Pretty In Ink (2 page)

“Wondering…”

The thought of being in a relationship with anyone caused me tremendous grief. Although I had been with women sexually, I had never been in an actual relationship with anyone. My parents, financial status, aggressive work practices, and frequent travel all but prohibited me from being in an effective relationship.

No one would ever suit my parents, unless I married someone from another state. Their thoughts of people in the Midwest were that they weren’t good enough for me, even though they had lived in the Midwest for the majority of their adult lives. Over time, their constant fear of a woman taking my fortune in whole or in part became my fear.

As hard as I had worked for my money, I often felt I would be willing to forfeit it all to have a normal life with a normal woman; far away from the watchful eyes and constant questioning of my parents.

“What do you do?” I asked.

“Tattoo artist. Just got a job at Blurred Lines, it’s a pretty new shop in Old Town,” she responded.

I nodded my head as I exited the highway. “An awful shame about the Harley thing.”

She wrinkled her brow and raised one eyebrow slightly. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, I only date tattoo artists,” I responded. “So it’s a shame you only date guys who ride Harleys. I guess I could buy one.”

“You can’t buy the personality,” she said.

“Oh, so I don’t have a personality?” I asked.

“Turn here,” she said as she pointed at the upcoming street.

As I turned the corner, the rain slowed to a light sprinkle. I realized what she meant in her comment about my personality, or at least I felt that I knew what she was trying to say. The back and forth banter regarding a relationship was a nice change of pace, and I found it to be not only interesting, but quite entertaining. As my mind floated away to thoughts of having a petite tattooed girlfriend with a foul mouth, she answered my earlier question.

“You’ve got the personality of a rich brat,” she said. “And what I was saying is that you may buy the Harley, but you can’t buy the personality I want.”

I immediately took exception to her remarks. I was far from a rich brat, and my actions, our dialogue, nor my dress made me appear to be so.

“Rich brat?” I said. “I take exception to that statement. If I would have been dressed in jeans and boots and pulled up to the front of the store in a truck, would you say the same thing?”

She shook her head. “No, but you didn’t. You’re dressed in slacks, a nice button down shirt, and dress shoes. And you pulled up in a Por-sha. Oh, and you’re a day trader. You
buy and sell securities in the same day, normally in large quantities, hoping for a small increase, but making a large profit due to the amount purchased.
Or whatever it was that you said,” she said mockingly.

I was thoroughly impressed at her capacity to retain information, primarily her ability to recite word for word what I had said earlier. Even so, her comment was without warrant, and wasn’t supported by her claims.

“So, I don’t have the
personality
of a rich brat, I have the
perception
of one. My dress, my choice of vehicles, nor my profession would be indicative of the personality I possess. I have a great personality,” I said.

“Maybe if you pulled that stick out of your ass,” she said. “Turn here, on Eleventh. Then a right on Lewellen.”

Her personality was as colorful as her tattoos and her hair. Contrary to anything sensible, and without a doubt against the beliefs and potential support of my parents, I decided to press even further.

“I would like to take you on a date,” I said.

“Right here,” she said as she pointed to a small brownstone on the left side. “1229.”

“Would you now? Well, I might consider it, but you’ll have to dress in something different. I don’t own any clothes like that, so you’ll need to get some jeans and a tee shirt,” she said.

“I have jeans and tee shirts,” I responded as I turned into the driveway.

I gazed out the windshield and out into the sky. The rain had stopped, and the sun was shining through a gap between the clouds as they slowly rolled away. As I shifted my gaze from the sky to the driveway in front of me, I realized the home had no garage, and there wasn’t a car in sight. I shifted the gear selector into park and turned in her direction.

“Is your vehicle broken?” I asked.

“My
vehicle
is in the back,” she responded as she tossed her head toward the rear of the car. “I don’t own a car. I’m from San Diego, and it never fucking rains there.”

“Oh,” I responded, quite shocked to learn that she had no vehicle.

She opened the door, grabbed her groceries, and stepped out of the car. I pressed the button to release the hatch, stepped from the car and quickly followed.

“So, when do you prefer to try and do this?” I asked as I walked toward the rear of the vehicle.

“Do what?” she asked.

For having an almost photographic memory of our previous dialogue, she sure seemed to forget the details of our recent discussion about going on a date in a matter of minutes. Maybe it wasn’t as important to her as it had become to me.

