Under Locke (17 page)

Crap, I loved this guy.

"I don't want anything to do with him," he stated with so much conviction in his tone.

I didn't either but apparently my brain wasn't working properly because I asked something I shouldn't have. "Did he ask about us?"

Sonny gave me a look I hadn't seen since I was nineteen and been told I needed to have another biopsy. It was filled with a dreadful kind of remorse.

And it projected the answer like a beacon in the sky.

Chapter Ten

“How long you been here now?”

I looked up to see my redheaded buddy, Slim, plopping onto the couch
across from
me. It was Tuesday, almost a month since I started at Pins and Needles and to be honest, it’d gone by really quickly and mostly painlessly.

I’d fallen into a comfortable routine. During the day, I'd hang out at Sonny's house, cleaning and cooking when I wasn't going to the rare job interview—the one and only one had taken place the week before but I hadn't heard back from them—and applying for places online. Occasionally, I'd let myself think about Dad coming into town to ask Sonny for money but it was rare. The man didn't deserve my annoyance. At night, I’d go home and half of the time Sonny would be up and we’d talk or watch television until he went to bed.

How he made it to work at nine in the morning was beyond me, but I didn’t ask.

The other half of the time, he was gone and I’d go to bed before he showed up again. In the days after he told me about our sperm donor coming into town, his mood had gradually improved so I didn’t ask where he went unless he told me. More often than not, he didn’t. But when Sonny was around, I always had a smile on my face though he was still acting a little strange since his unexpected visit. He was just like Will, whom I hadn’t heard back from yet either, but I didn’t let myself focus on that. I’d sent him weekly emails consisting of a short updates that confirmed I was alive, still with Sonny, still working at the tattoo parlor, and that I had a library card.  No surprise there.

The mirror to my Sonny was Dex, who’d been in and out of the shop for days. Half the time, something was eating his butt cheek and he’d go into the shop and head directly into the office, leaving me to have to sneak in randomly to get my work done. On the occasion that he was in a good mood, he’d smiled at me exactly three times—and God, it was a smile—and once he touched my hand when he walked by.

Not that I was counting or anything.

My days off were spent driving around Austin. I visited the Capitol, walked down Sixth Street during the day, which completely turned me off almost immediately when some douche bag started following me around. Sonny took me to a swimming hole one Sunday. We visited Trip's apartment another day. We went to the movies together a few times. After my second paycheck, I signed up for the closest YMCA to the house—because I’d seen quite a bit of apartments close to Sonny for when I moved in the hopefully near future—and started spending a quarter of each day swimming and exercising there.

It was good. I was happy with my quiet
, little
life.

Including when I found myself back at
Pins
, with Slim asking me how long I’d been working with him.

“A month.”

He sounded out the words slowly. “I think you’ve been here long enough.”

This was suspicious. “For what?”

Slim grinned. “To break in that canvas, Iris.”

I'd thought about getting a tattoo nearly every day but I still hadn't talked myself into it. "But I don’t want to get one unless I’m sure I like what I’m getting.”

“Then get a piercing on the house. Me or Blue can do it.”

“Iris, you getting a tattoo?” Blake called out from his spot at his station, hunched over a customer's bare back.

I shot Slim a funny look. “No, but Slim’s trying to talk me into getting a piercing.”

“
Do it
,” he egged on.

A piercing. A piercing? Hmm. I could live with a piercing. It wasn’t permanent, and after seeing how many women and men came in to get various parts of their body pierced, it couldn’t have been that bad. Plus I couldn’t say I hadn’t gotten a little envious when I’d seen someone walk out feeling like a million bucks after spending time in the torture chamber. What was the worst that could happen? I'd take it out if I hated it?

Plus, needles and I were old friends. Not necessarily best friends, but I wasn't afraid of getting poked and prodded.

My facial expression must have given away my thoughts because the redhead started nodding. “C'mon,” Slim pressured.

“But where?” I looked down at my hands like there
would
be some magical map leading me to the best spot on my body to get violated with by a needle.

“Nose!” Blake called out. How the hell he still clearly heard our conversation from all the way over at his station with Mastodon playing was beyond me.

I shook my head, imagining myself with a nose piercing. While there was nothing wrong with it—there was nothing special or messed up with my nose—I couldn’t see myself with one. “Nah.”

“Your eyebrow?” Slim suggested.

I thought about it. “No.
I’m not cool enough to pull it off. Or tough.
” Just yesterday, I screamed when a flying roach made its way into the parlor.

The two guys, and possibly even the customer, laughed.

“Get your tongue pierced,” Blake threw out.

No. Hell no.

