Tattoo Thief (BOOK 1) (25 page)

I wait but my eyelids are heavy with tequila and exhaustion. I was up at the butt crack of dawn cleaning and finishing Gavin’s apartment before my mom arrived.

The phone jolts me awake.

“Hello?” My voice is foggy with sleep.

“Beryl. Sounds like you’re already in bed.” I hear the familiar rasp in Gavin’s voice and savor the sound of my name on his lips.

“Mmm. Yeah.”

“Our bed?”

“Yes.”

“On your side or mine?”

“Mine, but I’ll warn you—I’m a sprawler.”

“And a snorer. You told me.”

“Let’s pretend I never said that.” I roll over in the smooth, cool sheets and inhale the smell of his shirt again. “I got your song. I love it. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. The minute I got to Bali, something changed. I opened up my notebook and just started writing. And everything came out. All the notes I’ve made during my trip started to make sense, and it was like a flood.”

“Gav, that’s great. That’s amazing. I’m so glad you’re OK.”

“I’m better than OK! I’ve got tons of energy with all the walking I’ve been doing, and no booze, and music’s just coming out my ears. I called the band today and we’re going to go back to the studio next week. We’re ready—we needed new material, and the stuff our label threw at us after
Beast
was just garbage. But this stuff’s new and raw and different. It’s going to take our music to a new place.”

I want to tell him I’m happy for him, but I’m stuck on the first part of his statement:
next week.

“Does that mean you’re coming home?

“Yes. I’m booking a flight as soon as possible. I can’t wait to see you and hold you.”

“And try some of the passion fruit gelato you sent me? It’s fantastic.”

“And see what you’ve done to my place. And see Jasper. I feel like there’s so much I missed out on—not because of my trip, but before. I didn’t really appreciate what my life could be.”

“And what about Lulu?” It’s hard to even ask this question, but I have to.

“I loved Lulu. But I wasn’t enough for her. She inspired my music, helped me work through the rough patches, but I learned on this trip that the music didn’t come from her. I’ve got it in me, and I’m just discovering new ways to draw it out.”

“She got you un-stuck.”

“Yeah. That’s what she did really well. And you got me un-stuck too. And this trip, it just
changed
me. I’ve spent so much time trying to become a star that I forgot about doing other stuff. Important stuff.”

“You mean, the stuff that lasts even if you’re not a star anymore?”

“Yes.”

I take a huge breath and stretch across Gavin’s bed. “I like that stuff. I’m figuring out who I am now that I’m not a student anymore. Like with my writing. I spent four years in J-school and it only took ten months to figure out I hated it, and I hated the coffee shop, too. Now what do I do?”

“That’s a delicious question, Beryl. Because you can do anything.”

“Says the rock star with unlimited funds.”

“To the girl with unlimited potential.”

“You
get
that I’m probably never going to be a famous writer, right? Even if I write my whole life, even if I sell stories, even if I publish a book.”

“Beryl, listen to me. That’s not the point. My friends and I didn’t start our band to get famous. We just wanted to have fun, play music, and not have to work at other jobs if we could get away with it.
That
was the point. But then it shifted, and I got lost. The label started talking about market positioning and pushing a bunch of pre-fab songs at us. It stopped being fun.”

“I think I’m following you.”

“Good. Because your writing career can be exactly the same way. You do it because it’s fun, because you’re good at it, and because it gives you joy—and maybe you even make some money. But if you judge your success as a writer by whether you become a star or not, you automatically lose.”

“But you won. You made it.”

“No, I lost. I lost most of my friends outside of the band when we hit the top of the charts. I lost Lulu. And it’s possible I might lose our record deal if we force the issue about what kind of music I want us to do next.”

“Your song was really different from anything I heard on your other CDs.”

“Yeah, that’ll probably be a fiasco. The marketing department will pitch a fit. But you know what? I don’t care. I got my fun back, Beryl.”

I hug Gavin’s pillow, hearing the smile in his voice from across the ocean.

“Well, I’ll take you any way I can get you, rock star or not, Gavin Slater. Because you’re pretty awesome.”

“You’re pretty awesome, too.”

“Hey, Gavin?”

“Yeah?”

“If I told you I was naked in your bed, would you come home faster?”