“Go on a date,” I responded as I pulled her bicycle out of the back of the car.

“Oh that,” she said. “I don’t know. How about tonight?”

Short of being slightly over an hour later to arrive at my office than I had planned, I knew my day’s schedule was as slight as any other. My evening would be spent at the office, gym, and my house, in that order.

“Tonight sounds great,” I said as I pushed her bike toward where she stood.

She glanced upward and grinned, eventually revealing a smile which made her appear slightly more beautiful than she seemed to be without it. Her tattoos set aside, she was certainly as or more beautiful than any other woman I had ever seen.

Yet.

After seeing her with the tattoos, I could not imagine her without them. In the past I would have turned my nose upward at a woman with as many tattoos as she had, but for her, they only added to her already outgoing personality. And, although I had yet to decide for certain, I was almost convinced they also added to her beauty.

“Alright. I’m not giving you my phone number if that’s what you’re standing there waiting for. Just pick me up here, tonight at oh, let’s say, six thirty. How’s that sound?” she asked.

I grinned and nodded my head. “I’ll see you at six thirty.”

“Bye, Wilson,” she said as she turned away.

I waved as she pushed her bicycle toward the side of the house, but it appeared she paid no attention. Slightly disappointed in her lack of expressed interest, I reluctantly walked to the side of the car, got in, and backed out of the drive.

As I shifted the car into gear and prepared to pull away, I peered over my shoulder and toward the front porch just in time to see the door swing closed. My final effort to catch one more glimpse of her obviously wasn’t meant to be.

Her image, however, was clearly etched into my mind.

And my entire work day was spent thinking not of short sales, securities, stocks, options, or futures, but of her.

And the day seemed to drag on forever.

STEVIE

For some reason I had spent the majority of the afternoon of my day off thinking of Wilson. It was unlike me to spend any time daydreaming or contemplating the possibilities of life – or men for that matter – I had always been a “by the seat of your pants” type of girl. When things happened, I reacted, and I didn’t really worry about what
may
be or what
might
happen, focusing only on what
had
happened and what I should do as a result. I seemed to be intrigued by Wilson, his kind and caring nature, and his matter-of-fact personality. He was completely the opposite of what I had always been attracted to in a man, but something about him sure seemed to have captured my interest.

A large part of it had to be his handsome looks. He was a very attractive man with an extremely strong presence. His wet shirt clinging to his well-defined chest and muscular biceps as he ran through the rain may have played a large part in my subconscious attraction. Realistically, there wasn’t anything wrong with him that I could see; only that he wasn’t a biker, and I had always dated bikers.

I straightened my work station and cleaned my drawers free of trash as I tried to convince myself a change in pace wasn’t necessarily going to be a bad thing. Maybe going on a date with a rich brat was just what I needed.

Riley’s heavy sigh from across the shop caught my attention and shifted my focus from thoughts of Wilson to the reality of cleaning the shop. Riley was the fiancé of the owner, Blake, and didn’t have a job. I guessed she must not need one, because she came into the shop and worked as a half-assed receptionist on a daily basis. She seemed to be a little bit of a lost soul, but she fit Blake’s scatterbrained personality perfectly. As broken as they were apart, together they seemed to somehow correct all of their individual faults and shortcomings.

Well, almost all of them.

“The pictures are all fuzzy. It’s supposed to take really clear pictures, but it freaking sucks,” she said as she stared down at the screen of her new phone.

She had just completed taking another series of photos of the shop, and was attempting to make a Facebook page. After I finished sweeping my floor I walked to the reception area and glared at her as she continued to flip through the grainy pictures on her phone.

I reached for her phone. “Let me see it.”

“It’s stupid. I swear, you’d think for six hundred bucks it would take better pictures than my old phone,” she said as she handed me the phone.

After looking over a few of the terribly blurry photos, I turned the phone over and glanced at the camera’s lens. The clear plastic protective film was still affixed to it, making obtaining a clear photo nothing short of impossible. I turned toward her, shook my head, and peeled the film from the lens.

“Here, dumbass,” I said as I handed her the phone. “My guess is it’ll do a lot better now.”

She chuckled as she reached for the phone. “Oh, wow. Now I feel stupid.”

“You
are
stupid,” I said as I turned away.

