Ocean (Damage Control 5)

I’ve turned down the guys’ offers to go out for drinks every night. They’re hovering around me like mother hens. I think the cut over my brow and the bruise forming there is scaring everyone. Can’t imagine what they’d do if they saw my chest. Send me home, probably.

Can’t afford that. I need more money, not less.

Meanwhile everyone is stressed, especially our newer inkers—Jesse, Seth and Shane, who’ve barely started working on their own. It’ll be a big test, to be seen working alongside more experienced artists, like the ones from the guest tattoo shop.

We spend hours talking about the organization of the event, about prices and regulations and what beer brand we’ll have on offer. Then I had customers to ink, and designs to think about.

By the time evening rolls in, I’m dead tired and in a damn funk. My ribs ache. My hope is fizzing out. And I can’t even draw.

My art has always been with me, a way to take out my doubts and fears and hopes and transform them into something I can see and control.

But nothing is coming out right these days. The design I’m working on for a guy penned in for tomorrow isn’t half done, and I’m digging the pen so hard into the paper I just about tear it.

It’s late.

Come home, Kay had said in that text message. And I want that. I want to go home, but how?

It’s getting hard getting out of bed lately, and it’s not just that I can’t sleep at night. The night promises to be dark and empty, and tomorrow the same.

The shop is about to close, though. Time to get.

I don’t even have the energy to go round the cubicles and say goodbye to anyone else who’s there. I gather my stuff and stumble out of the shop, nodding at Zane and Rafe on the way, where

they’re discussing at the front desk.

Tyler comes around the desk, follows me out. I stop right outside, in the cold evening, to see what the hell he wants.

“What’s up?” My ribs are killing me, my head aches, and although I’m heading to my apartment, dammit, I don’t wanna go.

Don’t wanna stay here and talk to Tyler, either, but he steps out and sort of corners me against the entrance.

“Hey, man, how’s it going?”

I shrug, and wince when that jostles my ribs. “Been better.”

“Got real banged up in the accident, huh?” His dark eyes are sympathetic, and I don’t want sympathy.

I don’t know what the hell I want.

“You look like shit,” he mutters, shaking his head.

“Thanks. Appreciate it.”

He snorts. “I won’t keep you. Just wanted to ask if Zane talked to you about the dragon tats.”

“What dragon tats? The ones of the brotherhood?”

Zane, Tyler, Asher, Dylan and Rafe are a brotherhood forged of friendship and hardship. They were there for each other last year, when lots of bad stuff went down for all of them, and I watched them in action, having each other’s backs and being what a family is supposed to be like.

“Yeah, those.” He grins widely and shoves his shaggy black hair out of his face. “I thought Zane told you guys he planned on inking those of you who still don’t have one. Make you part of the brotherhood. One of us.” His eyes narrow. “If you want, of course. Nobody will force you.”

I shake my head.

To be honest, I can’t deny that, ever since Zane found me on a street corner three years ago, drawing sketches on scraps of paper for passersby to buy, all I’ve ever wanted was to be part of the brotherhood. Of this family.

Meanwhile the family unofficially expanded with the Damage Boyz, and I’m one of them, so the need isn’t so urgent anymore. It’s still there, though, under my skin, like an itch.

But I’m not in the right head space right now.