Fade Back (A Stepbrother Romance Novella) (3 page)

S
he was early
, damn it: her internal clock was off. Becka lingered around the corner for a few minutes, absently scrolling through her Instagram pictures from the night before. Wednesdays were always big at the club. She mentally ticked off the faces she'd flirted with and the ones she planned to, bolstering her confidence with the echoing proclamations and promises she'd elicited. She told herself the pitter-patter in her chest was anticipation of the inking needles, or a by-product of her hangover; anything except the chiseled face of the man about to lay her out on a table and... She stopped herself from thinking any further along that tantalizing line. She forced herself to think about her job, and the crumbs Jerome left all over the couch when Becka finally emerged from the bathroom after applying her make-up, to find him gone with the front door ajar.

Reminding herself of her best friend's most irritating habits seemed to do the trick, and by the time she was ready to descend the seedy steps, she was as relaxed as she'd been all week.

When she walked through the door, she couldn't detect Karen's skulking presence behind the desk, and only one lamp beside the beaded curtain glowed to light the room. Becka wondered for a moment if she'd come in on the wrong day, but the unlocked door and the faint thrum of guitar-based rock trickling out of an unseen radio assured her someone was definitely home.

"Hi… Karen?" Becka’s voice wavered into the empty store-front.

"She's not here, I'm afraid,” Fitz’s voice wafted out from the curtain, followed shortly by the man himself. He wore the same tattered jeans as before, the flanks dotted with ink stains to match his calloused hands. "You know Mick, don't you? It’s something with his niece, or whatever. Doesn't matter. Anyway, come on through!" Fitz was chattier than on their last meeting.

Becka wasn't sure if she imagined a nervousness in the guy, who seemed almost giddy in comparison to the cool dude of a few days before. Becka liked it.

"So I want to show you the design, of course, I mean in case you don't like it. Or want to change it or something,” Fitz mumbled as he ruffled through sheaves of cartridge paper littered with sketches. Every scribble looked like a masterpiece to Becka, but when Fitz, blushing adorably, extracted one piece and smoothed it out on the padded table, she knew this was definitely for her.

It was a circle, precise and exact, with tangents striking out from its edges like a fan. This hard black fringe somehow bent and extended inwards into the circle, refracting and connecting beams to support a kaleidoscope of stained glass. Angles and line segments interacted to form an endless series of shapes, undulating across the paper's surface, and at their very center, where the magic of these lines should have created a point, there was instead a pulsing red heart, carved from the blankness by glorious ink.

Becka was speechless. She bit her pouting lower lip and nodded slowly, vowels escaping her mouth, undefined by consonants, "Ohhhooeeeeuuuaaaahhh..."

"Can I take that as a yes?" Fitz asked, his composure returned in the face of such overwhelming approval.

"Yes! I love it. You're amazing—
It's
amazing. The design, I mean. And you, the designer of the design. Oh wow. Shut up, Becka."

"I'll take the compliment!" Fitz laughed, throwing his hands up before turning around to busy himself with his inks and machinery, mussing up his gorgeous hair, the square lines of his jaw teasing her beside the curves of his neck. “Where do you want it?”

“Umm, I was thinking on my rib cage, off to the side… but this design, it should probably go right in the center, do you think?”

“Yeah, I’d have to agree. Right below your… umm… bra line, in the middle.”

Becka was pretty sure she'd seen her tattoo artist's blush deepen before this hurried about-face, and once again, the tug of distant recognition returned. Why did he look so familiar? She was grateful when Fitz waved a hand behind him for her to lie down on the table. His eyes remained studiously averted as Becka pulled off the plain navy tank top she'd finally selected, but she could see the guy glancing in his peripheral vision. She was glad she wore a sexy little lacy bra underneath. The idea of being scoped out by this supposedly unattainable man made Becka horny enough to squeeze her legs together as she lay down, desperate to relieve the tingling. This was ridiculous. The air in the room felt hot, heavy with expectation. Yet it gave her goosebumps as she wrapped the towel he handed to her under her bra, to cover it up. She cursed mentally at this necessity—now he won’t appreciate her lacy number that covered her perfect perky breasts.

