Ink (5 page)

“Well…”

“How is Mexico?”

“I’m not in Mexico. Shelley went without me.”

His father cleared his throat. “Why would she do that?”

Jason didn’t bother to lie. “She left me.” He walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa.

“She what?” His dad’s voice turned hard.

“Yeah, she left me and not just for a separation or anything like that. We’re done.”

He wouldn’t tell them about Nicole. He didn’t want his parents to hate Shelley, not really, but he had a small, niggling fear they might take her side.

“You okay, son?”

Jason smiled. No, his dad would never take Shelley’s side. Not unless he did something terrible like hit her, and his dad knew he wouldn’t. His mom ran the ship, but his dad always knew how Jason was on the inside. After he told his parents he’d asked Shelley to marry him, his dad pulled him aside and asked if he was sure he wanted to get married. Jason said yes, but he thought his dad knew something was a little off about Shelley. Something a little too controlling. He didn’t push, though. He’d just nodded and said “Okay, son.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. It wasn’t really a surprise. Things have been kind of…rough for a while. I didn’t want to say anything and get you both upset. It’s not like you could do anything about it.”

“No, these things happen. Have you talked to a lawyer yet?”

“Not yet. I have to find one.”

“Make sure you find one soon. I don’t want to see you get screwed over. Thank God you didn’t have any kids.”

His dad needn’t have worried about that; Shelley refused to even think about having children. Ever.

“I know.”

A small silence, then his dad sighed. “Oh Christ, your mother.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m not looking forward to telling her, that’s for sure. She’s not going to take the news like you. I guess I can’t bribe you to tell her for me, can I?”

“Don’t think so, son. I’ll go get her—she’s in the other room sewing or something like that. No matter what, remember, I’m here for you, okay?”

“I appreciate it, Dad.”

“And don’t worry. Things will just get better for you from here on out.”

The phone made a soft thud. Jason heard muted voices, then his mom’s raised in alarm.

“Jason?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“What’s wrong? Why aren’t you in Cancun? Where is Shelley? Is one of you hurt?”

Jason knew she had her hand up, waving it around as if pushing smoke away from her face. She did it whenever she got upset.

“Mom, calm down. Nobody’s hurt. It’s just—”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Well—”

“What did you do?”

Jason tapped his fingers on the coffee table. “Nothing, okay? Shelley and I split up.”

“Did you say what I think you said?”

“Ye—”

“This isn’t funny, Jason.”

He knew she’d moved her waving hand to her hip. Pretty soon she’d exhale through pursed lips and shake her head.

“It’s not a joke. Really, it isn’t. We split up. Things have been rough—”

“What did you do?”

The same question again. Great. Of course his mom assumed he’d done something. He knew she would. He didn’t do anything. He did
everything
. Everything Shelley wanted and then some, but in the end, none of it mattered. She’d wanted something more, and he wasn’t convinced it had anything to do with Nicole at all.

Shelley grew up in an area of town known for its unkempt yards, alcoholism and teenage mothers. A place where dental hygiene was a foreign word and education a necessary evil until the legal dropout age. Her mother had worked odd jobs when sober, and not at all when she fell into the bottle. They’d relied on the support of her endless string of boyfriends, each one a bigger loser than the last. Shelley’s own dad split when she and her older brother were still in diapers, and her mother had three more kids after that, all with different fathers.

When Shelley turned eighteen, she left home, cut her family out of her life and reinvented herself from top to tail. And she never stopped. She piled on one pretension after another until she ended up nothing more than a caricature of everything she wanted to be. The happiness she thought she’d find always hovered one step away and it turned her bitter, spiteful and cruel. Oddly enough, despite her distrust of mothers in general, she loved Jason’s, but she treated his dad as if he were an afterthought.

“I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t do anything,” he said.

“Is Shelley there? Let me talk to her.”

“No, she isn’t here, she went to Mexico.”

“Without you?”

“Yes, without me.”

“When she gets back, you need to talk to her. You need to work it out.”

“She left me,” Jason said. “There’s nothing to work out. It’s over.”

His mom exhaled heavily into the phone. He could almost hear her head shake.

“Jason, this doesn’t make sense. She loves you.”

No, she doesn’t. And I don’t love her, either. Not real love anyway.

“Mom—”

“I’ll talk to her when she gets back. It has to be a mistake. Maybe she just needs a little time away. Your brother and Eve split up for a few weeks, and they got back together. Their marriage is stronger than ever.”

“This isn’t like that. This is for good.” And Ryan’s marriage wasn’t stronger than ever; he and Eve still had problems, big ones. His mother just refused to see them.

“You can’t say that, Jason.”

“Yes, I can. It really is over. It’s not a bad thing, okay? Things have been horrible.”

His mom fell silent, but it didn’t last long. “Come for dinner Sunday night. We want to see you. I’ll make lasagna.”

And she would try to make him see the error of his ways. It was pointless to argue with her, though.

“Okay, I’ll come over on Sunday.”

“I love you, Jason, and everything will be fine. I know it will.”

He had a new tattoo and a date on Saturday night with Mitch; things couldn’t get much better.

13

On Saturday at seven o’clock, Jason pulled up in front of Mitch’s house and knew his sweaty palms had nothing to do with the warm weather. She opened her front door before he had the chance to knock and for a long moment he couldn’t speak, just stare. She wore a simple black dress, which covered more than it revealed, but his voice ran away and hid in awe.

“Hi,” she said finally, her mouth curved up into a smile.

“You look beautiful,” he said.

