Knockout (11 page)

“A job.”

“An apprenticeship? Cause I don’t think—“

“No, a job. I’ll run the register, clean bathrooms, mop the floor. Whatever it takes to be here and watch. To learn.”

“See, now that sounds like an apprenticeship.”

“Do you charge for one?” I asked, glad I’d done my homework on this already. “’Cause I have money.”

“I believe that. But no, not usually. I also rarely give them.”

“Then give me a job instead. Maybe in a year you’ll change your mind.”

“Maybe after a year of cleaning toilets you’ll change your mind,” he challenged, stepping back and crossing his arms over his chest.

I shook my head firmly, my eyes hard on his. “Not gonna happen. This is what I want. This is what I’m going to do.”

He watched me for a long time, his face unreadable. I was sweating all over. My heart was racing with nerves and adrenaline. I was feeling the kind of rush you only get when you’re doing something huge. Something life altering and potentially soul crushing. I wanted this. More than I’d ever wanted anything.

“Palos Verdes, huh?” he asked.

I blinked, surprised we were still on this. “Yeah.”

“That’s a long commute. What are you thinking? Three days a week? Weekends for sure.”

I could hardly breathe. “I can do that.”

“Yeah, we’ll see how long you last.” He nodded toward my sketchbook still sitting on the counter between us. “Which one is yours?”

“My what?”

“Your tattoo. The one you want the most. There’s a favorite in there, I know it. If you’re as serious about this as you say, you’ve been thinking about your first ink for a long time. Which one is it?”

I quickly opened the pad and easily flipped it to the page with my favorite sketch. I shoved the book back toward him.

“A compass rose,” he said, the surprise plain in his voice. “How big and where?”

“No bigger than my palm and right here,” I said, putting my hand over my heart.

“On your chest?” he asked, sounding surprised again. “Okay. I was expecting your wrist or your back. Between your shoulder blades?”

“No, over my heart,” I insisted.

He nodded appreciatively. “It has some meaning for you?” I nodded as well. “Good. Then that’s exactly where it should go. That’s what matters about tattoos. It’s not what’s in style and what you think you should get or where you think you should put it. Every time you get inked it should have meaning for you. This shit is forever and you’re the one who has to look at it every single day. You have to really want it and you have to love it. Every last one of them. You got it?”

“I got it.”

“You still want it?”

I felt my pulse fly. “I absolutely want it.”

He motioned for me to follow him. “Then get your ass in my chair.”

What followed was three hours of education. He didn’t put the tattoo on me in ink in my skin. He drew it in place with a fine point Sharpy to give me an idea of what it would look like. He also went over my sketch with me, the one I thought I had perfected after the last two years of tinkering. Turns out my drawings did show promise but they had to be adapted for tattooing. What looked good on paper didn’t always work in ink. You had to account for line thickness, shading, color choices changed everything – the list went on and on. Bryce, the tattoo artist who worked with me that day, went over it all with me. We reworked my sketch until it was right for tattooing and more beautiful than I ever imagined it could be. It was simple in all black, nothing ornate but it was intricate. He made that symmetrical, basic symbol into something elaborate. But it was still small and elegant. And most importantly, it meant something to me. It was everything Kellen had shown me I could be.

Sure. Decisive. Intent.

It would remind me to follow my heart. To find my True North and never waver. Never falter.

It reminded me that my life was mine.

I spun around the kitchen on my toes, pulling from the years of ballet my mom had insisted on as a kid. I was good, right up until I was too big. Scrawny as I had been I’d eventually gotten too tall. I towered over the other girls until it got weird and I hated it too much to enjoy it anymore. But it’d been fun while it lasted.

Now I used my latent skills to rock my ass off around the kitchen to
Sublime
’s greatest hits. I had the Bose system, the one my mom liked to listen to jazz music on while she cooked, cranked up ear splittingly loud as I baked cookies. Peanut butter crisscross. Because they’re delicious.

I couldn’t hear anything else in the world. Not the ocean outside or the beat of my heart or the doorbell being rung. I definitely didn’t hear anyone come in so when I spun around again, a spatula raised high above my head in perfect pirouette form, and I saw a big blurred figure standing in the doorway to the kitchen, I instantly thought I was going to die.

I stopped my spin, faced the intruder and chucked the spatula at him as hard as I could. He ducked quickly and shouted something. I pushed my wild hair out of my face in time to see him stand back up and take a step into the kitchen. I was looking for a new weapon when I recognized who it was.

“Dammit, Kellen!” I yelled. “What the hell?!”

He bent down to pick up the spatula. “That’s what I was thinking! Why are you throwing things at me?!”

“Because you scared the shit out of me!”

He scowled, looking around the kitchen for the hidden speakers. “Can we turn this down?!”

I grabbed the remote and quickly knocked the volume down to half. The world seemed strangely quiet all of the sudden.

He surveyed the trashed kitchen. “What are you doing?”

“Rotating my tires,” I said sarcastically, still annoyed at having been scared. “What does it look like?”

“It looks like your mom is going to be angry.”

“She’s not home.”

“Where is she?”

I gestured for him to hand me the spatula. He eyed me dubiously.

“If I give you this, is it going to end up in my back?”

“Don’t turn your back on me and you won’t have to worry about it.”

He handed it over.

“She’s on a trip with dad,” I told him as I rinsed off the utensil in the sink. “They took a cruise to the Mediterranean. Dad had a really ugly case recently and he needed a break and mom wasn’t about to miss a couple weeks on a cruise ship.”

“Was it just them or…” He let the question hang but I knew what he wasn’t asking.