"So, today I'm just going to do the outlines: only black, and then you'll need to come back for the next session. After something like this, most people need a week to recover. Are you ready?" Every word from Fitz’s mouth sounded laden with sexual promise to Becka, and it wasn't until the needle started buzzing that she finally felt the humming between her legs go down.

"Okay, so quick note: this shouldn't really hurt, but you're going to want to wriggle. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT wriggle. Grip the table sides if you have to but keep your back straight and stay still. Let me know if you need a break, okay?”

Becka nodded and closed her eyes tight. The bench she was on was somewhere between a dentist's chair and a massage table, padded with soft leather and smelling faintly of disinfectant, and the earthier tone of sweat beneath it. She thought about how many bodies had pressed into this seat, faces ringed with sweat and blushed with anticipation, how many girls lusted for Fitz’s touch as he drafted out the outlines, pressing cool sheets of transfer paper against the feverish skin of her body. She wondered how many of those girls had wanted to unzip those tattered jeans and put the advantages of this table to good use. A moan escaped from deep in her chest before she had a chance to stop it. When she heard Fitz chuckle,
"I haven't even started yet,”
it was almost too much for her to bear. She couldn't be left in silence here, or her imagination would get the better of her.

"Are we allowed to talk during?"

"We can, as long as you don't wriggle. Or laugh. And try not to breathe too much." His tone was teasing, but it made Becka want to do all three at once. Maybe if she just rolled onto her side, and kind of, you know... Oh stop it, let the man do his job, the angel on her shoulder said snippily. He probably gets this all the time.

"That's okay, you can do most of the talking,” Becka said, and was surprised to hear a lengthy pause, punctuated only by the insistent buzzing of Fitz’s pen.

"I could put the radio on if you think you'll be bored?"

"No, I mean, tell me about yourself."

"Oh, you don't want to hear that kind of shit. Do girls like you like TV?"

“Girls like me?" Becka teased him, enjoying the nervous energy Fitz was projecting, distracting her from her own awkwardness.

"You know, twenty-year-olds. You work down at Lux, don't you?"

"How do you know that?"

"Oh... Karen said something. She can be a real loud mouth."

"Oh really?" Becka remembered the laconic-to-the-point-of-hostility Karen and raised an eyebrow.

"....Yeah. She's pretty talkative one-on-one, you know."

"I'll bet. I work at Lux but I'm not, like, married to it. Anyway I thought you were meant to be doing the talking. I'm just lying here. Still as a log. No wriggling."

"No wriggling!” Becka’s eyes were closed but she could hear a smile in Fitz’s voice. “I’m a homebody I guess. Old dogs and all that."

"Shut up, old? You can't be a day over twenty-nine.”

"Ha! That's cute. Well, I feel old, anyway. I get restless sometimes, but that's when it's time to pack up my gear and go someplace else. I've guested in studios all up and down the country, just for the change of scenery. But everywhere you go, the same old problems come up."

"Like what?" Becka asked softly.

"Loneliness, mostly." Fitz replied, his voice like a lost puppy that Becka desperately wanted to scoop up and hold close. Instead, she changed the subject.

"Where was your favorite place you lived?" Becka asked, thinking to herself,
restless
: that's how Lux made her feel. And if she was totally honest with herself, a little lonely too.

"Portland, I think. For a while, anyway. It's the only place I'd go back to, I think. Not that I can."

"Why... if you don't mind me asking?" Becka felt Fitz bristle at the question, and wished she could take it back, scooping that one syllable up in a cupped hand and swallowing it down. And Portland… Why did that tug at the back of her memories too? Eventually, Fitz answered.

"Things didn't go so well there for me in the end. But they seemed really good at first, you know? Ah well, c'est la vie et cetera and so on. Okay, brace yourself. We're starting the needles."

