Tonic (11 page)

The night she sent me to the hospital after knocking me out with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s was the last. I kicked her out and filed for divorce. She went to stay with Hal.

Smug didn’t begin to cover it. Hal had always been so sure he could do everything better than me. Run a shop. Handle Liz. So when he walked out the door, taking my baggage with him, I waved goodbye without a regret. I just didn’t know he’d be my shadow for the rest of my days.

It started with him opening his shop, modeling nearly everything after mine. He tried to shark my artists. Tried to copy my life. But in the end, a copy of an original is never as good. Like a fax, distorted by perception, made grainy by misinterpretation.

And now, here I was. I’d have to talk about Liz. On camera. I’d been warned, and I believed every word Annika said.
 

Annika.
 

I was still chewing on the exchange, just as I had been all day. We’d been having a go at each other, all right. And at the mention of it, I couldn’t help but think of Liz again in comparison. I’d done this before, survived a relationship fueled by gasoline and a hot match. Barely survived. And now, after all this time, the first girl to wake me up wasn’t much different.
 

Part of me wanted to justify their differences. Annika wasn’t Liz, not by a long shot. We pushed each other, but it wasn’t destructive. Was it?
 

After her display that morning, I wasn’t so sure.

The difference between Annika and Liz was that Annika was sorry. She apologized and meant it, I thought, at least. Liz and I would just wake up and pretend like nothing had happened. Nothing was ever solved, and so the wheel would turn again and again, over and over, to no end.

But I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t want to push. I just wanted to be happy.
 

My head ached, and I popped some ibuprofen between clients, wishing there were a pill to set the rest of me to rights. Annika said she wasn’t interested in me, and that was probably for the best. The whole ordeal was doing its best to remind me why I’d been single for so long, resigned to be alone, maybe forever.

I took a long pull from my water bottle as I waited for my next job to walk in, and Patrick rolled his chair over to the short wall between our stations, his eyes somehow bright and dark, searching mine.
 

See, Patrick knew me, and he knew me well. He’d come into the shop near ten years before, all arms and legs, eyes sunken into his head, with a sketchbook under his arm packed cover-to-cover in promise. So I hired him, the quiet boy, the drug addict, and I gave him a place to stay, a place to work, a place to call home, which wasn’t something he’d had much of in his life. And in doing that, he became like a brother to me and to Shep.

I smiled at him to cover for the fact that I was broody. “Going okay over there?”

He nodded and leaned on the wall. “How about you? Doing okay?”

“Never better, man. Never better.”

He jacked a dark eyebrow. “That so? Penny spilled the beans about earlier with Annika.”

I chuffed. “She would. It really wasn’t anything to talk about.”

“You cussed her out in front of half the crew.”

I shrugged. “She had it coming.”

He laughed at that. “I’m sure she did.”

“Really, it’s fine,” I reassured him. “She just hit a soft spot, that’s all. Wanted to talk about Liz and did it in a way that wasn’t copasetic. But she came up after and apologized, so we’re good. And that’s all there is to tell.”

“What’s going on with you two? There’s been a lot of talk that you two have a thing going.”

I wasn’t sure if I could evade him, so I only gave it a half-assed attempt. I sighed. “There’s nothing going on.”

“But you want there to be something going on.”

I sniffed and scratched at my beard. “Doesn’t really matter what I want.”

He made a face. “Why are you being like this? It’s not like you to make me drag details out of you.”

I sighed again and pulled up a little closer, hanging my arms on the wall next to his. “I don’t know, Tricky. I really don’t. It’s just that from the second she walked through that door, she’s been under my skin, and I can’t shake her.”

He nodded. “I know how that goes. What’s the deal with her?”

“She’s resisted my charms on all fronts. Asked me to stop, told me she wasn’t interested.”

His brow dropped at that. “Yeah, that’s final.”

“And she gives me the signals, but I’m not about to chase down a chick who’s telling me no. It’s just that … I dunno. I can’t help it, man.” I sighed one more time, promising myself it would be the last, feeling heavy pressure in my ribs. “She’s smart, sharp as a fucking switchblade and gorgeous. I’m interested in her, undeniably. But we aren’t getting along, and I can’t figure out if it’s by design or by accident.”

