"Why would you even ask? You know tattooed guys give me the creeps."
Nikki shook her head at her. "If you'd take the time to get to know them, you'd recognize how hot they are."
Doubtful. Just seeing men with tattoos made Melanie's heart race with fear. Her reaction wasn't intentional. She'd been scared by a group of bikers when she was a teen. Had she been older, she probably would've recognized they were only teasing and meant her no harm. But they'd terrified her. Her parents had intensified her fear by saying she could've been kidnapped, raped, murdered, or worse. She hadn't even wanted to know what was worse than being raped and murdered. Her thirteen-year-old mind had associated her parents' warnings with men who looked a certain way. Men like those bikers who'd cornered her in the entryway of an abandoned storefront.
As she'd been too afraid to actually look at their faces, all she remembered was their body art and their words. The one with a skull tattoo had and told her all the lewd things he wanted to do to her pretty mouth. She hadn't understood what he'd meant at the time, but now that she was older, she knew she'd had a reason to be uneasy and disgusted.
One with a barbed-wire tattoo around his arm had touched her hair. She'd screamed, and they'd laughed at her, but ultimately had left her alone. She knew that tattoos didn't make a person bad, but that incident had left a lasting impression. Attending rock concerts was an exercise in keeping her fear at bay. Unfortunately, going to concerts was Nikki's favorite thing to do, so Melanie's fears got a fairly regular workout.
"I don't want to get to know them; I just want to stay away from them."
Nikki wrapped an arm around Melanie's shoulders and assessed them in the mirror. "You'll be fine, Mel. I promise. Besides, I need you to help me pull off my ruse."
Melanie's inner alarm clanged even louder. "What ruse?"
The crowd in the stadium roared with enthusiasm.
"Sole Regret's set is starting!" Nikki scooped her cosmetics and hairbrush into her purse, grabbed Melanie by the wrist, and rushed from the bathroom, nearly knocking a tough-looking biker woman to the floor in her haste.
"Watch it, bitch."
"Sorry," Melanie said as she was yanked into the stadium's causeway, her heels clicking rapidly on the cement.
There were many benefits of being friends with Nikki. She was fun. Afraid of nothing. Men liked her. So while they started out at the back of general admission, with several dozen coy looks, a bit of exposed cleavage, and some well-placed hands on the male metal-heads in the crowd, Nikki miraculously managed to work her way to the area just in front of the stage without being punched in the face. Melanie was allowed to join her only because Nikki refused to release her wrist. Along the barrier fence in front of the stage, Melanie purposely positioned herself between two women and turned away from the man hanging over the railing. The thrusting of his fist in the air drew attention to the skull tattoo on his forearm. One glimpse of that bit of body art had the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. Melanie forced her attention to the stage to keep her gaze from straying to the man's arm.
She supposed she should be excited to be so close to the stage, but Melanie much preferred stadium seats to the pit. She liked to listen to the music, not defend herself from injury. The pit was hot and sweaty: crowded, loud, lewd, and dangerous. Nikki called it exciting. Melanie called it painful. Nikki spent the next forty-five minutes trying to get the attention of the band's lead singer; Melanie spent her time avoiding elbows in the face by two enthusiastic fangirls and keeping the guy behind her from squishing her against the metal bars of the barrier fence and prodding her in the ass with his junk. How could Nikki enjoy this?
Melanie watched the lead singer-the current object of Nikki's obsession – prowl the front of the stage. He could've been a gorgeous man. Tattoos ruined his otherwise good looks. Had he been dressed in a nice suit and discussing philosophy instead of wearing ripped denim and screaming something about descending into Hell, Melanie might have admired the wide cut of his shoulders and his strong, handsome profile. But, yeah, the ink completely turned her off. She wondered what color his eyes were. He had yet to take off his sunglasses. The stage lights were blinding, but she figured the shades were part of his image. He'd worn them onstage the night before, too, and by the way the two fangirls were screeching Shaaaaade every time he stalked in their direction, she assumed he'd been named after his fondness for eyewear. Melanie had a heck of a time keeping the names of the band members straight even though Nikki had gone on and on and on about them on the drive down from Wichita.