~ CHAPTER 1 ~
NICK
“Is this an impulse decision?” the girl with pink hair and a tattoo gun in her hand asked me. “You sure you’re sober? I can’t do this if you aren’t sober.”
I turned to look over my shoulder. My bare ass was on display for the room, for this pink haired beauty to glimpse, and neither was a concern. I felt like I was stuck, buried deep under the sand. I’d felt that way for a couple weeks now, maybe longer if I were being honest with myself. I hoped this small amount of pain might shock my senses somehow, help me feel something again. At the very least, this was a parting gift... to me from myself. Tonight was my final night in town. Tomorrow I planned to quit my job and drive back to Maine.
Good riddance, Kill Devil Hills.
“Not an impulse decision,” I clarified. “I’m sober.”
“It’s just... it’s a sea turtle on your ass.” She gave me this pained look. “On your virgin skin, no less. I feel like I should make sure this is really, really, what you want.”
“What do most guys get? Barbed wire around their biceps. No thank you, sweetheart. I know what I want. This is what I want.”
She bit down on her bottom lip, giving me a reluctant nod. Shit, she was a beautiful girl. I loved her pale pink hair color. For a brief second, I wondered what her story was. Was she from this beach town, born and raised, or had she escaped here just like I had, thinking it was the solution to everything, when it really wasn’t?
I rested my face on my forearms, lying still for her, waiting for her to get started. Finally, the needle hit my skin. It stung. But it was a very bearable kind of pain.
I don’t know if it helped or hurt the dull ache in my chest. After a couple minutes, my butt cheek just felt numb. I felt numb along with it.
“So why the turtle?” the girl asked.
I sighed. “C’mon, this isn’t a hair salon.” Again, I glanced over my shoulder. “You don’t have to bother with small talk. Not with me.”
She looked at me with these big, kind of sad, brown eyes. I’d offended her. Fuck. I hadn’t meant to do that.
“Hey.” One of the other tattoo artists that worked at this place stepped into her area. “I’m going to pop next door and get some dinner. Want something, Amanda?”
“No,” she muttered. “Not hungry.”
He turned his attention to me. “You’re probably going to be on that table for a couple hours. Want some dinner? The place next door is actually decent.”
I cleared my throat. “No, thanks.”
“Alrighty.” The massive guy with tattoos up to his neck stepped away. It wasn’t a busy night. Without him here, it would be just the two of us.
I dropped my head back to my arms. I heard the bell on the door chime as he exited the shop. “He’s stupid,” I mumbled into my arms. Her name was Amanda. Thanks to Meat Head, I now knew my pink haired tattoo artist’s name was Amanda. “It’s stupid for him to leave you by yourself. It’s just us. It’s late. Even if it’s only for ten minutes, something could happen in those ten minutes. You don’t know how many creeps there are in this world. In the future, you should make him get the place next door to walk your food over.”
My words were probably out of bounds. I’d never been great at minding my own business. But it was stupid. To leave her alone with one of her customers this late in the evening—plain dumb.
“I hate this sea turtle,” she suddenly said. She stopped working, setting down the tattoo gun, peeling off her gloves. “I hate it. Like in the past year I’ve probably done this same sea turtle six other times. Exact copies. All of them on eighteen-year-old girls who don’t have a clue what they want. The kind of girls who walk into the store not knowing what they want and just pick out the first pretty thing they see on the wall. Fuck, it’s lame. Come with me.”
“What?”
“Pull up your pants. Come with me.”
I had no choice. She had already left me behind. I glanced down at the ink on my skin. She’d barely even begun. I jumped off the table, yanking up my jeans over the tiny black blob on my ass, and I followed her. She led me deeper into the shop, past a couple other unoccupied stations, toward a back room. It looked more like a break room than anything. She sat at a computer, patting the chair next to her.
Hesitantly, I sat down beside her. Had she gained nothing from my lecture on safety and strangers? I guess not.
After a moment waiting on the computer to boot itself up, she typed “sea turtle tattoos” into Google, and started scrolling through images. “The designs from the wall, the ones that John has drawn,” she started talking. I didn’t know who John was, I guessed maybe the owner of this place? Her boss? “They’re great designs, beautiful designs, but none of them very unique.” This coming from a woman with mostly flowers on her skin. Bubbly, colorful flowers. “Because anyone who walks in the front door can look at John’s art and choose that turtle off the wall. You’ll be on the beach this summer, and I promise you’ll see someone walk by with your same turtle on her shoulder. Or on her foot. Maybe on her ass, just like you.”
I’d be in Maine this summer. But even if I were here, it would be the least of my concerns. “Maybe I’ll find my soulmate that way,” I muttered. “We can have matching turtle ass tattoos and ride off into the sunset together.”
She smiled at my dry humor. Which was amazing in itself because most people never got my jokes, when I made those ‘true to myself’ kind of jokes. “I have an idea.” She left me and the computer. At the table in the room, she grabbed a piece of plain white paper. She began to sketch something. Her own turtle. It wasn’t at all what I had in mind when I decided I wanted this tattoo. The one I’d chosen from John’s wall of art was truer to real life. But her version—it was made up of all these cuts and lines. Completely abstract. It was a piece of art. I don’t know why, but I instantly loved it. Something about it spoke to me. And then the shell of the turtle, instead of giving it a normal shell, she gave it sails. It was half turtle and half pirate ship. Who knows what the fuck it was? But I loved it. I loved it fiercely. I wanted this on my skin.
She shrugged when she finished, passing over her design to me.
I took the paper. “I like it. Let’s do this.”
“It’s weird. I know.”
“It is weird, but I’m choosing this. Can you put it on my ass now, Amanda? Please?”
Again, she smiled at me. Damn, she had a pretty smile. “One turtle ass tattoo coming right up.”
~ CHAPTER 2 ~
AMANDA
This guy was strange. Like ‘super, impossible-to-figure-out, this-conundrum-will-drive-me-insane’ kind of strange.
So far, I’d gathered that he was wealthy. Like, super wealthy. Like, if he told me he was some famous actor, I wouldn’t have been surprised. I could smell it on him. Like, literally, as I pressed the tattoo gun to his fair skin, I thought this in my head. I’d never smelled anyone who smelled as good as this guy. It had to be what money fucking smelled like. I wouldn’t know, I’d never had much in that department, but he smelled like he cost a fortune.