“I’m on my way.”

My mom came back to Gavin’s apartment after I fell asleep last night, but now she’s up, dressed, and raring to go to brunch even before I’ve made coffee.

Who is this new Meredith and what has she done with my mother? In Eugene, Mom spent Sundays reading in her pajamas and often never got out of pajamas at all.

We walk Jasper through Central Park to an Upper East Side brunch spot. My mom gushes the whole walk about the view from Rockefeller Center, the late-night dessert spot Dan took her to, and everything she and Dan caught up on.

I’ll bet not
everything
. I ask her if she kissed him and she blushes crimson but furrows her brow at me.

“Beryl. That’s
not
something I’m ready to talk about.”

I raise my brow and mentally save that line to parrot back to her when she grills me about
my
love life.

The morning is crisp and I tie up Jasper at the sidewalk table where Dan’s already waiting for us. He stands and wraps an arm around my mother’s waist to kiss her in greeting. She offers her cheek but he pulls her closer, giving her a good, hard kiss on the mouth.

Holy high-school sweethearts, Batman.

Mom frowns at me. “Don’t start.”

“I’m just here for the food.” I smirk but bury my nose in the menu. Mom sits and gives Jasper a lot of attention but I think she’s just self-conscious under Dan’s heated gaze.

I’m happy for them.

And totally, outrageously jealous. I wish Gavin were here. I wish he were kissing me at brunch after a spectacular night together.

“So what are your plans today, ladies?” Dan asks, and I mumble something about taking mom on a sightseeing bus tour before the spa appointment.

“Meredith, since Beryl’s busy this afternoon, I’d love to take you exploring. There’s a food tour of the Lower East Side’s ethnic restaurants that I think you’d enjoy. The green tea creampuffs and shrimp dumplings are fantastic, and there’s a pickle place that makes habanero pickled pineapple.”

Dumplings! Dan’s speaking my language. Mental note to find out where he goes.

Even though I know my mother’s rarely more adventurous than salad and casserole, I hear her accept with enthusiasm. I spend the rest of brunch watching their back-and-forth like a tennis match.

***

I feel like an impostor as I follow a beautiful girl through the hushed corridors of Bliss Spa. We’ve passed two waterfalls, a Japanese-style tea suite and dozens of treatment rooms.

She takes me to a locker room that looks like it belongs in a palace. Not that I’ve been to a palace, but I’ve seen my share of period movies. Marble and chrome are everywhere and my bare feet melt into the heated floors.

The girl takes my phone. “Spa policy!” she chirps and misses my scowl. She opens a slender closet door where a fluffy white robe waits for me to swap with my clothes.

“You have fifteen minutes before your first treatment in the mud room,” she tells me. “Once you’ve changed, take a seat in the tea lounge. Someone will escort you between each session.”

Gavin’s signed me up for the royal treatment—a mud wrap followed by a full-body scrub, then a ninety-minute massage, facial, mani/pedi and salon appointment.

I may never leave.

Then again, the spa folks have no idea what they’re up against. Other than a couple of massages, I’ve never done the spa thing. I get my hair cut at a place that charges twenty bucks. I’ve never even had a pedicure.

Will that be weird? I vow to go with the flow. Try new things.

I sip green tea in the lounge with a half-dozen “no talking” signs and more than a dozen women ignoring them. Even though everyone’s in identical robes and slippers, no jewelry and little makeup, gossip indicates the social status pecking order.

I eavesdrop, catching snippets about whether
that bitch
had more work done. One of the women catches my eye. “Do you have something to add to our conversation, or are you just along for the ride?”

I shake my head, trying to get off the hook with an apologetic smile.

“Then perhaps you should relax a bit further away,” another woman says, inclining her head toward an empty bench at the opposite side of the lounge.

Ouch. But I’m not about to lose a stupid spa turf war.

I stand, stretching to my full height, and lean in to their cluster with a whisper. “Ladies, you might want to keep your voices down. You don’t know who I am. But I know
exactly
who you are.”

I drift away, letting them chew on the possibilities of my threat. Now that I’ve seen behind the curtain of so many of New York’s elite, they no longer scare me. Everyone has secrets that could undermine their reputations.