When I was seventeen, my best friend at the time snuck off and got his tongue pierced behind his parents’ backs. A week later, he had a knot the size of a golf ball in his mouth, and ended up unable to eat solid food for months. That thing was traumatizing, and I liked food too much to risk it.

“No. I like to eat, and that’ll make guys think I like to give hugs with my mouth, you know what I mean?” I stated, matter-of-factly.

“What the fuck?” someone asked from behind me. That someone specifically being Dex.

Kill me. Kill me now.

My face flamed up like a tomato when I turned around to see him smirking, holding a bottle of
chocolate Nesquik
in his hand. “Uhh… I meant—“

Dex burst out laughing. His head was tipped back and he was laughing his ass off, this deep, throaty sound that made me smile even though I felt like an idiot for what I’d said.

“I’m gonna have to use that one day,” Slim grinned, shaking his head. “Hey girl, wanna give me a hug with that sweet mouth?”

I groaned through my smirk. “Please don’t.”

Dex, who couldn't contain his laughter, focused in on me. “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

Slim hooked a thumb in my direction. “We’re trying to talk Iris into getting a piercing as her rite of passage to Pins.”

Well shit. Before there was medical insurance, there was a piercing.

Dex looked over, sized me from the waist up since I was sitting down, and hummed.

“What about your—,” Blake started before Dex shot him a pointed look.

“Not happenin', bro.”

Whatever he was going to say I had a feeling wouldn’t be something I really wanted to know about, so I didn’t bother asking him to finish his sentence.

Dex focused in on me again, blue eyes bright against the tan skin of his face. “Belly button, babe.”

My belly button.

It wasn’t on my face. No one would see it unless I showed it to them, and if I took it out,
the scarring would be so small no one would notice it.

But still. “Does it hurt?”

Dex seriously bit his lip but it was pointless. His mouth started curling upward in amusement. “I don’t think any of us would know from personal experience.”

I made a face. Smart ass again. “I’d hope not.”

“Every girl I’ve ever pierced hasn’t complained too much, Iris. I think your cartilage was more painful,” Slim explained. “Now if you were getting your nipple,” he bugged his eyes out, “Or something like your hood pierced, then I’d probably tell you not to do it until you did something easier first.”

“Uhh...where exactly does a hood piercing go?” I asked slowly, feeling naïve as I clenched my thighs together in perceived fear. I’d seen pictures of some non-traditional piercings and read things in novels that made me debate whether to grin or blush, but… I thought that was pretty rare.

His lazy grin was my answer. “Let's look it up,” he suggested.

I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have been curious enough to look, but I did. Slim leaned over the computer, quickly typing in a search that brought up page after page of different types of piercings.

The first few pictures were pretty PG. A single eyebrow, double eyebrow like Blake's, nose, tongue, labret, snake bites, the septum, nose bridge! The more Slim clicked through, the more I started to wonder whether I should be looking or running. There were nipple piercings on men and women, and then I saw the vagina.

A hood piercing. A vertical one, horizontal one, a deep one...I shuddered and like an idiot, put my finger over Slim’s to go to the next page.

Penis!

A dick popped out at me from the
screen
. A hard dick with a piercing that curled from the urethra through the head.

“Holy shit,” I whispered, looking at the damn picture longer than I should have, crossing the line between appreciation and staring.

But it wasn’t over. I glanced at the picture right below it and saw rows of penises.

I gulped.

A long, incre
dibly
thick one with a piercing straight through the head. Top to bottom. In print on the lower half it had “Apadravya” labeling it. One penis after another popped up on the screen. Pictures with words like frenum, dydoe, lorum, and pubic slapped me in the face—visually, not physically. Unfortunately, I would say since they were all
impressive
...could an erection
be
pretty
?

Not that I had much experience to go off of but whatever.

My thighs clenched together, and I’m sure my eyes were nearly the size of the sun. I started huffing, a sign that I was going to regret the nervous words that were going to spill out of me. Words that cemented I was lonely in not just an emotional sense. “Do those help the man or the woman?"

“What do you think?” Dex asked a little too quickly.

I stuttered, entranced with the image on the screen. I should
ha
ve been grateful I didn't reach up to stroke the screen, that would
ha
ve been horrible. Not that staring was any better.

“Dex has one,” Slim spit out in a laugh.

My gaze stayed forward
.
“Pardon?” I coughed.

Slim shook his head, grinning wide. “Dex? Am I lying?”

My focus slid over to the man in question. The man in question who had his eyes locked on me, bleeding me out with the
focus
of his gaze. And it was with that same confidence, that complete
concentration
that he shook his head slow, slow, slowly. Grinning just like a man with no shame at all. “You ain’t lyin’.”