"You mean you haven't yet?!" Becka was relieved to hear Fitz’s saucy chuckle again, and settled in to the table.

She braced herself against the needle, but her first jolt came when she felt Fitz’s cool, powerful hand spread against the naked flesh of her chest and upper belly, pressing down gently with a tantalizing hint of force. Oh boy. This guy. Wow.

"Nope, that was a regular pen. Sorry. Here we go!"

I
t didn't really hurt
, or at least the pain was easy to trace along with the needle, disappearing as quickly as it arrived, with Fitz’s hand deftly moving from line to line. It stung just enough for the tingling and wetness between Becka’s thighs to finally go away, which was a relief in itself. For the most part, they were quiet. Becka let her tattoo artist focus on his work, enjoying the steady whisper of his breath, her body still humming with every touch.

In the intermissions, when Fitz refilled his ink and fiddled about with fresh needles, Becka stretched, and their chatting resumed.

"I've never been to Portland, though I hear it's pretty cool."

"It's beautiful, but it might be just a little too hip for me, truth be told."

"Too hip? For an award-winning tattoo artist? Are you kidding?"

Fitz chuckled again and shrugged in a self-effacing gesture; Becka found it so disarmingly cute she thought she might just fall in love with it.
Fall in love? Shut up, Becka.

"Well, I knew a girl there. She was a lot cooler than me I guess 'coz she never had that problem. It gave the whole town this kind of hipper-than-thou vibe for me, and I just can't seem to shake it. But yeah, ostensibly, I should've fit right in."

"You didn't?" Becka asked, genuinely perplexed that a guy this handsome would have trouble fitting in anywhere. She also wondered if she'd be receiving any salacious tidbits regarding the nasty Wendy’s gossip about Fitz’s predilections.

"It didn't feel right, I guess. My ex," Becka’s heart sung at that laden syllable. Ex. So he dated. He might date again. He had a girlfriend, but not anymore. If Jerome were there, he would have been screaming ALL ABOARD at the top of his lungs. If Mick were there, he'd have rolled his eyes and said
duh.
But neither of them was there, so instead Becka just listened. “She kind of ruled that scene, and in the end I just didn't feel like my interest in the place was worth all the drama, considering I was the newcomer, so to speak. Either way, it turned out all her friends loved the drama and all my friends were her friends so I packed up and left, but two years is plenty of time to get to love a place."

Two years he'd been with that other girl? That was almost as long as Becka had been out of her geeky shell. In the three years since Becka burst through the doors of this new partying lifestyle, she barely remembered who she was before, and a lot of that she attributed to the admirers she'd teased along the way, and the confidence they’d given her. She tried to imagine forsaking the scores of conquests she'd had in that time for one person, and simply couldn't.

"Two years is a long time."

"For you maybe, but you're just a kid!"

Becka was surprised to find herself smarting from this. She was used to her youth being seen as a commodity, and deeply desirable at that. In her world, anyone over twenty-five had better be transitioning into a lawyer or a doctor or they'd desiccate into an aged, grandmotherly fossil. And yet,` here was Fitz: probably almost thirty but still as hot as they come.

"So what if I'm just a kid? Two years is a long time when you could have anyone you wanted!" She didn't mean to blurt that out, but luckily Fitz took it as a compliment. Becka was gratified to see him blush again as he gave her a sideways glance between the changes of the needles, the crinkles around Fitz’s eyes deepening with his grin.

"Yeah, but what if you only want one person, and you can't have them? Or you can have them, but they want everyone else as well?"

"Well, then it's time to look for someone else!"

"I've done enough of that in my time. I figured it was time to just settle in and focus on art. Let someone else find me for a change."

Now it was Becka’s turn to blush. Fitz’s smiling gaze lingered on her and she could feel every second of it stretching out for an eternity. She felt herself getting restless again, and to cover her embarrassment, she clapped her hands in enthusiasm when Fitz was changing the ink as she giddily shouted, "Alright! Let's get back to it!" when what she really wanted to do was sit beneath that lingering stare and give Fitz something to see.

