The Sexy Tattooist Read online

  “I’ve been twenty-one for months now.”

  “I know that, but I bet you didn’t even go out to a bar. Am I right?”

  I sighed. “You are.”

  “So, I’ll come get you around seven, okay? We’ll do dinner and then drinks and then go clubbing or something. Wear something cute. This is going to be the best summer ever; I just know it! See ya!” She hung up before I could respond, or remind her that I didn’t own anything that she’d categorize as “cute” for a night out on the town.

  There was a note on the marble countertop in the kitchen, in my mom’s flowery cursive: At the yacht club. Your father’s golfing. Will be back later this afternoon. Alicia made some snacks that are in the fridge. Xo, Mom

  I crumpled the note up and tossed it into the trash. No doubt the snacks that Alicia made were something totally decadent and delicious, but I’d always felt weird eating food that had been prepared for me. It sounded strange, considering that my parents had employed someone to cook our meals for most of my life, but if I were to open the fridge and start eating whatever snacks Alicia had made, I’d feel overwhelming guilt because—wasn’t I more than capable of preparing my own snack?

  I left the kitchen without eating anything, though, and went up the stairs and down the long hallway to my bedroom. Tara liked to give me a hard time about feeling guilty over having wealthy parents and a privileged upbringing, but it was something that had bothered me for a long time. But I also knew enough not to talk about it, because no one wanted to hear that sort of thing, and people would just sort of roll their eyes and think, Oh, poor little rich girl, which was exactly the sort of sentiment that I was trying to avoid. And it wasn’t as though I felt guilty enough about it to take a vow of poverty or not accept my father’s offer to finance my apartment and tuition for college. In a way, I guess I was a hypocrite, and that was maybe worse than being from a wealthy family. Tara made no apologies for it, spent her parents’ money freely, and enjoyed every bit of being from the upper class. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me that wished I could just be like that, too.

  I left my suitcase at the foot of the bed and looked around my bedroom, which hadn’t changed much since I was a kid. The few decorations that adorned the eggshell-white walls had been chosen by my mother because they’d been timeless (so she said, and neither of us had changed them as I’d grown up). In a way, being in this room felt as though I were stuck in some sort of time capsule that ten-year-old me might have put together. There was the desk in the corner that I rarely sat at, and a four-post bed with a canopy, a handmade quilt purchased from an artisan crafter at the county fair. The room could’ve been featured in Cape Cod Magazine or something; it was tasteful and pretty, but anonymous in that you it lent no clues about the person who inhabited it.

  I caught sight of myself in the mirror above the dresser. I thought about what Tara had said on the phone: This is going to be the best summer ever! She said that every year, and I knew, if you asked her, every summer was the best summer ever—that is, until next summer rolled around. For me though, summers had basically amounted to hanging out with Tara, hanging out with my parents, and wondering just what it was that I was going to do with my life. Tara didn’t share that concern; so long as her parents had money, she knew exactly what she was going to do with her life: whatever she wanted. At the end of last summer, we parted ways, me heading back to art school, her back to New York, but only for a little while before it was on to an extended vacation in Europe and then a winter out at her parents’ ski lodge in Vail. And if she got sick of Vail, she could just ask her parents and they’d buy her a ticket wherever she wanted to go. Last year it had been Ibiza; this year she’d already mentioned the possibility of Thailand.

  But maybe Tara was right; maybe I could make this the best summer ever, even though I wasn’t entirely sure what that would mean. I’d spent my whole life being the good girl, (mostly) doing exactly what my parents wanted—I deserved to have a little fun, too, didn’t I?

  The girl looking back at me in the mirror was wearing a pair of old cut-offs and a white t-shirt splattered with old paint. I squinted, trying to see myself as someone else other than the same, old person I was used to, but I couldn’t. It was just me. Same old me that it had always been.

  “Even if you just do one thing you wouldn’t normally do,” I said out loud, “that will be something.”

  I felt a little foolish talking to myself out loud like that. That’s what crazy people did: ladies with wild hair and outlandish clothes and thirty cats waiting for them back in their apartment. But still. There was something comforting about hearing the words out loud, even if I was just saying them for my own benefit. And even though I had no idea what that one thing I wouldn’t normally do might be, it seemed like a good goal.

  3.

  Graham

  Saturday morning was one of those nice, early summer days—warm but not humid, no annoying, biting insects, a refreshing breeze every once in a while. I met Todd down at the conservation area we rode at most often. He showed up in full kit, and of course he couldn’t resist giving me shit about my baggy shorts and t-shirt.

  “You heading to the skate park after this?” he asked.

