Vigilant

“Hey girl, how are you doing?” Martin said from behind the small barricade, keeping the customers out of his work area, yet allowing them to view his work in process. He glanced up again. “Jesus Christ, what happened to your face?”

“Long story, but trust me when I say I didn’t get the worst of it.”

“That’s hard to believe,” he said. “This have anything to do with your visit?”

“Maybe,” she admitted.

Ari got her first tattoo when she was eighteen. A star on her ankle, signifying her independence when she moved out of her home. It was also an act of rebellion, against her parent’s strict rules. The hum and sharp, specific pain of the needle proved addictive and she was back again in six months. That time to commemorate another first. Her first. Three weeks after that, she came in with a broken heart and added another star to the collection. The pattern continued for years. The road trip to New York City with her friends in college. Graduation. Her first job. The time she and Oliver made a bet and she lost. Her body became a road map of her memories.

“It’s been a while,” Martin said, coming around the corner. His hair was bleached super white. It had been black the last time she’d been here. Almost every inch of his body was covered in ink, except his face. He’d told her once that he and another apprentice practiced on one another. The early ones were terrible and led to other, more professional cover-ups over the years.

“Thought it was time to make a visit.” She hadn’t been in since her last one, the hardest one so far. Ari had asked him to make the mark extra dark, making the skin raw and bloody under the black ink. She’d just wanted to feel something that night—something other than the pain of her loss. This time, she was running from the rejection she felt from Nick. The only other option was Davis and that wasn’t an option. She’d ended up at the tattoo parlor instead.

“How you been holding up?” he asked.

“You know me,” Ari said with a shaky laugh. Martin was something like a therapist. Or a bartender. She spilled her secrets while in his chair.

“Where are you thinking this time?” he asked. Ari removed her sweatshirt and revealed a low-cut tank top.

“Maybe here?” she pointed to the middle of her chest. The purplish bruise was still noticeable. She wanted to remember it when it was gone.

“That looks pretty brutal. Accident?”

“Sort of. I was almost shot. That came from someone saving me.”

Martin nodded in understanding. “So where do you want it? Maybe here? The base of the palm?”

Ari looked in the mirror to see where he pointed and it was perfect. Right between her breasts, the center, anchoring part of her body. “Yes. I like that.”

“Let me get this ready,” he said. He pointed to her tank. “You’re going to have to take that off.”

“Sure.”

Ari waited while he prepped the materials and pulled her tank over her head. Martin did his best to be professional and not a perv despite how Ari sat only in her bra. He applyed the template on her skin. “This is going to hurt,” he told her. She believed him. Different parts of the body had more or less sensitivity. The spot she chose would be tender for days. She relished the idea.

“You ready?” he asked, picking up the silver ink gun and leaning over her body.

“I’m ready.”

“Let’s do this.”

Ari gripped the sides of her chair bracing herself for that first sting—the first wave of pain. Goosebumps covered her skin and she knew her nipples were erect, easily visible to Martin. She closed her eyes, sinking to the place where the pain became pleasure and once again, she felt alive.

* * *

The adrenaline rush from the tattoo still ran through her veins. The residual pain distracted her and that was why she didn’t notice the guys standing in the shadows on the other side of the street across from her home. She’d barely shut the car door when one walked in front of her bumper, while another came from behind.

Too late to get back in the car and too far from the door, she fought the urge to panic and tried to get up the driveway. “Where you running, baby?” the boy closest to her asked.

Ari flicked her eyes at him and took in the pale skin and scraggly hair. It was dark and she wasn’t sure, but she felt like she’d finally come face-to-face with Jace Watkins.

“Just let me by,” she said.

“Yeah, I can’t really do that,” he said. “I know you told the police about me being at that hardware store.”

“I didn’t tell them anything,” Ari lied.

Jace shook his head. “They’ve been looking for me and only one person could connect me to that robbery. I saw you there—and you saw me.”