“Next you’ll tell me you have carp
diem on your arm,” Mal said.
He shook his head. “It’s ‘this too shall pass.’”
Mal just about swallowed her lips in an effort not to laugh. “Better than keep calm and carry on. Or something profound that started as a T-shirt from Target.”
“You mean like live, laugh, love,” he said, expression blank. “I’ve got that on my ribs.”
“I’d have figured you for a world map guy,” she said, with her first careless, joyful smile; it went all the way to her eyes.
“They just look like fungus. I almost got a hummingbird, here.” He pointed to the inside edge of his elbow, covered by his sleeve. “But I went for coordinates instead.”
“Coordinates to where?” said Lenny in a way that told him for the moment she’d forgotten he was for business not pleasure.
He turned to her, wishing he could think of something to say that would make her trickle her fingertips over his body again. “The tattoo studio. I couldn’t think of anywhere else more meaningful.”
Lenny made an undignified snorfle. It was a sound worthy of its own music chart.
“I’d get a heartbeat thread, like on a monitor, but that’s so last year,” Mal said.
“You will not,” said Lenny, but there was humor in her voice.
“I’d have taken you for a paw prints person or a feather that turns into birds,” he said.
“I’m more a city skyline or a constellation girl. That’s if I don’t get the word ‘perseverance’ spelled wrong, you know, totes ironically.”
“Classy.” He looked at Lenny. “You should get matching tattoos.”
“How do you know we don’t have them?” she said.
Utterly inappropriate, he wanted to strip her to check. “You mean you both have ‘I’m up to no good’ across your ribs?”
“Mal, seriously, for a second, you didn’t get a tattoo, did you?” Lenny said.
Mal shook her head and lifted her shirt, flashing her belly button ring. Bingo. “I got this, and I have a Pinterest tattoo page. I can’t decide. Whatever is cool one minute is basic the next.”
Lenny was coming to terms with the piercing, and Mal was provoking him by asking how long his unicorn horn was when Easton walked in and the laughter shut off as if a plug had been pulled, the temperature in the room going from balmy to lightning storm. Mallory jumped up and gave up her seat at the head of the table for Easton, and he took it without a word.
The bully king had arrived.
“We were joking about silly tattoos,” Mallory said. “Halsey says he has—”
“You’re not to get a tattoo,” Easton interrupted.
“We were just having fun,” said Lenny. “Talking about—”
“There’s nothing funny about tattoos, and I’d better not find you have one, Mal,” Easton said.
Mallory put her hand on Easton’s arm, placating. “I don’t. We were—” Easton shook her off, and Halsey interrupted. He’d seen enough.
“We were making fun of me.”
Easton made no effort to personally greet his family, didn’t acknowledge Halsey as a guest, and aimed his displeasure at Mallory.
“They’re not a joke. They’re a permanent disfigurement,” he said.
“Easton, have some cheese,” said Lenny, “and leave Mallory alone.”