shop were making me smile more than the dude in front of me.
He, frankly, was becoming a little annoying.
I’d begun with a small needle, a thin line, and had gotten about a third of the outline complete. We still had color and shading.
So basically, we hadn’t seen anything yet.
“Ow!”
The wife giggled.
I lifted the needle well away from the guy’s arm and met her gaze. “You might want to get something to eat,” I told her. “This is going to take a while.”
She bit her lip, but I saw the edges of her mouth curve up. “I’ll grab a coffee and be back.”
“What?” the dude in front of me said.
And I guessed it was the Californian in me that kept calling Jeff, “dude,” but it wasn’t intentional. Everyone was a dude, regardless of gender, age, or personality.
“Tally don’t go—”
She kissed him on top of the head. “Just remember that I pushed out two babies and regularly get my hair yanked out of my hoo-hah for your pleasure before you start complaining.”
Okay, now I was laughing.
And so were Jeff and Tally.
“You want anything, Garret?” Tally asked.
“I’m good,” I said, “thanks.”
She smiled and turned to go. “Hey! What about me?” Jeff called.
“I’ve been with you for more than fifteen years, baby. I know what you want to drink.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.” She waved. “I’ll be back in a few, and maybe by then you’ll have found your man cred.”
“It hurts,” Jeff whined.
She pointed in the direction of her vagina. “Two babies.”
Jeff wisely shut up.
“You know you don’t have to do this, right?” I asked once she’d walked far enough away to be out of earshot.
“I do,” Jeff muttered. “It was my idea.”
I snorted.
He groaned. “I know. Who would have known she’d be so tough?”
“Most of the time the women are.” I picked up the gun. “You ready?”
Jeff sighed. “As I’ll ever be.”
“Can you tell me more about that board game you mentioned earlier?” I asked, not giving a shit about the game except for its usefulness in potentially distracting Jeff from what I was doing. “Is it a deck-building game or—”
My board game knowledge came strictly from clients both past and present. While I’d grown up playing the classics—Monopoly, Life, Rummikub, Uno, etc.—with my family, I didn’t have much time—or a group of willing players—to make much of it currently. Luckily, I’d found each person I tattooed often had their own pool of information they were experts in, and I managed to absorb a sliver of it during each hours-long session.
A recent one had launched a game on Kickstarter that had apparently become popular enough to be carried in big box stores.
Hence, me pulling out a term like deck-building.
Even if I didn’t quite understand what it meant.
Either way, it had the desired result. Jeff started waxing poetic about the game—not deck-building, apparently—and though his jaw did tighten slightly, he was distracted enough by the game and its various attributes to not start ow-ing again.
I worked quickly and got through the majority of the outline by the time he’d spelled out the rules.
Tally came back with coffee and pastries, and they began discussing a different game, giving me the opportunity to switch needles and start on the color. Before long, I got lost in the piece, filling in colors, adding shadows and details.
There wasn’t any sense of time or others.
I didn’t feel my aching back. My eyes didn’t get tired. My hands didn’t shake.
In fact, it wasn’t until I’d nearly finished that I realized how long I’d been working without a break. I blinked bleary eyes. “You good?” I asked, feeling a little guilty for not having offered Jeff a break. I’d been working for a few hours, and I usually liked to give clients a chance to stretch every hour or so.
Otherwise they got antsy.
“I’m fine,” he said, his face no longer pale. “It’s looking awesome.”
It was looking awesome.
Confidence, not ego.
Ha. Sure.
I stretched my neck. “Well, another few minutes, and I’ll get you out of here.”
“Cool.”
He turned back to Tally and they chatted about one of their kid’s teachers, leaving me to the work again, but it wasn’t so easy for me to find the zone a second time. I’d been abruptly dropped back into my own body and everything hurt—my hands, my back, my neck, my eyes. Two pieces in one day meant that I’d been working for near on eight hours.
Yes, I knew that was a normal day for most people.
But that didn’t include the final tweaks to the sketches or the placement