TWENTY-ONE
“I have an idea,” Marcos says with a mouthful of food. “My friend Jackson.”
Tonight is Baptismal Dinner night. Breakfast again. We haven’t been talking about anything specific, so none of us knows what Marcos is referring to. He’s met with blank stares, so he points across the table toward Samson. “Jackson has dark blond hair. Blue eyes. Your face structures are different, but it’s a tattoo shop, I doubt they really look at your I.D. too hard.”
Oh. That. Samson can’t find his wallet and it’s been three days since he suggested getting a tattoo.
You can’t get a tattoo without identification, and even though he’s torn his house upside down for the better part of three days looking for it, he hasn’t had any luck. He thinks the last renters might have found it and taken it. He said it’s always in his backpack, but we both looked in the backpack and it wasn’t there. Everything else he owns was though. I don’t know how he carries it around so casually; the thing weighs fifty pounds.
Samson chews on Marcos’s suggestion, then shrugs. “Worth a shot.”
“Tattoo shop?” my father asks. “Who’s getting tattoos?”
Sara immediately points at me and Samson. “Those two. Not me.”
“Thank God,” Alana mutters.
Not that I’m much more than her husband’s daughter, but that comment stings. It doesn’t bother her if I get one, but she’s obviously relieved her daughter isn’t getting one.
My father looks at me and says, “What are you getting?”
I point to the inside of my wrist. “Something right here. I don’t know what yet.”
“And when are you going?”
“Tonight,” Marcos says, holding up his phone. “Jackson just said we could swing by and borrow his driver’s license.”
“Nice,” Samson says.
“Do you know what you’re getting, Samson?”
“Not yet,” he says, shoveling a fork full of eggs into his mouth.
My father shakes his head. “Both of you are getting something inked onto your bodies for the rest of your lives in a matter of hours, and neither of you know what you’re getting?”
“We have to take the ferry to get there,” Samson says. “That’s plenty of time to think about it.” Samson scoots his chair back and stands up. He’s got a slice of bacon in his hand as he walks his plate to the kitchen. “We should probably get going. Ferry line might be long with it being the end of the weekend.”
“Beyah,” my father says, his voice pleading. “Maybe you should think about this for a few weeks.”
What a parental thing to say. I think I like it. “Trust me, Dad. I’ll have much bigger regrets in life than a tattoo.”
His expression falters when I say that. I meant it as a joke, but he looks genuinely concerned about my decision-making abilities now.
The tattoo shop is empty, and I think that worked to our advantage. When the guy took Samson’s fake driver’s license, he looked at Samson, then back at the driver’s license. He shook his head, but said nothing. He just disappeared behind a door to make copies of our paperwork.
When Marcus returned to the car earlier with Jackson’s driver’s license, I couldn’t stop laughing. He’s a good fifty pounds lighter than Samson and at least five inches shorter. Marcos told Samson if the tattoo shop doesn’t believe it’s him, he should just say he’s been lifting.
They didn’t even question it. I’d be offended if I were Samson.
“They must be desperate for business,” I whisper. “He didn’t even question you.”
Samson slides a photo album in front of me full of ideas for tattoos. He grabs one for himself and we start flipping through the pages.
“I want something delicate,” I say, scrolling through pictures of hearts and flowers, but nothing tugs at me.
“I want the opposite of delicate,” Samson says.
What is the opposite of delicate? I flip toward the back of the book and come across tattoos that seem like they would be more up Samson’s alley than mine, but none of them seem like something he would like. When I get to the last page, I close the book and try to focus.
Delicate to me means dainty, soft, fragile. So, the opposite would be what? Strength? Durability? Maybe even threatening?
I know immediately after that thought what he should get. I open my phone and search for pictures of hurricanes. I scroll through several before I find one I think he would love.
“I found one I think you should get.”
Samson doesn’t even look up from his book when he says, “Okay.” He continues scrolling while he flips his left arm over and says, “I want it right here.” He points at a spot on the upper inside of his forearm. “Go show it to the guy so he can start getting it ready.”
“You don’t want to see it first?”
Samson’s eyes slide over to mine. “Do you think I’ll love it?”
I nod. “I do.”
“Then it’s the tattoo I want.” He’s so matter-of-fact about it, like there’s no question at all that this tattoo is more about me than anything else. I can’t help but kiss him.