“Thank you. You said to dress nice, I hope this is okay.”

So much better than okay.

“It’s perfect.”

She smiled when he opened the car door for her. “So, are you going to tell me where we’re going?”

“And ruin the surprise? Nope.”

“So how do I know if I’m overdressed?”

“You’re not. Not at all.”

“Can you give me at least a hint?”

“I hope you’re hungry.”

She gave his arm a gentle poke. “That’s not a hint at all.”

“What can I say? It’s all I got.”

“Tease.”

When they pulled up to the restaurant on East Franklin Street, a place well known for its steak, pine-nut cake, and impeccable service, her eyebrows raised and she twisted her hands together.
 

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I wouldn’t joke about a place like this,” Jason said.

Once inside, they sat on a cushioned bench to wait for their table. Dark red glass lamps hung down from the low ceiling, casting a warm glow. Beneath the voices of the wait staff and the patrons, a hint of music could be heard. Something soft with mandolins and guitars.

Mitch sat close enough to him so the length of her thigh pressed against his. Even with her hair pulled back from her face, she still smelled like coconut. Jason fought the urge to press his lips to the little sideways comma scar above her eyebrow. A couple walked in, dressed in formal dinner wear, and she leaned even closer. “I think I might be underdressed. I should’ve worn my pearls.”

“Yeah, my Rolex is in the shop.”

She turned her face toward his shoulder and giggled. “The limo, too?”

“Didn’t I mention it before? I sold it to pay for dinner.”

“The food better be good, then.”

“You’ve never eaten here before?”

“No. Have you?”

“A couple times, but only on special occasions.” Like his fifth anniversary.

“Does this count as a special occasion?”

Jason smiled and touched her hand. “Yes, I think it does.”

“So what were you humming in the car?”

“What do you mean?”

“On the way here, you were humming something. I couldn’t place the song, though.”

“I don’t know. Just nothing, I guess,” Jason said. He didn’t remember humming at all and yet an unfamiliar tune tickled the back of his mind. Something odd, something old, then the maître d' beckoned them to follow him, and the song vanished.

Halfway through dinner, the tattoo started to itch; he rubbed the bandage through his shirt, but it didn’t help. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to keep a bandage on it, but he couldn't remember Sailor telling him not to, and without it, the ointment left oily traces on his shirts.

Mitch saw the gesture and smiled. “It itches?”

“Just a little.”

“I hate that part. It’s worse than getting it done. Just ignore it. It’ll stop. I made the mistake of scratching with my first one and had to get part of it touched up later.”

He took a drink of sangria, trying to ignore the itch, but it pleaded for his attention, annoying and persistent.

“So, you said you work in IT, but what do you do?” Mitch asked.

“I handle all the mobile devices for the company. Cell phones, PDAs, wireless cards, that sort of stuff.”

She smiled. “Sounds interesting.”

“It can be, especially when the CEO is out of town and drops his PDA into a puddle, but most of the time, it’s just mindless work.” His hand twitched toward the bandage, but he grabbed his fork instead.

“Like mine sometimes. Every time a Hollywood star gets a new, groundbreaking hairstyle, all my customers come in, wanting to look exactly like her. It gets old.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Right. Until the next star does something like”—Mitch lowered her voice to a whisper—“add highlights. Then the whole process starts again.”

Jason tried to laugh, but the itch, like many-legged insects crawling back and forth across his skin, made it hard. The waiter stopped by their table and filled his empty glass. As soon as he stepped away, Jason drank half the glass and tried to ignore his arm, half expecting to hear the buzz of a hundred insects as they took flight.

The restaurant noise wrapped around them like a glove. The music, hushed conversations, muted laughter and silverware tapping against plates. Mitch reached across the table to touch his hand, and the jolt it sent through him pulled him away from the itch. She traced his knuckles with the tip of one finger, then drew circles in the skin above. One lock of her hair had come loose, and it hung against the pale of her cheek in an S-shaped wave. Then the itch took hold again; he jerked his hand back, and Mitch pulled hers away fast.

“Sorry,” Jason said. “It’s just my arm.”

“It’s okay. Is it like a mosquito bite? That’s what mine felt like.”

A mosquito bite? Maybe if the bug had a proboscis as large as D.C.’s Washington monument.

“Something like that,” he said and took a bite of steak. It tasted like nothing in his mouth; his brain would only process the itch. The poison ivy bush he’d fallen into on his tenth birthday had nothing on this. His skin begged him to scratch the bugs away, to send them scattering out into the restaurant in search of fresh prey.

Mitch said something in reply, but her words were nothing more than background noise. The itch was the main instrument in the orchestra pit, and it played big. Without the bandage covering the tattoo, the temptation would be too great to scratch and scratch and scratch until his skin bled.

Jason lifted his fork and ran his fingers over the tines. Yes, they would do the trick nicely. Never mind the gouges left in his skin. Never mind the damage to the tattoo. He could take the fork into the bathroom, strip off the bandage and rake the tines over his skin. A hundred times, a thousand. The pull to make the trip made his heart race. How would he explain it to Mitch?

He could pretend to drop it on the floor and slide it in his pocket when he reached down. Tuck it away, then excuse himself for a few minutes. He could bandage it back up when he was done and keep his shirt clean. He could—

Stop it. It’s just an itch.

Ignore it, it will stop, Mitch had said. Mitch’s mouth moved, and he tried to focus on the conversation, but he was only half there. The other half? Under the bandage, screaming for the itch to stop. It was like the orchestra from hell, and every single damn insect in the state of Maryland got an invitation to perform.