“Maybe there’s just something else going on with her. Can you just give her space?”

“That’s all I can do. And it’s stupid.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, waiting isn’t your scene. That’s more mine. But you’re a go-getter.”

I shook my head. “It’s not the end of the world. She makes me feel a little like Liz did. Like I’d drown myself in her, sink until I disappeared. I don’t want to do that again, Tricky. I can’t.”

He watched me, offering a nod. “I get it. I do. Maybe it is for the best then.”

“Doesn’t feel like it. But to quote a great man,
Heads and hearts are connected by threads impossible to cut completely.
”

Patrick narrowed his eyes in thought. “Paolo Coelho?”

I smiled. “Joel Anderson.”

A single laugh burst out of him.
 

“Your interview is tonight, right?”

“Yeah. Not looking forward to it.”

I waved a hand. “It’s not so bad. Just don’t let her strong-arm you into anything, okay?”

“Okay. Ronnie said Annika asked her about me and Rose.” His brand of the brood — something he could have copyrighted — passed over his face.
 

“Well, you had to figure they’d want to talk about Veronica’s big crush on you, how she broke you and Rose up the first time.”

The brood set even deeper into his face. “She didn’t break us up. I broke us up.”

“And then you took Ronnie to the bar where Rose was bartending, thus barring you from getting back with her when you realized what a dumbass you’d been.”

He huffed. “Still. It’s low. There’s no story there — that whole thing is old and worn out, and I’m with Rose. For good.”

“Hey,
I
know that. You don’t have to convince me. Just convince Annika and maybe she’ll move down her list until she finds something that sticks.”

“You really don’t think she’s going to try to press the topic with Veronica and me? Try to make some storyline out of it? Because I don’t believe that for a fucking minute.” He shook his head and raked his black hair back with his hand. “If this fucks something up with Rose and me, I swear to God, I’ll lose my shit.”

I angled to face him, looking him square in the eye. “I won’t let that happen. Okay?”

“You can’t stop it if it does. We’ve signed our lives away for this show, and you and I are the only ones who know it.”

I wished I could say he was wrong, but I couldn’t. “This was a bad idea, Tricky. Maybe the worst idea. I just really fucking hope we can make something good of this. In the meantime, talk to Rose and tell her everything. Be honest with her. Keep her in the loop. She’ll be all right and so will you.”

He sighed. “I hope you’re right.”

As I turned back to my station, I hoped I was too.

Annika

That night, Joel handed a girl in his chair the mirror, trying to keep a straight face as the cameras rolled. I was too, pen between my teeth to give my mouth something to do besides laugh.

She looked over her shoulder into the mirror at her new tattoo: a Cupie doll on her right shoulder with a banner up top that said
No Ragrets
and one below that said
#YOLO
.
 

“Oh, my God. It’s perfect.” She smiled in the mirror and beamed at all of us. “It’s ironic.”
 

He smiled like he was thinking a thousand things, and I wanted to know every one.
 

“Thanks, man. Seriously,” she said, still beaming.

Joel chuckled as he reached for the plastic sheeting to cover it up with. “Anytime.”

He taped up the sheet and gave her a piece of paper with instructions, rattling off tips for her like he had a million times. She tipped him mightily and practically bounded out of the shop after Shep rang her up.

The cameras were still rolling, and Joel sighed, shaking his head as he began to break down his station, pulling the plastic wrap off his tray and disassembling his gun.
 

“So,” I started, “do you get a lot of tattoos like that?”

He looked up, his hands busy as he answered. “We get all types, you know? Most people want art, something meaningful to carry around with them every day, reminders, that sort of thing.”

“Do you get a lot of hipsters coming in?”

He glanced up at me and then back down. “I try not to judge. If someone wants to come in here and get a hashtag tattooed on them, who am I to ask questions? They get what they want, something that makes them happy. That’s part of the problem with the culture sometimes. No one is more or less legitimate than someone else just because of how they choose to tattoo themselves. It’s just another way for people who historically have been persecuted for their choice to get tattooed to persecute someone else. None of us own the culture, and the people who judge are the worst kind of assholes.”

