“On my eighteenth birthday. My gift to myself. A reminder to live despite whatever adversity tries to weigh me down.”
He nods toward my other arm. “And by balance, you mean something similar, I take it? Why not go back to her? This organic style and color is more her thing. I do blackwork mostly.”
“Do I need a reason to want you to give me a tattoo?”
He lifts an eyebrow, evidence that despite having only a few precious conversations of substance when we were younger, he still knows me well. “Sweetness, you always have a reason to do what you do.”
I grit my teeth, not wanting to admit the truth, which is hard enough to admit to myself as it is. I missed him. The time apart hurt for years, and just when I finally get to the point of forgetting more often than I remember, he shows back up. I have no idea if he’ll stick around, and even if he does, there’s no way we can be together. Papá’s as possessive of me as ever, despite giving me freedom in my role as our organization’s CFO. So I want something to keep with me, to remind me of what Maddox and I once shared.
“I like the idea of the contrast,” I say, pulling something plausible out of my ass. “Toni’s delicate, organic style juxtaposed with your harder-edged, darker aesthetic.” He’s giving me a dubious look, and I can’t keep a straight face. I smirk and try to hold in a laugh. “What? I love art.”
He just shakes his head and chuckles. “Keep telling yourself that. You’ve inflated my ego by a factor of ten thousand just by asking for my tattoo to ride alongside hers. How many others do you have?”
“Just the one.”
He nods, and a cocky grin spreads across his face. “Can I sign it the way she did?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
He pulls out a sketchbook and settles on a stool to begin sketching. I feel conspicuous just standing there watching, so I wander around the room to let him work. In a former life, this space was the reception area for his mother’s dance studio, which sits empty on the other side of the wall of windows. My dance classes were always Friday evenings, though I know Marcella Santos had a busier schedule than that. It’s only noon, so the place will stay empty until around three p.m., when school lets out. Then it’ll fill with girls in pink leotards who dream of becoming ballerinas.
I wasn’t one of those girls. Maybe at first I was, but the day my mother died, all those frilly dreams disappeared along with her. I still danced for six more years after that because it was something she’d wanted for me, and because it was the only way I could see Maddox without raising my father’s suspicions.
“How is your mother?” I ask, picturing the pretty, dark-haired woman with the tall, willowy frame. Marcella Santos was born to dance, unlike me, even managing to look graceful while she was pregnant. By the time I quit at fifteen, I was spilling out of my leotards and envied the slimmer girls who had true dancer physiques.
A shadow crosses his expression but is gone as quickly as it appears.
“Still teaching five days a week. If you want to hang for a few hours, I’m sure she’d love to see you. I have other clients this afternoon, though, so you’d be on your own.”
“Maybe another day. Papá’s expecting me for a meeting in an hour.” My gaze snags on the old wood floor, still polished to a shine, and the mirrors lining the studio’s walls, and a sense of longing tugs at my insides. Then I head back to see his progress.
He flips the sketch around when I reach him, and I’m unable to suppress an excited smile at the piece of art he’s rendered in only a few minutes. “It’s just a rough sketch. I’ll scan it tonight and work it up in detail digitally.”
The design is a rose in full bloom, and where the tiny seedling looked like it struggled to break through hard stone, the rose has encompassed the stone in its roots, leaving cracks. It’s all rendered in black ink with precise hatching for shadows and a background layer of abstract lines that resemble the skyline of a city.
“It’s perfect,” I breathe.
“Forgot something,” he says, turning the design around. He presses the pen to the paper along the dark edge of the cracked stone and scrawls Mad Dog in dark, geometric lettering, a stark contrast to the flowing script Toni uses. Then he grins at me.
I smile. “Even better. Do I need to give you a deposit or something?”
He waves me off. “I trust you. When do you want to come back?”
I’m not even ready to leave, so the question takes me a second to process. I finally make an appointment for the end of the week, during the time when my old dance classes used to meet. Hopefully, I can come a little early and say hello to Marcella too.
Maddox catches me staring at the studio and pulls out a set of keys from under the counter. “You want to visit the studio? I can let us in. You can look around if you want. It really hasn’t changed despite me setting up shop out here. The only new thing is the tattoo chair and the new cabinets in Mom’s old office.
“I’d love that. Thank you.”
He unlocks the door that separates the two spaces, explaining that they never open it anymore. It apparently wasn’t cost-effective to do serious renovation to downsize, so as long as he and his mom are comfortable with their arrangement, they plan to
