Even with trusted clients, I try to keep my speaking to a minimum.
“Girl trouble?” she guessed, though it sounded like she was unsure of her choice. I smiled at her and shook my head again. “Ah, boy trouble then.”
That was the moment my best friend and most irritating coworker decided to butt his loud mouth in.
“Oh, yeah, Javi here’s all torn up over his hot neighbor,” Dane said.
“Oh? I wish my neighbor was hot. I live next to this incel neckbeard who thinks my tattoos are an invitation to say the creepiest things. Tell me more about this dreamy neighbor.”
“He’s a dad, and he’s bold as hell. Javi was having this party, right? And there we were…”
Once again, Dane talked all over me. Or for me. But this was how we worked. He knew I didn’t like to talk because of the stutter, that I preferred to watch people. There was something so lovely about seeing people when they don’t know you’re looking—it was like the curtain fell, and I got to know the real them.
Besides, when Dane spoke for me, it wasn’t personal, the way it was with some people who didn’t think I could talk for myself. He wasn’t even trying to protect me from my stutter. He just really loved the sound of his own voice and, luckily for him, I didn’t mind it, either.
Dane could fill silence like it was his job. He knew how to make people laugh, how to get them to ease up, how to make them happy. Which I very much needed.
Only at the moment his humor wasn’t helping, making my client laugh while I had the needle against her skin. “P-please don’t m-move so much, Mia.”
There was a wobble to one of the lines that I would have to make bolder than I liked in order to hide it, but it was her laughter that made it funky in the first place, so I couldn’t beat myself up over it too much.
Three hours passed that way. Dane talking to Mia, keeping her distracted while I occasionally had to remind her to sit still and worked on getting a large chunk of the outline finished up. She could normally sit for longer, but the ribs truly did take a toll on the toughest of customers. By the time I wiped her down with some peppermint oil and antiseptic and bandaged her up, Mia looked ready to sleep for ten hours. Adrenaline crashed, I bet.
After she left (and she left me a substantial tip that I owed, in part, to Dane), Dane came over and helped me clean up.
“You, my friend, need to go out,” he said.
“D-do I?”
His smile was wicked and his eyes twinkled with delight. “Hell, yes, you do. You need some beer and some fucker’s junk rubbing all up on you to turn your frown upside down. This might be the longest I’ve seen you go without sex since the Great Dry Spell of 2015. If I recall correctly, and you know that I do, you were an enormous ass after your flirtation with celibacy.”
“I wasn’t celibate, you ass. I just wanted to t-try being in love for once.” Not that it had turned out well for me. If anything, those awful trial relationships had solidified in my mind that I’d never have what it took to gain a boyfriend, a husband, a family.
Some things just weren’t meant to be for people like me.
Dane’s gaze softened, and I hurried back to my station for a final sweep, unable to take his pity. Still, he wasn’t wrong. I missed the release of sex. I liked feeling wanted, even if just for a night. Before the voices in my head kicked in and reminded me that some things are too broken to fix. And that broken things don’t deserve love.
“Okay. Where t-to?”
“Legends, obviously.”
The only gay bar in town. I looked at the tattoo gun. It hadn’t kept me distracted like it was supposed to, which meant I needed to try something different. Something different with a six-pack, and hair I could pull while riding hard. “Done.”
The lights at the club were manic, the kind of rave fever-dream that sends inebriated souls into a trance. Despite Dane’s attempts, I stayed sober-ish, pacing myself with a beer an hour as I watched Dane flirt and dance his way through all of the new faces in the bar.