Work of Art (21 page)

“Tell me about it. Fortunately, I was good at tuning her out, and I was pretty smart, so I knew how things worked. I was so afraid that I would end up like her that I never dated.”

“Never?”

“Never. I kissed a guy at a party when I was thirteen and went home and cried for hours, afraid that it was the first step on the road to whoredom. So I just didn’t date. Then a few years later, my stepfather was arrested for stealing millions from his clients, including a decent amount of people I went to school with, and I became a social outcast. Ryan was actually the first boy to ask me out after my family’s name was dragged through the mud. He didn’t seem to care what my stepdad had done. He just liked me.”

“Your face just lit up when you talked about him,” Brandon told me, and I let my face fall.

“Shut up. It did not.”

“It did,” he confirmed. “
I was not going to bring him up, per your request, but let the record stand that you mentioned him. But I’m not going to hold it against you. Please continue.”

I
rolled my eyes dramatically. “There’s not much else to say. He was the first person to be nice to me after everything turned to shit. He told me he loved me after two weeks, and I know he really did. My mother hated that I was with him, because I think she was jealous, and she called me a whore on a regular basis, but I knew I wasn’t. Ryan and I didn’t even sleep together for the first year we dated. But I couldn’t go on the pill because if she found out, she’d know we were sleeping together, so we used condoms, and we were careful, but we weren’t careful enough. I got pregnant about a month before we graduated.”

“And that whole time your mom was getting paid to have sex with men,” Brandon deduced.

“Yeah, apparently, but she still couldn’t handle the fact that I’d gotten pregnant. I wondered if things would have been different if it hadn’t been Ryan. Our families never got along. His parents were pretty awful people. They never liked me, but I think his mother really hated my mom, and I never knew why.”

“Maybe your mom was screwing Ryan’s dad,” Brandon offered, and I shook my head.

“I doubt it. His dad didn’t seem like the type to do much besides work. I didn’t see him often, but he made it known that he didn’t approve of me. I honestly think he’s the one who talked Ryan into breaking up with me. It was a great excuse to get his son to move on and find someone who wasn’t white trash.”

“You’re not white trash,
and you weren’t back then,” Brandon told me.

“Well, I know that.
But they thought otherwise. They couldn’t stand that the community knew we were together, and they really couldn’t stomach everyone knowing he’d knocked me up, so if we stopped seeing each other, and I didn’t have the baby, no one would ever know.”

“Man, I can’t believe you and
Ryan almost had a kid together,” he said, shaking his head.

Yeah,
‘almost’ isn’t quite the right word.
But Brandon didn’t need to know that. Ryan hadn’t offered up that little tidbit of information, so I wasn’t saying anything.

“Yeah, it’s sort of unbelievable,” I said, being purposefully vague.

“Have you talked to him since you walked out on him at the bar?”

I shook my head. “
No, you know that. Have you talked to him?”

I hadn’t stopped thinking about Ryan, but I also hadn’t called him. I’d almost called him a dozen times, but I stopped myself, knowing it wasn’t smart. I needed to let him go, but I was finding that to be harder than I’d originally anticipated.

“Yeah, he’s my best friend. I talked to him yesterday and the day before that and the day before that.”

“Brandon, I don’t e
ven talk to my best friends that much, and I’m a girl. What is it with you two?”

“
It’s man-love, baby. Deal with it”

“I’d rather get drunk,” I said, shaking my head. “That way I don’t have to think about my mother screwing Mr. O’Donnell from up the street or Mr.
Thomas, the guy who liked ornate shrubbery.”

“You mean like in
Edward Scissorhands
?”

I nodded. “Yup, he was out there trimming them and measuring them daily. It was sort of creepy, but he always shaped one like Santa
Clause at Christmastime, so that was pretty cool. Oh, God,” I said, dropping my head back on the chair. “I wonder if she screwed any of my teachers or the dads of people I’d been friends with.”

I was pretty sure I could look back at her records and see just who she’d had ‘relationships’ with over the years, but I really didn’t want to.

Brandon nodded his head a few times. “I’d say that’s probably a safe bet.”

“That’s gross. Ugh, my mom was literally the town whore. And she always called me that.”

“Geez, she sounds delightful,” he said sarcastically.

I rolled my eyes. “The sad thing
is I was a good girl, but I think that’s why she hated me. She was the one who slept around in high school, and I guarantee she was projecting her own lack of self-worth onto me.”

“I’m
just sorry I never met her,” Brandon said, his tone full of false despair.

I threw a pillow at him, and he ducked just in time. “I have an amazing dad, though, so I’m not complaining.”

Much.

“Do you talk to your stepfather?”

I shook my head. “No, we weren’t very close growing up. He worked a lot, and when he was home, he doted on my mom. I realized later in life that it was because he knew I wasn’t his, and he started to resent me being around. By the time he landed himself in prison, and my mom told me the truth, I was more pissed that I’d been lied to for so long versus finding out my father really wasn’t my father. I know he got out of prison a few years ago, but he’s never contacted me, and as far as I know, he never contacted my mom.”

“
At least you have kick-ass friends.”

I smiled. “Yeah, Julian and Kelly are pretty amazing.”

“And me!” he said, after a few minutes of me torturing him by not including him in the mix.

“And you,” I said, humoring him.
If he wanted to call me his best friend, who was I to stop him?