  He wouldn’t be running his mouth so much once we got out on the trail, though. For unknown reasons, I was particularly adept at this style of bike riding, despite not doing any training for it or even using the “correct” equipment. It was fun, I didn’t have to wear Spandex, and I liked the rush it gave me to be careening through the woods, sometimes at twenty-plus miles per hour.

  There was also a point when you had pushed yourself as far as you might have thought you could physically, when your mind would just sort of turn into this blank slate and your body would take over. That exhaustion you felt would completely disappear, and you’d be able to go harder and faster than you would’ve thought possible. It was a sort of magic, really, and just the possibility of obtaining the feeling was enough to get me back on the bike again and again. But I also rode because it kept me out of trouble.

  We turned onto a fire road, which was wide enough for us to ride next to each other. Todd slowed until I’d caught up and we were side-by-side.

  “So, did you call Amanda?” he asked.

  “Dude! You just gave me her number last night. No, I didn’t call her.” I reached down and pulled my water bottle out of the cage and took a big sip. “I’m actually not going to, either.”

  Todd gave me a hurt look. “Why the hell not? She’s hot. You’d be a fool not to. She’s way hotter than Danielle. What’s gotten into you, lately? Are you having some sort of weird, quarter-life crisis or something?”

  “What the fuck is a ‘quarter-life crisis’?”

  “It’s exactly what it sounds like, except it’s also total bullshit because no one should be having any sorts of crises when they’re in their mid-twenties, because that’s the prime of your fucking life! So get out there and get laid, dammit!”

  “You know, I appreciate your concern and everything, but I’ve actually been thinking about it—”

  “That’s your first mistake—this isn’t something you’re supposed to psychoanalyze. If you think about it too much, you’re going to start getting all introspective and shit, and the next thing you know, you’re going to be writing poetry or fronting some awful emo-core band. Where’s your phone? Call her right now. Hell, if you won’t, I’ll call her and set it up. Do you see what I’m willing to do for you? I’ve got a date tonight, too, actually—this chick Melanie. And am I over here, analyzing every detail about it? Fuck no. Because if I started to do that shit, it would ruin it. It just would. So, I suggest you stop it, too, and just call Amanda.”

  He wasn’t going to lay off, I could tell, so I responded by pedaling faster. We were side-by-side, until I started to pull ahead, which Todd responded to by pedaling fast himself. We had about half a mile to go before we reached the turn off for the singletrack, and I usually let Todd set the
pace, but I knew if I pushed it right now, I could beat him there. Also, he’d have to exert himself so much he’d be forced to stop talking, so I shifted into a higher gear and let loose.

  “Fucker,” I heard Todd grunt as I pulled away. “Goddammit, Graham, you know I don’t like riding like this when we’ve got a race coming up.”

  *****

  When Todd and I were done with the ride, I was famished, so I took myself out to eat, because the last thing I ever felt like doing after a long ride was cooking some elaborate meal. The place I liked to go was called Laura’s. It was a little, breakfast-and-lunch joint that was open year round, but mostly overtaken by the tourists during the summer. The locals stayed away until after Labor Day, but I still went there after every ride. It was also right across the street from Ocean View Realty, which was where all the rich people went to get secure their summer rentals.

  The proprietor of Ocean View was Craig Oliver, father of yours truly. Though I didn’t know if he even knew that; I myself didn’t find out until freshman year of high school. Up until that point, I’d always assumed my father had died. I sensed that it just wasn’t a topic to bring up with my mother, and she let me believe he was dead. I wasn’t sure what changed the day she told me he was actually alive and well and prospering right here in town.

  Seeing as he’d never been a part of my life, it seemed silly to think that he’d want to start now. I wondered why my mother didn’t go after him for child support, as she was constantly in need of money, no matter how many “loans” I made to her, fully knowing she would never be able to pay me back. If anything, my father was probably relieved she never tried to get him on the hook for helping her raise this son of his—it would be easy to be embarrassed by my mother, especially if you were a successful businessman like he was. Still, it didn’t stop me from being curious about him, though I hadn’t approached him and honestly didn’t have any clue if he even knew I existed.

  I was just draining the last drops of orange juice from my glass when my phone started to vibrate. I looked at the screen and sighed. It wouldn’t be a Saturday morning without a call from my mother, who, no doubt, was going through some sort of diabolical, personal emergency. I picked up the phone, if only because she’d keep calling incessantly until I did.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Graham! Thank god you picked up. Are you busy? You won’t believe what happened to me last night—I was just leaving ... well, never mind where I was just leaving, that doesn’t matter ... I went to get into my car and it wouldn’t start. It just wouldn’t start. And I hadn’t left the lights on or anything like that. So, now my car’s just sitting there. I had to hitchhike home last night.”

