“What are we going to do next?” Thea asked after we left the bookstore, a new copy of Shadow of the Wind for her and Catch-22 for me in her backpack, and her arm tucked into mine.
“Up to you,” I said. “It’ll be dark soon. You hungry?”
“No, I mean when this trip is over,” she said. “What’s next, Jimmy?”
“We go back to Virginia, I guess.”
“And then? I’m not going back to Blue Ridge. No chance.”
“Neither am I,” I said. “Because I was fired.”
She didn’t smile. “You need a job. I need a job. We both need to go back to school. I mean, if you feel up for it.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Your art school was in Richmond?”
She nodded. “But even if I went back. I don’t know where I’d live.”
Inhale. Exhale. “Maybe we could both move to Richmond.”
Thea stopped walking. “We?”
It’s too much. You’re asking too much of her. Of life. No one gets everything they ever wanted…
I pushed the old fear down and kept talking.
“Maybe we get a place together in Richmond,” I said. “I’ll get a job and you can go back to school. And then, down the road, when we’re settled… I can look into programs for speech therapy.”
Thea pounced, wrapping me in a choke-hold that softened as she slipped down into my arms. I held her while the pedestrians parted around us like a river around a stone.
“It sounds so perfect,” she said against my chest. “This is a dream and I’m going to wake up in that little box again—”
“Jesus, don’t say that.”
She huffed a steadying breath. “No, you’re right. I love your plan.”
“Yeah?”
“I do,” she said.
We kissed to seal the pact, but it wasn’t enough. A feeling I didn’t have a word for made my chest expand. I couldn’t describe it except that when I looked in Thea’s eyes, or held her, or kissed her, or listened to her talk, it grew bigger. Sunk in deeper. Embedded itself into the marrow of my bones, and yet I was fucking petrified it would crumble and vanish.
We passed by a tattoo shop and Thea slowed to peer in the window. “I always wanted a tattoo but as an art student, I had too many design options floating in my head. Want to check it out?”
“Sure.”
We went inside the dark, cool confines of the small shop. Art on every wall and R-rated music blasting from the sound system. A guy bent over a woman facedown on his table, inking a design on her calf. Another guy stepped out from the back—thin with tattoos over every inch of skin visible but for his face. The butterfly on the side of his shaved head looked newly inked—darker than the other tattoos.
“Can I help you?” he asked in an almost gentle voice. His eyes were quiet and calm in the middle of the noise and color in his skin.
“I think we’re just looking.” Thea glanced up at me. “Or… are we?”
“Get one if you want one.” I looked to the guy. “She likes to pretend I can stop her from doing anything.”
“Ha ha.” Thea elbowed me. “I think I do want something. To commemorate this trip to New York.”
“Cool,” the tattooist asked. “You want to look at some books? Get some ideas?”
“Absolutely,” Thea said and offered her hand. “I’m Thea.”