Riley was far from stupid, but I liked teasing her. She had quickly become my favorite person, and was my only girlfriend. She was a fairly quiet person, listened well, and was easy to frustrate, leaving me no alternative but to tease her. Her sense of wit was pretty keen, but a little slow at times.

“I am not,” she shouted as I sat down on my stool.

I reached for my drawer, pulled out a box of cellophane wrap, and pulled about ten feet of it from the roll. After folding the wrap into a two foot square, I held it directly in front of my face, and attempted to peer through it toward where she was standing.

“Fuck, I can’t see a thing. Everything’s all blurry,” I whined.

“Fuck you, Stevie,” she snapped back.

I wadded the cellophane into a ball and tossed it toward the trash basket in the front of the store, a good twenty-five feet from where I was sitting. It fell directly into the trash as Riley pivoted in a circle, snapping photos of the shop with every ten degrees or so of rotation. I nodded my head in confirmation of my skills, half aggravated that Riley didn’t witness the almost impossible basket.

“You didn’t see that, did you?” I asked as I waved my hand toward the basket again.

She continued to pivot a few inches at a time, snapping a picture each time she stopped. “See what?” she asked.

“Forget it,” I sighed.

“So, why are you in such a shitty mood?” she asked as she leaned against the stool and began flipping through her newly acquired photos.

I shrugged my shoulders and tossed my head toward the door. “It’s fucking raining again.”

“I can take you home,” she said without looking up from her phone.

“Hopefully it’ll stop here pretty quick,” I responded.

She glanced up and peered toward where I was sitting. “I can’t believe you came in on your day off just to clean your station.”

“I can’t believe you came in on your day off to take pictures. Me? I love this place,” I said in a sarcastic tone.

Truthfully, I did enjoy going in to work, even on my day off. It was a really cool shop, and Blake and Riley were as good of people as I had ever met. Being at work was soothing for me, even if I wasn’t actually working. The shop was a place I knew I could find peace, and no one messed with me when I was there. There were the occasional idiots who came in and wanted some stupid tattoo, but seeing them, hearing their stories, and giving them a piece of artwork – even if it was stupid – was always pretty entertaining. Today, as odd as it seemed, I was apprehensive about my upcoming date with Wilson, and seemed to be trying to waste time until six o’clock rolled around. At times, I wished Blake would just keep the shop open seven days a week; at least I would always have something to do. As the buzzer for the front door sounded, I glanced toward the entrance.

“Is there a Stevie here?” the man asked as he entered the shop.

“Right here,” I said as I walked toward him. “Actually, we’re closed, but what can I do for you?”

“Here you go,” he said as he dangled a pair of what appeared to be key fobs from his fingers.

“Here you go what?” I shrugged as I glanced down at his hand.

“Mr. Wilson was afraid you’d be riding your bike in the rain. He sent this for you,” he said.

I wrinkled my nose and stared. “
Mr
. Wilson?”

“That is correct, Ma’am,” he said.

He appeared to be in his mid-twenties, was an attractive guy, and was dressed similar to Wilson, wearing tan slacks, a navy jacket, and dress shoes.

“Wait a minute.
Mr. Wilson
? So his
last
name is Wilson? And he sent me a fucking car?” I asked, half confused and slightly excited.

“I’m not at liberty to say, Ma’am. And that is correct, he sent you a car,” he responded with a nod of his head.

He reached toward me and shook the key fobs as if they were a bell.

I glanced toward Riley and widened my eyes. As she began to walk in our direction, I shifted my eyes toward the man with the keys. “He rented me a car to drive so I wouldn’t get wet? And what do you mean you’re not at liberty to say? Who the fuck are you?”

He stood stone-faced with his hands on his hips. “I’m Andrew, an associate of Mr. Wilson’s. And no, Ma’am, he didn’t
rent
a car. He
purchased
the car and had me pick it up for you. I was advised to deliver the car to you. Mr. Wilson was afraid the rain may hinder your ride home and prevent you from being on time for your meeting later this evening.”

“So you’re giving me this car to drive so I don’t get wet?” I asked, attempting to contain my excitement.

As much as I was against cars and associated them with confinement, living in Kansas was a far cry from living in San Diego, and not having a car was proving to be impossible.

“No Ma’am. Not exactly. It appears Mr. Wilson purchased the car for you. He was under the understanding you didn’t have a car, and he wanted you to be able to get out of the weather. He said…” He paused and glanced down at his feet.

