Sketch (2 page)

She flips through the paper appointment book we have as a backup to our computer system. “First appointment is a cover up, and then you’ve blocked out five hours for some dude named Arson?”

I laugh. “He’s a friend of mine, in an MC. It’s a memorial piece, and it’s going to take a while.”

“Is Arson his real name?”

“If he told you his real name, he’d have to kill you, Jackie.” I level her with a look that makes her take a step back.

“Some of the guys you know, Sketch, I wonder how you’ve made it this far in life without dying.”

I shake my head at her as I make my way out of the shop towards Starbucks before turning around and yelling at her over my shoulder. “Text me your drink order.”

As soon as I’m out of the shop, I think about the last six months and wonder how the fuck I made it this far without dying too.

SKETCH

M
y back is
killing me, but it’s a good kind of hurt. The kind of hurt that comes after I’ve spent hours bent over someone’s piece of skin, memorializing them forever. I’m the only one Arson allows to touch his skin, and that makes me proud. The tattoo I’m giving him I worked hard to create, and there’s a sense of satisfaction that it gives me. Nothing else compares.

When I’m in the zone, I can go hours and not need a break, but the clients may, and I try to respect that.

“You need a break, my man?”

Arson stretches out his arm and turns his eyes to admire the ink I’ve put on it. No color for this guy; it’s straight up old-school dark lines and gray shading. “Could go for a smoke.” He motions outside.

That means he wants me to follow him. Reaching over into my station, I grab out my hard pack of Marlboros and beat the box on the palm of my hand as we walk out onto the shop’s patio area.

“How’s it goin’?” Arson asks as he lights up and hands me his lighter.

He and I have talked here and there. He knows what’s been going on in my personal life. Taking a drag off my cigarette after I light it, I blow the smoke away from him. “Living, man…just living.”

“Has Nina tried to get in touch with you?”

It jars me to hear her name being spoken. Hardly anybody has talked to me about it. It’s like a forbidden topic no one wants to bring up. “I got a text from her today asking if she could come get some of her stuff,” I tell him, trying to keep the hurt out of my voice.

Who am I kidding? It still hurts. Every day I wake up trying to move on from where I was that night she left me in the driveway, but it’s hard.

“That’s rough,” Arson echoes my thoughts. “Are you gonna try to talk to her?”

That’s the question I keep asking myself. “I don’t know. I figure I’ll play it by ear. It’s not like I can tell her about my day, she hates this place.”

“She doesn’t,” he argues. “I’ve seen her here with you before, dude. She may not love it like you do, but she’s proud of you for havin’ it. I could see that in her face.”

“When she left, she blamed it on the time I spent at this goddamn shop. Her exact words.”

“Anger and hurt makes people lash out; sometimes they say things they don’t mean.”

“I’ve known Nina for fourteen years—since freshman year of high school. We’ve been together just as long. When she says something, she means it.” And I know that without a doubt.

Arson looks like he wants to say more, but instead he flicks his cigarette out of his hand and squashes it with the toe of his boot. “Then let’s get this over with so you can go do whatever it is you need to.”

*

To say I’m
not looking forward to this is an understatement. Nina and I haven’t seen each other in four months. In these four months, I’ve taken a hard look at my life and made changes. Those changes are for me, though; I don’t expect her to notice them. One night, with a bottle of Jack, I made an idiot out of myself at her new apartment building and realized I had to make some changes in my life. It was time.

Gone is the fast food I was so quick to grab when I was on my way home to her; gone are the lazy nights in front of Netflix. Three nights a week at the gym, and I run every morning. I look better now than I did in high school. I haven’t lost a lot of weight, but I’m much more muscular than I’ve ever been, and I do have the beginnings of a six pack, if I do say so myself.

Her car is parked in the driveway as I turn my truck in, parking beside her. Sitting there for a few minutes gives me time to get my feelings under control, and I know it keeps her guessing and on her toes. I see her get out of her car, so I get out of mine.

“Nina,” I greet her with a nod of my head. I don’t want to give her any more of myself than I already have. If she wants words from me, she’s going to have to work for it.

“Hey, Sketch,” she greets me with a small smile. “How are you?”

I don’t miss the way her eyes rake over my body. It gives me a sense of accomplishment.

“Let’s not make small talk, Nina.” I purposely use her name. “What are you here to get?”

She swallows hard. I can tell by the way her throat moves. “Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be,” she pleads.

“Harder? You left me, babe. Not the other way around.” There’s that anger again, festering just beneath the surface. It makes me want to either beat the shit out of something or grab my shoes and run another three miles.

“Do we have to get into this?”

Putting my hands on my hips, I face her. For the first time in what feels like a lifetime, I face her. “There’s no time like the present, sweetheart. Why don’t we lay it out on the table?”

She’s still watching me with more interest in her eyes than she has in years. I’m a dick and I know it, but I can’t help the words that come out of my mouth. “Or we can use the table to lay your body out. I haven’t fucked you on the kitchen table in a long time.”

“Is this necessary?” Her eyes narrow and she glares at me.

“Whatever it takes for me not to lose my mind is necessary,” I tell her with a tone that is much rougher than I’ve ever used with her. “Please, do us both a favor. Get your shit, and get out.”

“You’ve changed, Devin.”

Back to the real name again.

“I had to. When your heart is ripped from your chest and torn into a million pieces, you’ve kinda gotta do what you’ve gotta do.”

The look on her face tells me that maybe I’ve not been the only one hurting, but I don’t allow myself to respond.

SKETCH

I
keep my
distance as I follow her into the house. There’s a huge part of me that wants to be able to witness her reaction to the changes I’ve made. It’s shock value, I tell myself. Her response will fulfill a part of me that’s been empty since she left. That’s another thing I tell myself all the time.

