Sins & Needles(75)

I shook my head, trying to get some sense into it.

“Don’t you trust me?” he asked.

Well, no. I didn’t. I wanted to. But I couldn’t. That said, I had been wrong about him trying to contact Javier. And I still had his phone, and no weird calls or messages had come through. But did I trust him with my body, into making it something beautiful? Did I trust his talent and his skill—his passion?

I did.

“How much is it going to hurt?” I asked.

“A little more than your normal tattoo. I have a tattoo on the bottom of my foot. It would probably hurt just the same.”

I made a face. “Ugh, you do?”

He slid off his Reef sandals and showed me. It was the symbol for the Wu-Tang Clan.

I had to laugh. “Are you serious?”

“I went through a serious wigga phase and started listening to all this old rap. I think I knew I was going to grow out of it, hence the placement.”

I was still smiling at that. It felt good. “Boy, LA changed you.”

“Tried to change me. I found myself again.”

We exchanged a humbled look.

Then, “Will you say yes, Ellie?”

I looked down at my leg, covered by denim. What the hell. Why not? What difference would it make to me? If he could handle the Wu-Tang Clan on his sole, I could handle his art on my scars.

“This won’t interfere with our plans for tonight will it?” I asked.

He gave me a small smile and started emptying out his kit onto the luxe bedspread. “It should only take about three hours. You’ll be able to walk, though to be honest you probably shouldn’t wear pants. But it’ll be bandaged really well. No one will see.”

“Only three hours?”

“I just want to do the front of your leg, where it’s more pronounced. I don’t want to do too much at once. We can save the back for another time. If you wear a loose and long dress or skirt this evening, you’ll be fine.”

I swallowed hard, suddenly nervous. “Will I get a drink for the pain?”

He shook his head. “You’ll bleed too much. But you’ll do fine. I promise.”

And so with the curtains open and the sun blaring in, I stripped down to my underwear and lay on the towels he’d spread out on the bed.

He sucked in his breath as his saw me, his eyes traveling from my toes to my hips, as if he hadn’t seen it all before.

“Jesus,” he whispered, gaze lingering everywhere. “I keep forgetting that you’re art already.”

I felt strangely shy at his admiration and fidgeted with the corners of the towel. “So what are you going to tattoo on me?”

“Whatever your scars tell me to,” he said.

I lay my head back on the bed as he started prepping my leg. I didn’t want to watch. I wanted to submit. I looked out the window, the sun glinting off the Rio building in the distance. After a few minutes, the needle buzzed, alive and waiting to transform me.

I put my sins in his hands.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN





Then





The girl stood outside the tattoo parlor, shaking her head adamantly. She had promised her boyfriend that she’d get a tattoo with him, but she was getting very cold feet at the last minute.

“Come on, angel,” Javier crooned to her, taking her hand. “Everyone gets nervous their first time. It’s a little like sex, although you should be so glad you don’t have to wear the loss of your virginity on your sleeve.”

I kinda will, she thought to herself, unable to keep from smiling. Not only had she lost her virginity to Javier, but they had talked for months about getting tattoos together. Javier already had several, a large cross that ran up his spine, and his mother’s name scribbled on the inside of his bicep. The girl had none.

They had decided to go with a musical theme based on songs they would pick out for each other. Javier was partial to the song “On Every Street” by Dire Straits. Being a big fan of the band, the girl loved the song but could never understand why her boyfriend had associated it with her. After all, the song talked about a woman’s “injured looks” whose “fingerprints remained concrete,” and the man with a “ladykiller regulation tattoo” who was “still on the case” and forever searching for her in “a ravenous town.” Javier’s answer was always the same, that no matter what happened to them, he’d always come looking for her, on every street.

At the time, the girl thought it was romantic. And perhaps, in some twisted way, she still did. But she couldn’t decide how to incorporate that into a tattoo. There was a line in the song about the moon hanging upside down, and she thought that might be a good one. Then Javier suggested she get the written notes to the part of the song that always made her cry. She said she cried when she heard it because it made her feel what the hero in the song felt. And that was alone. Just three simple notes, and she felt all the grief of losing your lover, forever confined to a never-ending search. She told him it sounded like your heart echoing down a black corridor.