The rude women are still staring at me when a tiny woman beckons me to follow her to a treatment room swirling with new age music, low light, and the scent of lavender. She tells me to start face down—naked!—on the vinyl-covered table and then she steps out of the room.

I hang my robe on a peg and arrange myself on the table under a thin sheet. I wiggle, adjusting my boobs so they’re not smashed beneath me. I wiggle some more, fidgeting to find the right way to position my legs as she reenters the room.

“You need a bolster.” She slips a half-cylinder pillow under my feet to elevate them. Instantly, the pressure on my lower back is gone. “I’m Iris. Is this your first time?”

I confess my spa-virgin status to Iris as she coats my body in thick, gooey mud. The fat paintbrush tickles as she applies the mud, explaining that it will “draw out impurities.”

My mind’s in the gutter with that comment and I snort. It’ll take a lot more than a mud wrap to relieve me of the impure thoughts I’ve been having about Gavin.

He’s coming home. I’m not sure when, but I’m excited and scared and lusty and nervous all at once.

I worry I’ll disappoint him. I’m just me—pretty, but not a stunner like Lulu. Talented? Hell, I don’t know. You’re reading my writing. You decide.

I worry he’ll disappoint me. That he’ll be the cocky rock star I read about in
Spin
, instead of the confused, wrecked, passionate guy I’ve been chatting with.

I don’t want the rock star—I want the Gavin who wrapped me up in his favorite T-shirt after a very scary night. The Gavin who figured out how to send me passion fruit gelato on my birthday. That’s the Gavin I know.

Or think I know.

I worry that reality won’t work. That outside of a chat session, we won’t connect in real life the way we did online. Will we have chemistry? Will he still want to do the things he promised to do to me once he sees me in person?

Iris removes the mud from my back and helps me roll over so she can coat the other side of me. I sigh deeply and she mistakes it for relaxation—but mostly, it’s angst.

I’m crazy about him.

Truth.

And if Gavin takes one look at me and runs the other way, my heart will be shredded. Eugene-Beryl would grieve and move home. The budding New York-Beryl? I have no idea how I’d survive it.

Maybe I need a strategy. Maybe I should have my guard up in case things don’t go as planned. I try a few careless phrases in my mind, trying to be dismissive of too little feeling from Gavin. I try to be cool, aloof, disinterested.

But who am I kidding?

The very reason I’m so eager to see Gavin is the fact that he was real with me. He’s not the packaged product I imagined when I first saw him online. I’ve given him truth in return—secrets I haven’t shared with anyone. Feelings that run deeper than I ever thought possible, even after a year and a half with Jeff.

Iris finishes the mud and rinses me with a high-pressure showerhead that makes me squirm. She rubs a soapy lather all over my body and then pulls two coarse mittens over her hands. She scrubs furiously on my skin, up and down every limb, my back, my armpits, even—cringe—my butt.

“Pressure OK?” she asks brightly, not seeing me cringe.

“It’s fine,” I lie. I open my eyes and see rolls of dead skin being sloughed off my arms, the way it comes off after a sunburn and a shower.

Gross, yet strangely satisfying.

When that peculiar brand of torture is over, I’m transferred to another room with a carpeted floor instead of tile. The sound of a trickling fountain kind of makes me want to pee. Jared’s in charge of my massage and I’m blissed out in minutes under his long, sweeping strokes.

I’m snoring on the massage table when he’s through. No wonder rich people go to spas. If I had as much money as Gavin, I’d be here every weekend.

Or daily. I could handle daily.

In the salon, a stylist walks me to a treatment room where she instructs me to lie down on another table. “I just can’t let you out of here without fixing those brows,” she says sternly. “They’re all wrong for your eyes. Have you been threaded before?”

I shake my head and watch as the woman unwinds several lengths from a fat spool of white cotton thread.

“Don’t worry. It doesn’t hurt much.”

The “much” is what I’m worried about. I remember a failed brow-waxing experiment in college with Stella—it felt like she was tearing my skin off.

I exhale and chant “try new things” in my head as fast as possible, bracing myself.

I hear a high twang, like a tiny stringed instrument being plucked, and feel the thread run above my brow. Two strands twist together and rip lines of hair out of my face. It’s not nearly as bad as wax and when I finally inspect the finished product in a mirror, I have to admit it works.