“Who did it?”
“Why?”
“Well, fuck Pen, because I want to know. Why else?”
“I used to hang out at a shop,” she explains. “They did apprenticeships and courses regularly. So, I let someone do their first tattoo on me.”
It impresses me, the fact that she’d take that kind of risk. One slip, one fuck up, and she’s got a bad tattoo forever… maybe we’re not so different after all.
“Isn’t it a bit crazy to let someone unskilled give you a tattoo?”
“It’s crazier that you earn buckets of money to trade punches in a cage. It’s just a man-sized cock-fight.”
“I like it when you’re nasty.”
“She did a great job, though. The shape of the penguin is spot on.”
I look at the tattoo again. I can’t see anything wrong with it. The proportions are perfect, and while the style is a little cuter than I’d like, it’s good body art.
“She must have had a good hand.”
“She did.”
“As good as yours?”
Penny snorts. “No.”
“How long ago was this?” I’ve noticed that the black ink is starting to fade a little.
“Few years ago now. I was still in high school. I don’t think the ink took really well there on the back of my knee. The skin there is delicate.”
“What did your dad say?”
“He never noticed.”
“Never?”
Penny shrugs, and rolls over. I lie down next to her and wrap her up in my arms and hold her body tight against mine. I love the feel of her soft skin against me, her naked body touching me.
“We didn’t, like, go to the pool together or anything,” she says, shrugging.
“So, what, you’ve never worn a skirt or shorts?”
“Not around Dad,” Penny says. She smirks when she sees my expression. “He’s… conservative.”
“He dictates what you wear?”
She sits up now, face serious. “Nobody tells me what to wear.” The brief moment of indignation passes. “At least, not for a long time. No, he doesn’t stop me. He wouldn’t. But I know he doesn’t like it.”
“So you do it for his benefit.”
Penny sighs. “When Mom left, he was… well, I was still young, a teenager, and I wasn’t easy. Come to think of it, you must have been a nightmare to raise.”
“I boarded, Pen. No parents to speak of since I was thirteen. Anyway, girls are always worse than guys.”
She rolls her eyes. “Like you would know anything about that. Anyway, I tried to make it easy on him, you know? I decided to stay with Dad because Mom cheated, but, I mean, he’s oblivious. He’s clueless. This one time I was out with him at a zoo, I was like nine or ten… this was even before the divorce. Anyway, he tried to insist I go into the male bathroom with him when I had to use it. At that age! I mean, I was a precocious kid, don’t get me wrong, but he was just so clueless. He just never grew out of me being a kid. I’m always his, well, little girl.”
“You decided not to make him worry.”
“Well, it wasn’t all that,” she says, looking away. “I was more of a ripped-jeans and Converse girl, anyway.”
“Why a penguin?”
“Are you kidding? They’re the cutest animal.”
“You ever seen one?”
“At the zoo, yeah.”
“I mean in the wild.”
“No,” she says. “I was planning on visiting Phillip Island sometime to watch them come in and nest. You know, the miniature penguins. I thought I’d join a tour.”
“It’s shit there,” I tell her, shaking my head. “You sit up in these stands, ages away from the beach, and you can barely make them out in the dark. Plus you’re with about two thousand other people and everybody’s got their cameras flashing uselessly, fucking idiots. Nah, don’t bother.”
“Oh.”
“But I know a better place. Just a little ways down the coast. You want to go tonight?”
“What do you mean ‘a better place’?”
“You know there’s a colony in St. Kilda, right? At the beach?”
“I read about it, but didn’t have the chance to go yet.”
“Well, in between St. Kilda and Brighton, there’s a little hidden beach that nobody knows about in a small cove. There’s another colony there. I’ll take you there. You’d be right on the shore with them. Heaps of the little fuckers.”
Her eyes light up, and she beams me the broadest grin. Seeing it makes my heart race, gives me butterflies.
Fucking butterflies!
“Tonight?”