"There's not much more to go for today, just a few more lines. How are you feeling, by the way?"

"It feels kind of like getting bit by a bug or something, but like, over and over again. Am I going to bleed at all?"

"Y'know some do, but it looks like you're going to be pretty clean. You've got a thick skin."

"I heard from this guy once that he got a tattoo, and it scabbed over so much that the whole thing came off, or faded away, when he scratched it, and he sued. Or he was going to sue. Or something." Becka suddenly felt stupid. This anecdote was stupid. She couldn't even remember the guy's name, or what the tattoo was. It was just another of the black light conversations she had with the other Lux patrons, barking inanities into deaf ears until somebody either went in for a kiss, or turned away. She tried to think of the details, why Fitz might find this story cute or interesting, some texture which would make it a worthwhile use of her breath. She couldn't think of anything.

"I think he was probably pulling your leg. Or his tattooist was really terrible at their job. Let's go with terrible, shall we? Well, I assure you I am not terrible, and this is going to look great. My designs are permanent. They fade with time, just a bit, but they don’t fade
away
.”

"I trust you," Becka mumbled closing her eyes, and felt the pen hover over her chest before Fitz again, tender as ever, applied its buzzing nib to her marker-festooned flesh.

"So how do you know Mick?” Fitz sounded forcefully casual as he stretched Becka’s skin.

"How do you know I know Mick?” Becka countered playfully.

"Because Karen said, doh.”

"Oh yeah!" Becka giggled, which earned her a playful slap and an admonishment from Fitz: "No wriggling OR giggling!"

"We met in college. He taught me how to break this one difficult code—back when I was a bespectacled nerdy nerd—and I taught him how to think positively. As it turned out, I'm a better student than I am a teacher."

"Ha! Yeah, he's a little on the sarcastic side, but no one could blame you for that. You were nerdy before? Would’ve never thought that.”

"Are you calling me pretty?" Becka teased, for the first time all afternoon feeling a little in control of this situation. She was used to flattery, but something about Fitz’s bashful delivery made her happier than a thousand party guys prostrating themselves at her feet.

"I guess, maybe I am," came Fitz’s reply, which made Becka blush even harder. She could imagine the crimson rushing down her neck and spreading across the fair skin of her chest. She must be burning to the touch.

"Well, you smell incredible," Becka said, muttering under her breath.

"Thank you," Fitz almost whispered. He drew on in silence for the next few minutes, while each of them contemplated their chosen words, each assailed with feelings of hesitant regret and bolstered by their boldness. The air grew thicker between them, to the point where Becka was sure she could feel Fitz’s breath against the fine hairs of her arm, the sweep of an errant touch of Fitz’s hand on her stomach, bathed in the combination of cologne, ink, clean laundry, and some unidentified earthy tones which made up his melange. Becka breathed deep. If she could only bottle it...

The silence intensified to the point where Becka, almost lost in the vastness, began to force herself to shore out of habit.

"So... This tattoo of mine, how did you come up with it?" she asked, trying to sound affable, but the quaver in her voice gave away her curiosity.

Fitz continued drawing, a thoughtful 'Hmmmm' his only indication of having heard. Becka wondered if she should ask again but Fitz finally spoke up, with a shake in his voice to match Becka’s. "I don't want you to think I'm being... I dunno, presumptuous."

"Oh, don't worry about that. Presuming is what most of my friends do."

"Well, I don't. I guess it's just... I do a lot of tats for young girls like you. They're always hot, and confident, and they think they know exactly what they want. It's like they were born with this sense that they, I don't know, that they fit in. And when you came in, it was like you could have been just like these girls, and that you could fit in, but there was something about you that just didn't. I don't want to say you're vulnerable, because we all are, I think. But the way you held that crumpled paper, and all the scribbling on it, all the doubt and fear... I guess I just didn't want you to have to be like that crowd when you've got something better. I thought there was more to you than a line from a movie, and I think you think it too."