“Laney is out for the night. Party.”

“You’re here alone?”

I turned around, surprised by his tone. It sounded nervous? Maybe uncomfortable.

“Yep, just me.”

“You should have had the alarm system on.”

“The door was locked.”

“I know, I used my key. But you’ve got the alarm system. You should use it.”

I shrugged. “I’ll turn it on when I go to bed.”

“You should have it on whenever you’re alone in the house.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “Alright, Kel, geez. Do you want me to turn it on now?”

“Just promise me you’ll turn it on when I leave.”

“Are you leaving already?” I asked, feeling my heart hurt. I hadn’t seen him in months and despite being scared shitless when he showed up, I was excited to have him here. Also, I’d been alone in the house for a couple days. I could use the company.

“I don’t know,” he said, glancing toward the kitchen door. It reminded me of the day I met him when he was watching for my dad, nervous about getting social with his lawyer’s daughter.

“Don’t be stupid. You drove all the way down here. Sit down. Have a cookie.”

“What kind are they? Chocolate chip?”

I sighed heavily. “You don’t like chocolate chip.”

“Everyone likes chocolate chip.”

“Everyone but you. You think they’re too sweet. Here, have a peanut butter crisscross.”

He stood on the opposite side of the island from me and bit down into a cookie. His eyes went wide.

“What is that?” he asked.

“A cookie. You like it don’t you? You’re welcome, although you’ll forget you like it by tomorrow and think chocolate chip is the only cookie on the planet.” I bit into a cookie as well, talking around the delicious dissolving in my mouth. “You have a terrible food memory.”

“Food memory isn’t a real thing and that’s not what I’m talking about.” He came around the island, his eyes intent on me. Not on my face, but on my chest. I suddenly realized I was only wearing a workout halter top. My pseudo tattoo was barely covered at all. “Did you get a tattoo?”

Before I could answer his fingers were gently pushing aside the material of my shirt. He exposed the top of my right breast to a dangerous degree but I don’t think he realized it. I on the other hand, was breathlessly, heart-stoppingly aware of it. And of his fingers lightly running over my skin.

“It’s just a drawing,” I said quietly, watching his face. “It was practice for the one I want to get.”

“I didn’t know you wanted one.”

His voice was so deep. He was close. Warm and tall and so close.

I nodded slightly. “I’m surprised you don’t have any.”

“I’ve never had the money lying around to get one. Every extra penny has always been spent on boxing.”

He was talking but I don’t know that he was paying attention to what he was saying. His fingers were moving over the lines on my skin, tracing the entire image. I wouldn’t need the ink after this. His fingers were burning me, leaving feint scars in their wake.

His eyes finally found mine though his hand didn’t leave me. “Why a compass?”

I swallowed hard. “So I remember to trust myself. That no one knows me better than me.”

“So you remember to follow your own path.”

“Yeah.”

Kellen grinned as he dropped his hand and took a step back. “You’re an old soul, Jenna. You’re too together for your age. You’ve got too much figured out already.”

I chuckled shakily, feeling off balance. “Tell that to my mom.”

“I’m guessing they don’t know about this,” he said, pointing the compass.

“No. Or about college.”

His face fell. “You’re not thinking about skipping out on college, are you?”

“No, I’m going. But they don’t know where I’m going to go or what I’m going to study. Mom thinks I’m going to be a business major.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Art. I want to study art.”

I moved out of the kitchen to the adjacent dining room where I grabbed my sketchpad. When I brought it back to the island and set it down beside him, my hands were trembling. Sam knew. So did Bryce, my boss, but this was different. This was Kellen. This was like telling family and I was so afraid but I was also rushing. I felt like I couldn’t stop myself. Like it was going to burst out of me whether I wanted it to or not.

I flipped my pad open to the page Bryce and I had worked on, the one where he had shown me different shading techniques and how to adjust my drawings to become better tattoos.

“This is what I want to do,” I said breathily. I felt like I had run a marathon, not to the dining room and back. I couldn’t catch my breath. “I got a job at a tattoo parlor in Bakersfield. I’m going to work there on weekends this year then hopefully he’ll give me an apprenticeship while I go to college. Then I’ll get certified and I’ll do it on my own. Maybe I’ll work there or somewhere else. Someday I want my own shop, but for now this is what I have to do.”

“This is what you want to do.”

I grinned. It felt wild, crazy. “Same thing.”

Kellen smiled at me before looking down at my sketchpad. He flipped through it the way Bryce had. Slowly. He was looking, really, honestly looking at each drawing. I felt exposed. I felt more vulnerable and naked with him passing his eyes over my drawings than I would if I was standing in front of him bare skinned from head to toe.

“What do you think?” I asked quietly.

He looked up, his face surprised. “What do I think about you becoming an artist?”

“Yeah.”

“I think it’s what you were meant to do. I’ve always said you’re talented, Jen. I’m glad you’re going to do something great with it.”

“You think me becoming a tattoo artist is great?”

“If that’s what you want, then hell yes. This,” he pointed to the compass on my chest, “is something you designed isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Bryce, the guy at the shop, he helped me fix it but yeah, I designed it.”

“It’s perfect.” He turned to face me, his dark eyes serious. He stepped close and pressed his hands on the side of my face so I was looking at him. So I couldn’t look away. “
You’re
perfect, Nonpareil.”

I smiled as my eyes filled with tears of relief. I pushed his hands away so I could wrap my arms around his neck and hug him tightly. He didn’t hesitate to hug me back. It felt so good to have him here again. I knew I’d missed him but standing here with him like this, having him around to tell my secret to, that was excruciatingly sublime.