I smiled. “So everyone’s included?”

He shrugged and tossed a wad of plastic and paper towel in the trash under his desk. “That’s the idea.”

“I like it.”
 

He finally looked up at me and smiled, though there was something else behind his eyes, the same something that had been there for the last few days, ever since that first day of filming. He made me hot and cold, furious and fevered, and everything I learned about him, every time we spoke, the want to know more built until I couldn’t help myself, disarmed by him completely.

It was late, the last segment of the night, and we were set to shut down. So as Joel finished breaking down his station, the camera crew broke down their equipment and PA’s swarmed, grabbing film and hard drives to take upstairs to start editing. I took a seat in his tattoo chair while his back was turned, and when he looked back and found me sitting there, that something in his eyes was gone, replaced with something else entirely, something that made my breath catch.
 

He had frozen — I didn’t notice until he snapped back into action, moving to his desk to put his machine parts away, and I couldn’t help but watch his muscles and tendons flutter in his tattooed forearms as he arranged the pieces.

“That was a great piece. Good shoot tonight.”

He made a sort of
humph
sound, but it was amused. “Just doing my job.” He closed the drawer and sat on the surface, leaving one foot on the ground, his other thigh on the desk, elbow resting on it. He looked casual, easy, like your favorite pair of jeans, the ones that made your butt look amazing. That pretty much summed Joel up.

I realized then that I’d missed flirting with him, and I felt like an asshole for turning him out like I had. He just made me so uncomfortable that shutting him out was my only defense against him.

The realization made me even more uncomfortable than his flirting had.

“You looking to get some work done?” he asked, nodding to the chair.

I laughed softly. “No. If you couldn’t tell, I’m not exactly the alternative type of girl.”

“You don’t say?”

I smiled. “I know. Shocker, right?”

“So, you don’t even have one tattoo? I mean, almost everyone has at least one that they got when they turned eighteen.”

I wrinkled my nose and inspected the black vinyl of the arm rest.
 

He laughed, the sound full and easy, just like the rest of him. That sound had me wondering again what my hangup with him was. “You do. Is it bad?”

“Define bad?”

“Bad as in you don’t want to tell me because it’s that bad.”

“Then yeah. It’s bad.”

He was smirking now, and I felt myself smiling back. “Tell me the story.”

“How do you know there’s a story?”

“Princess, there’s
always
a story.”

I rolled my eyes, giving only a superficial impression of actually being annoyed. “Well, you’ve met Roxy.”

“I have.”

“So, our birthdays are only a month apart, and when we turned eighteen, she got me drunk on Stoli and dragged me to a tattoo parlor.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Oh, God. Maybe I don’t want to know.”

I laughed. “I’ll gladly stop there.”

“No, I won’t be able to sleep not knowing. Lay it on me.”

One of my brows rose. “Hmm. Well, now I don’t know if I want to tell you. The thought of keeping you up at night sounds really appealing.”

That something was back behind his eyes, and his smile fell. “Not fair.”

I smiled apologetically. “I really didn’t mean it like that — I’m sorry. More in the way that it would be fun to torture you.”

He leaned toward me a bit. “So where is it?”

I felt my stupid flush bloom across my cheeks. “Well, I knew I wouldn’t want it somewhere I could see it, where anyone could see it.”

“Hip?”

I bit my lip before answering. “Lower back.”

He laughed again, teeth flashing from behind his dark beard. “No.”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

My cheeks could have been steaming, they were so hot. “A Chinese character.”

He shook his head, still laughing. “Oh, Annika.”

I made a face at him. “What happened to accepting everyone?”

He made a face right back at me. “Did it make you happy?”

“No,” I conceded.
 

“Then it wasn’t the right piece for you. Did you see that girl when she left? You thought her tattoo was stupid, but she left here ready to fly. What you think doesn’t matter to her. But you can barely even tell me what you have tattooed on your body because you’re so embarrassed.”