“Fair,” she says, and starts spinning in a circle.
For a long moment, I watch her spin, arms out, locs held away from her face in a spiky ponytail. I’m head-to-toe in protective gear but Lainey’s just got her skates on, probably because she doesn’t fall on her ass every time she turns around in these things.
She spins. I put my skates on the bench in front of me and look at them: bright teal with pink laces and pink wheels. If you’re gonna buy roller skates on a whim, they may as well be visible from space.
“How many butt tattoos do you think there are?” I ask Lainey, who stops spinning to face me. For the first time, she wobbles slightly.
“Do you mean in the world, or with Seth’s name on them?” she asks, rocking from skate to skate. “In the world? Millions, probably. You’ve got one.”
“The other thing,” I say, resignedly.
Unlike my sisters or my family, Lainey knows everything. We’ve been casual friends since high school, where she was a year behind me and also in Art Club, and best friends since I moved back to town two years ago.
She’s an awesome badass weirdo who counsels troubled teens for a living, and I love her.
“Probably just the one, though you’d know better than me at estimating tattoo numbers,” she says. “How many butt tattoos do you see?”
“Some?” I hazard.
They’re actually not particularly common. Tattoos are expensive. Most people want to spend the money on something they can show off to the public.
“And of those, how many are names?”
I shift my feet on the bench, rolling my fun pink wheels back and forth.
“A higher percentage than tattoos in general, but not a lot,” I admit.
“So, statistically speaking, there aren’t likely to be a lot of butt tattoos in the Sprucevale region,” she says. “And when you consider that the population of women who know Seth Loveless —”
I snort at know.
“ — Is, in terms of statistics, very small, the number of butt tattoos with his name on them is likely to be vanishingly small,” she finishes. “As in, I think you’ve probably seen the only one.”
I sigh.
“What if there’s a club?” I say, rolling my feet again. “Maybe there’s a harem, Lainey. Maybe there’s an entire secret society of women who have ‘Property of Seth Loveless’ tattooed on their butts, and he takes turns sleeping with them and admiring their butt tattoos, and how am I supposed to compete with a woman who’ll put his name on her ass?!”
Lainey gives me a long, considering look as she floats backward on her skates, then forward, all without lifting a foot off the ground. I recognize the look as her a lot to unpack here look.
“You should take up figure skating,” I say.
“It’s interesting that you’re framing this issue as a competition with another woman, rather than a constantly-evolving series of choices with a complex history,” she finally says.
“Wow, and which of those things do you think it is?” I deadpan.
She spins once, grinning.
“I’m neutral,” she laughs.
“Liar.”
“Fine. I think the butt tattoo is an unfortunately-timed and particularly visceral reminder of your issues with Seth,” she says. “I mean, you came over last week you had two glasses of wine and stood on my couch gesturing wildly and shouting ‘This is why, this is exactly why!’”
Past me is right, because this is exactly why Seth and I aren’t together.
“It is,” I say. “I fucking hate seeing someone at Walmart or the grocery store or downtown and knowing that we’ve done the exact same thing with the exact same person.”
“Virtually everyone has former sexual partners,” she points out.
“Okay, I hate seeing everyone at those places and thinking, hey, all the women in the produce section right now have something in common!”
I’m exaggerating, but Lainey knows it and does some more spinning instead of correcting me.
“And maybe one of them has a secret butt tattoo,” I finish.
She swirls around one more time, then stops herself on the bottom bench of the bleachers, then carefully climbs in, stretching her legs in front of her and leaning back against the railing.
“All right,” she says. “In my wildly unprofessional opinion, that’s a fucked up tattoo to get, but I also think it says considerably more about Mindy than it does about anyone else, and it’s particularly interesting —”
“There’s that word,” I say.
Lainey flips me off and keeps talking.
“ — That she claims to only be getting it covered at the behest of another man, because God knows if I got that tattoo and then we broke up? I’d be scrubbing the shit out of it —"
“That won’t work,” I point out.
“ — Okay, using one of those pore vacuum things for blackheads?”
“Do you know what a tattoo is?”
“Applying a belt sander to my ass —”
“Major infection, horrific scarring.”
“Would you please engage with the spirit and not the letter of my statement?” she says, and I laugh.
“You’d figure out it,” I say.
“Exactly. Though I also wouldn’t get that tattoo in the first place. With anyone’s name.”
For a moment, she stares across the gym, suddenly distant.
“You okay?” I ask, after a beat.
She sighs.
“I always wonder what leads women to do shit like that,” she admits. “Property of. She has no idea.”
Awkwardly, I pull my skates off the bench in front of me, and they land with a loud, echoing thump on the bleachers. Without standing — much, much too risky — I scoot over to where Lainey’s sitting, get into the footwell next to her, and put my arms around her waist, my head somewhere around her boob.
“Thanks,” she says.
“You’re a lovely, magnificent jaguar,” I say.
“You’re a beautiful, stupendous manatee,” she says back, putting her arm around my shoulders. “You still want to learn to skate backwards, or should we call it a day?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Seth
Then, one day, I see her.
I knew it would happen. It’s happened plenty before. It’s why we have the rules I hate.
It’s a Thursday night, just after seven. I volunteered to take Rusty to her tap dance class to give Daniel and Charlie a break, and afterward she talked me into walking to the Mountain Grind for hot chocolate.
It didn’t take much convincing. I’m a softie.
“She’s kind of a know-it-all, but she’s usually right,” Rusty’s saying. “And even though her parents were muggles, she’s way better at magic than the boys. And she’s way cooler.”
Rusty sighs.
“You think Dad and Charlie would let me go to boarding school?” she asks, looking up at me.
“Not a chance,” I say, grinning. “Wouldn’t you miss them? And Thomas?”
“I’d be home for holidays and stuff,” she says.