold my emotions back.
Eric stops his tattoo gun and looks up at me. “You know what? Go ask Angie at the desk to give you a few gallery brochures so you can focus on what you really came to Portland for. It’s to finally pursue your art dreams, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay, so go focus on that shit for the rest of the day and then make sure you’re back at home in time for my party.”
“Party?”
“Yep.” His client looks up again, nodding slowly as if he’s about to pass out. “Third Thursday of every month. Can’t wait.” He nods one more time and falls off the chair and onto the floor. Hard.