Chapter Sixteen

Harper

Two weeks later, it was a
Tuesday night, and I was standing at the front counter talking to Krysta, one of my artists, and looking at the appointments that had been booked for the next few days when I looked up and stopped mid-sentence.

“Hi,” I said, because it was all I could come up with.

“Hi,” Ryan said, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his rumpled suit pants.

His hair was sticking up at odd angles like he’d been running his hands through it, and he had mustard on the corner of his mouth.
He looked exhausted with dark circles under his eyes and a weary expression. I knew he wasn’t okay.

“What’s up?”
I said as casually as I could.

I was honestly surprised was there. We hadn’t spoken in three weeks, an
d the last conversation we’d had ended with me telling him to fuck off. I wasn’t sure what to think about him just showing up at my shop.

He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. “I was grabbing dinner across the street, and I looked up and saw you, so I figured I’d come in and say hi.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” I said gesturing to the remnants of the sub he’d eaten.

He looked at me in confusion for a second before realizing what I was referring to and quickly reached up to wipe his mouth with his hand.

Then we stood and stared at each other for a few seconds.

“I’m going to run to the back and make some copies,”
Krysta said then, squeezing behind me.

In the background I could hear the buzzing of the t
attoo needles mixed with the alt rock we were playing overhead and the random conversations my artists were having with each other and the people they were working on. But other than that, the front of the shop was quiet, and Ryan and I were the only people in the room.

“So, you just came by to say hi?” I questioned when he didn’t say anything else.
My heart was practically pounding out of my chest.

“No, I want a tattoo,” he said then, and I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Seriously?”

I was sure I had one hell of a skeptical look on my face.

He nodded. “Yeah, I had planned to get one the night Brandon and I came in, but then I ran into you, and it didn’t happen.”

“What do you want?”
I asked disbelievingly, sidestepping the mention of our chance meeting. I wasn’t interested in rehashing that night.

I was more curious to know what sort of tattoo he wanted to get
, but at the same time I hoped he wasn’t interested in getting his fiancé’s name tattooed on his body.

He swallowed. “I want to look at some sketches you’ve done. I have this idea in my head, but I want something you designed.”

“Okay,” I said, as I called for Krysta to come back out front to cover the rest of Gracie’s break.

I knew she was just giving us space and was most likely hovering near
Paulie while he worked. Ever since they’d started dating, I had to remind them that while they were at work, they both had jobs to do.

Ryan silently followed me back to
my private room. Even though there was a station available out front, I wanted to avoid the prying ears of my artists. He settled into the chair, and I handed him a book of my designs. I sat on my stool and watched him flip through the pages, stopping whenever he saw something that caught his eye.

After a few minutes he looked up at me. “You’re really talented.”

“Thank you.”

I was dying to turn on some music, but the air was so thick between us that I was almost afraid to move.

“Are there any Celtic symbols that mean ‘fuck you’?” he asked then, and I reeled back before a small smile started to creep up on his face. “I want to get it and show it to my family.”

“I would advise against that,” I told him, as he continued to flip through the book.
“But no, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t a common term with the Celts.”

He smiled a small smile and shook his head as he continued to flip pages.
It seemed like he more so needed someone to talk to, but I wasn’t sure. We weren’t exactly friends, so it was odd that he’d come to me if something was bothering him, but I also couldn’t ignore the comment he’d just made about his family.

“Ryan, are you sure you want a tattoo?” I asked, instead of probing into his personal life.

He shrugged. “Sure, why not.”

“Because you were never the type to mark your body, and keep in mind that this is forever.
It’s really painful and takes a long time to make one go away, so you need to be sure that you want that before you let me come near you with a needle.”

He sighed. “I understand how permanent this is, and even though I don’t have any tattoos, I think there are a lot of things in life that mark your body and stay with you forever, and just like ink, they’re painful to remove, and sometimes they never truly go away. But I wouldn’t change the decision to go through what it took to get those marks in the first place. I wouldn’t change it for anything.”

The lyrics from
Name
by The Goo Goo Dolls suddenly filtered through my mind – ‘Scars are souvenirs you never lose, the past is never far.’

“Ryan, why are you here?”
I asked him.

He closed the book but left it on his lap.
“Because I wanted to see you. I don’t know what I did the night we met at that bar, but I feel awful about it. I haven’t stopped thinking about you, and I just needed to see you, to see if you were okay.”

“I’m okay,” I assured him
, even though my heart started pounding again at the realization that he’d been thinking about me.

He ran his hand back through his hair and appraised me. “Brandon says you’re still coming to the wedding.”

I nodded. “I am. I didn’t want to bail on him.”

“I’m glad. I want you there.”

Yeah, that was a little odd, but I wasn’t in the mood to question him about it.

“Can I tell you something?” he asked then
, as he looked at me pensively.

I nodded. “Sure.”

He shook his head. “You might already know this, but were you aware that your mom was sleeping with my dad during the time we were dating?”

I sucked in a breath, and
my eyes went wide, as I remembered the joke Brandon had made when I told him my mother had been an escort. I never expected it to be true.

“
Tell me you’re joking,” I said, not sure if I should tell him what I’d learned about her occupation of choice.

“
No, I’m not, but I feel a little better that you didn’t know either.” He shook his head. “The day I met you at the bar, my mom told me why she disliked you so much when we were dating, and that was the reason. She apparently hired a PI and had my father trailed, and she has pictures of the two of them together.”