As he shifted his eyes upward, he continued. “He said it was the closest he could get to providing you with San Diego’s weather.”

“So you’re giving her a car?” Riley asked as she reached for the keys.

He pulled the keys toward his chest. “No Ma’am.
Mr. Wilson
is giving her a car. I’m sorry, there’s a cab waiting, and I need to get back to the office. Mr. Wilson’s card is in the passenger seat. You may call him if you have any further questions.”

I glanced at Riley and grinned. As strange as it seemed, I extended my open hand and shifted my eyes toward Andrew. He released the keys into my hand, nodded his head, and turned toward the door.

“It’s the white coupe parked by the door,” he said over his shoulder.

I glanced down at the two key fobs.

BMW
.

Riley looked up with wide eyes after studying the keys. “Uhhm, those are keys to a BMW.”

“I can see that,” I said as I walked toward the window.

“So the guy you met at the grocery store bought you a fucking car?” Riley asked.

I shrugged my shoulders.

She chuckled, covered her mouth, and turned to face me. “You sucked his cock, didn’t you?”

“No I didn’t suck his fucking cock,” I snapped back. “He just gave me a ride.”

It was slightly out of character for me not to suck his cock, but for some reason I hadn’t. Maybe it was because it was ten o’ clock in the morning, and I hadn’t been drinking yet. One predictable pattern of mine was that sex seemed to always follow the consumption of alcohol.

With Riley at my side, I stood and peered through the glass. A white two door BMW sat beside the curb in front of the shop. The window sticker from the dealership was still on the passenger side window. Without speaking I walked to the front door of the shop, opened it, and waited for Riley. Together we walked to the curb and stared at the car. After studying the key fob for a moment, I pressed the button to unlock the car.

“Get in,” I said as I opened the driver’s side door.

The inside of the car was a combination of light tan and black, and smelled of new leather. In slight shock, I sat in the seat and stared at the gear selector. A short but confusing moment later, I leaned back in the seat and stared down at the pedals.

As Riley got into the passenger side of the car she handed me a business card, obviously the one Wilson had left on the seat of the car for me. The name “Wilson” and a phone number were all that was on the card. It was simple but mysterious in an odd sense. Maybe it was because I wanted it to be. I dropped the card into the center console, turned to face Riley, and shrugged my shoulders.

“It’s a stick shift, but there’s no clutch pedal,” I said as I glanced around, trying to make sense of the many dials and levers. “How the fuck do you make it go?”

“It’s just like mine,” Riley said.

Riley’s ex bought her a new BMW for her birthday, and when they separated, she kept the car. She seemed to love driving it, and her knowledge of the futuristic spaceship-like cockpit would certainly be useful to someone used to riding nothing but a bicycle.

“It’s a manual shift with no clutch pedal. It’s fun. See those paddles on the steering wheel?” she asked as she motioned toward the center of the steering wheel.

On each side of the center of the steering wheel was a small silver lever. The one on the left was clearly marked with a minus symbol, and the one on the right with a plus symbol. After studying them for a moment, I nodded my head.

“The one on the left shifts down and the one on the right shifts up. You just click them up and down, and there’s no clutch pedal, the levers do it all,” Riley explained.

“No shit?” I asked.

Riley opened the door, stepped onto the sidewalk and leaned into the car. “Let’s lock the shop and go for a drive.”

I continued to glance around the car, nodding my head mindlessly as I tried to make sense of everything. A few minutes later Riley opened the door, lowered herself into the seat, and buckled her seatbelt.

I had always explained how I hated cars, and rode my bicycle to make a statement regarding my opinion of the freedom it represented. As much as I did enjoy riding my bike in California, riding it in Kansas was an entirely different experience. The wind, varying temperatures, and rain made riding it on a daily basis almost impossible. For me to buy a car, however, would have been impossible. My rent, utilities, and booth rental at the shop was about all I could currently afford. To think some man I didn’t even know had bought me a car was impossible for me to comprehend, but him allowing me to use it for the afternoon wasn’t so much of a stretch.

“Ready?” Riley asked.

I buckled my seat belt, turned her direction, and shrugged my shoulders. I knew how to drive, but it had been a long time since I had done so. The futuristic cockpit of the BMW made me a little nervous to say the least. Riley having one and knowing the intricacies of it helped make me slightly more comfortable.