There are two tattoo artists working tonight, and even though we’re both getting a tattoo, I still haven’t found what I want. Samson is in the chair, the tattoo gun pressed to his arm. His head is tilted away from it so that he doesn’t see it before it’s finished.
He’s scrolling through his phone, trying to help me find something.
“What about a sunrise?” he asks.
That’s not a bad idea, so I look through a few. I ultimately decide against it. “That seems like it would take a lot of ink and would look better if it were bigger. I want to start small.”
I’ve flipped through every book they have. I’m starting to think my father was right. Maybe I have to give this more thought.
“I have an idea,” Samson says. “We should look up meanings and see what kind of symbols they correlate to.”
“Okay.”
“What do you want it to symbolize?” he asks.
“Maybe something that means luck. I could use some better luck in my life.”
He starts scrolling through his phone while I go to check the progress of his tattoo. Even though I chose a hurricane for him, it’s not with typical black ink. I chose a tattoo that resembles what it would look like on a radar screen, with reds, yellows, blues and greens. It’s not necessarily a watercolor tattoo, but the colors all swirled together against faded black edges sort of make it look that way.
It’s turning out even better than I hoped.
“Found yours,” Samson says. He goes to hand me his phone so I can see what he picked out for me, but I don’t take it.
“I trust you,” I say. It’s only fair.
“You shouldn’t.”
His expression after he says that sends a swirl of unease through me. He’s right. I shouldn’t trust someone I hardly know anything about. I was just agreeing to let him do what I’m doing—choosing his tattoo blindly. But I feel like between the two of us, I’m oddly the more trustworthy one. I grab his phone to look at it. “What is it?”
“A pinwheel.”
I look at the photo. It’s delicate. Colorful. And he doesn’t even know I’ve chosen a hurricane for him, so we would both have tattoos that resemble a pattern of rotation.
“It says pinwheels are supposed to turn around bad luck.”
“It’s perfect,” I whisper.
Sara and Marcos have been outside since we filled out the paperwork for the tattoos, which was a good two and a half hours ago, but they haven’t come inside to complain about the wait. I’m sure they’ve found something to keep themselves occupied.
My tattoo is finished. It’s perfect. He lined the outside with a thin line of black ink and then filled it with color, but the colors bleed outside of the lines like dripping paint. I got it on my left wrist. I showed Samson and then took a picture before I let the guy cover it up with a bandage.
Samson’s tattoo artist wipes his down one final time. Samson hasn’t peeked once. “All done,” the guy says.
Samson sits up in the chair without looking down at the tattoo. He stands up and walks to the bathroom, then summons me to follow him with a nod.
He wants to look at it with no one else around. I don’t blame him. He might hate it and that wouldn’t just make me feel bad, it would make the tattoo artist feel bad.
I walk into the bathroom with him and close the door behind me. It’s a small bathroom, so we’re standing really close together. “Are you nervous?”
He says, “I wasn’t. But now that it’s done, I am.”
I smile, and then I start anxiously bouncing on my toes. “Look at it, I’m dying.”
Samson looks down at his tattoo for the first time. It’s about the size of a fist, right beneath the inside crease of his elbow. I’m staring at his face, waiting for his reaction.
He has no reaction.
He just stares at it.
“It’s Hurricane Ike,” I explain, running my finger across it. “I used a radar photo of when it was right over Bolivar Peninsula, and had him turn it into a tattoo.”
The only thing I get from Samson is a sigh. And I can’t even tell if it’s a good sigh.
I feel anxious now. I was so convinced he would like it; I didn’t think about what it might mean if he didn’t.
Samson slowly lifts his eyes. There’s no give in his expression that would hint at what he’s thinking.
But then he grabs my face and kisses me so sudden and so hard, I fall against the bathroom door. I think this means he likes it. He lowers his hands to my thighs and slides me up the door until I’m wrapped around him, like he’s trying to tie us in a permanent knot.
He’s kissing me with a freshly dug-up feeling he’s never kissed me with before. I’m not sure any other response to seeing his tattoo would have been an appropriate one now that I’ve been met with this response.
He moves against me in a way that makes me moan, but as soon as I do, he pulls his mouth from mine like that moan was a big red stop sign. He drops his forehead to mine and his words are full of emotion when he says, “I’d take you right here if you didn’t deserve better.”
I’d let him.