We get to the door and she stops, stepping aside. “I doubt my key still works.”

It’s said with a little self-deprecation, but I can tell she truly wonders.

“Your key still works,” I admit. “You could have come to do this while I wasn’t here if you had wanted to.”

Pushing the door open, I motion for her to step inside. I watch as she immediately goes for the living room. It was always her haven. Flipping on the light, I prepare myself for the onslaught I know this woman is going to rain down on me. If she’s anything like the girl I married, I’m about to get my balls handed to me.

“Sketch, what the fuck did you do?”

The anger and hurt is there, in her voice. It makes me feel good, and I know it shouldn’t, but I want her to hurt as badly as I did when she walked away from me. We never talked about it—hell, this is the first time we’ve seen each other. It’s past time we had this conversation.

“Got rid of that goddamn fucking cheery yellow.”

“I loved that yellow,” she argues, piercing me with an accusing glance, her blue eyes sparkling with anger.

“I know,” I admit as I lean against the wall and cross my arms over my chest.

Her interest doesn’t escape me. There was always one thing Nina loved, and that was the ink on my arms. When we were in high school and I spent all my time drawing, it was her who had suggested I become a tattoo artist. It was her who had done the research, who’d worked hard so that I could apprentice and we had food to eat. Back then, it had been us against the world. Somewhere along the line, we’d become two individuals who were no longer part of a cohesive unit.

“Every time I looked at those yellow walls, Nina, they made me think of a time when we were happy with each other. I couldn’t take it.” I let my bravado fall down, but not completely.

“This hasn’t been easy for me either, Sketch.” She licks her lips and goes to stand at the wall opposite me, folding her own arms over her chest. “I’ve rethought the decision a million times.”

“Could have fooled me. You seemed pretty damn sure when you left.”

She growls in frustration, kicking her head back against the wall. “Stop saying that!”

“It’s not a lie,” I remind her. “You did leave.”

“I did.” She throws her hands up in the air. “Only because you made me.”

What? Now I’m wondering if she’s on drugs. I, in no way, told this woman I wanted her to leave. “I made you?”

“The long days at the shop while I waited on you to finish someone’s piece, the long nights you spent at the shop leaving me here, the countless long weekends we were supposed to have when something came up. You never wanted to spend time with me, Sketch. Never.”

“Nothing you’ve said to me has ever been further from the truth. If you weren’t such a spoiled brat, you’d see that,” I tell her, pushing against the wall as I launch myself at her. “Nothing has ever been good enough for you. Why do you think I was killing myself? To make things better for us, and where did that get me? Standing in my driveway like a dumbass as you drove away.”

She shrinks back from me as I approach her. Scared of me is something she’s never been.

“Scared?” I taunt.

“Pissed.” she answers in a clipped tone. “I have never been a brat.”

This shit flies all over me. When we first got married, she hadn’t been a brat, but she’d slowly evolved, and I knew that. “The hell you aren’t. I bought you the car you’re driving out there. You bitched because it didn’t have a sunroof. I bought this house. You bitched because it didn’t have a basement and that it was only two bedrooms, because when we had that kid we always talked about, you wouldn’t be able to have your craft room anymore.” I tick the items off on my fingers. “But that’s the big stuff. Should we go into the everyday, nit-picky shit you’ve stuck me with?”

“Stop,” she begs, her bottom lip trembling.

This is her MO, and I’m not stopping. “I can’t make it to your aunt’s birthday because I have a client who booked with me five months in advance. We’re doing a memorial piece for his seven-year-old son who died of cancer. This is the only time he can come in, and the first chance I’ve been able to fit him in. Your aunt decided two days before that she wanted to have the birthday party. Somehow, me not being able to go turned into my fault. Never mind the fact that my client had worked up the nerve for a year to make the appointment, he’d saved for even longer, and I’d stayed at the shop late every night the week before to draw the perfect piece.”

I stop to take a breath because shit’s getting serious and it’s getting personal, but maybe it needs to. “You know why I do that, Nina? Because that means something to me. I want the person who comes in broken because they have gone through the worst thing that life throws at them to leave with a huge smile on their face because I’ve made a difference. That feels good to me. They appreciate me, unlike you.”

“That’s not true, Sketch.” She swallows roughly.

“Could have fucking fooled me.”

This is enough for one night. I can’t take anymore. “Like I said earlier, get your shit and leave. I’ll be in the shower. Lock the door on your way out.”

I don’t wait around to see what she does. All I know is I have to get away from her before I say a million things I’m going to regret later.

SKETCH

I
’m sitting in
my office, head bent over the sketchbook on my desk, drawing away. When I’m angry, hurt, sad, depressed, even happy, this is my go-to. I want to get as much work done as possible. It’s one of the pitfalls of being an artistic fuck. When I work, I work.

“Hey, boss.”

A voice interrupts me. Trix is the only female artist we have here, and I’m not gonna lie, we get some dudes here because of her. She’s Kat Von D without the stick up her ass or the pretentious air that makes her seem like she’s better than everyone else. Not to mention, she’s damn good at her job, can hang with the boys when we go out for beer and wings, and looking at her you can tell she’s a lady when she needs to be, a freak when she wants to be.

“Yeah.” I glance up, giving her my full attention. And full attention she gets. Today she wears a shirt that shows off her cleavage and ends right before the waistband of her jeans. She’s put her hands up on the door frame, and it gives me a view of her taut stomach. I remind myself though; I’m still wearing a wedding ring. Literally. I haven’t been able to take it off yet.