Holding Her Hand (The Reed Brothers 9)

“The heart has a tendency to get acquainted quickly,” he says.

“I thought that was just a penis and a vagina,” I counter.

“That too,” he says with a chuckle. “But the heart, that’s the important part, and that boy might just fill up all the space in yours. The hole that was left by your parents, and the guilt that took its place… It’s time to fill that up with something new, Lark.” He sits down beside me and rests his elbows on his knees.

“I’m ready,” I tell Emilio.

“You finally are,” he says softly.

Ryan starts his machine, and I wince as the needles begin their journey. Ryan smiles at me in reassurance, and I listen to Emilio as he tells me stories of when we were all younger. They’re things I can’t even remember, but Emilio has every event stored in his head like a filing system, and he can spit stories out any time. It’s what made him such a good songwriter, once upon a time.

Any time Emilio tells you he can’t remember something, you know he’s lying. Through his teeth. But it’s hard to stay mad at him, because he does it for us. Because he loves us.

Next, he’ll threaten to maim and dismember Ryan if he does anything to hurt me. He’ll probably involve body parts no one wants to lose. I just wonder how Ryan will respond.

Ryan

I am doubting myself a little bit. I drew up the tattoo and now I’m just hoping like hell she’ll like it. If she doesn’t, she’s stuck with it. Until this moment, I was feeling very confident. But as I lift my machine, lay it down, and swipe the extra ink off her forearm, I would be lying if I said I’m not a little bit nervous. I clean the area and get it ready for her to see.

Lark has been sitting here talking with her dad while I work. He’s been telling her stories and they laugh and joke around. Every now and then, her shoulders shake with laughter, and it makes me smile to see that he makes her so happy. The feeling is apparently mutual, and he’s just as happy to hang out with her as she is with him. Every now and then, he reaches over and brushes a lock of hair from her face or she lifts her arm to touch his, and it makes me realize that the love of a parent is incomparable to anything else. It doesn’t matter if the parent is one made by blood or by circumstance; the feeling is still just as strong and that’s all that matters.

“You ready to see it?” I sign to Lark.

She nods and stares into my eyes.

“It’s done.” I look down at her forearm. Even I have to admit that it’s good, and I’m a little biased.

“I’m nervous,” she says.

“It’s too late to be nervous now. It’s not like you can do anything about it.” Well, I could cover it up at a later date if she hates it. But it’s not going away. “Take a look.”

She looks down and I can feel the wind from her gasp. She covers her mouth and stares at her arm. Her eyes flood with tears, but she blinks them back furiously.

“You hate it,” I say.

But she stops me, waving her hand in the air. “It’s perfect.”

“I told you he knows you,” her dad says.

“He does,” she replies, her hands soft with emotion.

I knew a few things about her, going into the tattoo. Her favorite place to visit was the beach, back before her parents died. I had already done the male and female seagulls tattoo, which represents her parents, and it covers up the largest of the splash burns she has on her arm. The male bird looks really masculine, and the female bird looks really girly. They’re both wearing wedding rings on their legs, the same rings that hang on a chain around Lark’s neck all the time.

The challenge in this case was hiding the scars from her suicide attempt. They slice across her forearm. I also had to cover up a bunch of small splatter discoloration spots from where the hot oil hit her skin and burned her.

Her suicide scars were something I refused to hide completely. They’re part of her and she got through it, so I felt like it was important for them to stay there. I turned her suicide scars into clouds in a sunset sky. The jagged edges form the edges of the clouds. To an outsider who doesn’t know her story, one might think it is a perfect sunset. But it’s not. It’s a sunset fraught with challenges. But the thing to remember is at the end of the day, the sunset will always happen and it will always be beautiful. It’s one’s perception of it that matters. Do you see the scars or do you see the sunset? Some days, you need to see the scars. Some days, all you’ll see is the sunset, the perfect end to the perfect day. But to get to the perfect end, you had to face your challenges all along. We all do, and I wanted her tattoo to depict that.

I turned her small spatter scars into tiny seashells that litter the beach. They’re colorful and playful and she grins as she counts them. There are twenty-four in all.

When you look at the tattoo as a whole, it’s like a painting. But there are so many parts to it that I can’t even imagine anyone who looks at it would understand. But Lark understands all of them.

I watch her face as she takes in the tattoo. “Do you like it?” I ask.

“No.”

My heart stops. “I can cover it up with something else. Maybe in a few weeks,” I rush to say.

She catches my hands and stops them from moving, then lets them go.