  “Why didn’t you call Wade?”

  “I tried, but he didn’t answer. He’s been so tired lately, he’s been working double shifts because that asshole boss of his fired Kenny and refuses to hire anyone else—”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “I don’t actually need the whole story. So what do you want me to do? I can drive down there in a little bit and give you a jump if you want. But you’re going to have to tell me where the car is.” I already knew where the car was, but there was always a miniscule part of me that was hoping she might say it was somewhere respectable—say, the grocery store or the laundry mat.

  “It’s ... it’s at The Finery.” She sounded like a petulant child. “And I don’t need you to give me any shit about it, okay? I’ve got to make money, too, you know. We’ve all got bills to pay. I’m just like anybody else, trying to make ends meet.”

  Don’t let the name fool you—The Finery was about as seedy a place you could get, a strip club masquerading as a tavern/gentleman’s club. My mother had worked there my entire life (and was probably where she met my father), though now that she was in her mid-forties, had been demoted to waitress.

  “What happened to applying for the job at town hall?” I said. “The one that Lauren told you about.”

  My mother laughed. “Oh, I checked out the application. It was about five pages long. Wanted to know all this personal stuff. Which is fine by me—I’ve got nothing to hide—but then it was also asking about past experience and everything. And trust me, Graham, I know some of the women that work in the town hall, and they don’t want to hear anything about the past experiences that I’ve had. It just wasn’t the right fit for me. You can understand that, can’t you? It’d be like me trying to make you work somewhere that you just didn’t fit in. You would hate it. How is business going, anyway?”

  “It’s fine. Listen, I’m not at the house right now, but I’m going to head back there in about half an hour. I’ll get my truck and then I’ll come pick you up and we’ll go jump your car. I don’t know why no one offered to give you a jump last night—oh wait, no, I do; everyone was probably way too wasted.” The patrons of The Finery were less-than-stellar characters, and I wasn’t looking forward to going over there, even though the worst of them wouldn’t be out until much later this evening.

  “You’re the best,” my mother said. “What would I do without you? I’ll see you soon.”

  “Bye,” I said. I had just put the phone down when I saw my father step out of the office building across the street. He was wearing cream-colored shorts and boating shoes and one of those salmon-pink golf shirts that seemed to be all the rage with the affluent folks. A woman stepped out behind him, and they stood there for a moment, talking. She was wearing an all-white tennis outfit: white sneakers, white skirt, sleeveless, white shirt, white visor. Was that his wife? Girlfriend? Or someone that was just securing a summer rental from him? I was too far away to be able to hear their conversation, though their body language didn’t suggest a romantic relationship.

  I had to fight off the urge to run over there and introduce myself. It wouldn’t go well—I knew that much, which was why I hadn’t done it yet, and probably never would. And even now, at twenty-six years old, I still found myself wondering how my completely fucked up childhood might’ve been different if my father had been around.

  *****

  My mother and Wade still lived in the same, shitty duplex that I’d grown up in. There wasn’t a driveway so much as a gravel parking lot, and their unit was in the back, behind the first two. The paint was peeling; there were empty beer cans littering the sparse front lawn, along with an assortment of forgotten children’s toys. The whole place was depressing as fuck, and I had to bite back the urge to flee immediately.

  Luckily, my mother came out, saving me from having to go in and possibly interact with Wade. We’d come to an uneasy truce over the years, mainly due to the fact that I was now an adult who could hit him back.

  My mother was wearing her usual attire, consisting of a too-tight tank top and short shorts. It was pointless to suggest she wear something a little more modest, so I said nothing. I didn’t feel like getting into an argument with her over what constituted “modest attire.” She hopped up into the passenger seat of the truck and I took off out of there about as fast as I could.

  “So, anything new going on with you?” she asked. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “I saw you last week, Mom.”

  “Was it? Well, it was only for a few minutes. Business is going good?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “Do you have a girlfriend? I’m looking forward to being a grandma, you know, even though everyone says I’m way too young to be one!” She laughed as though this were the best compliment ever.

  “No, Mom, I don’t have a girlfriend and don’t hold your breath about the grandkids. You know I don’t want to have kids.”

  “Don’t say things like that!” she said. “You might very well change your mind once you meet the right person.”

  “I’m taking a break from the dating game at the moment, if you must know.”

  She frowned. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that you need to stop giving me shit about these phantom grandkids you think you’re gonna ge
t. It also means stop asking me if I have a girlfriend, because I don’t.”

  “I wouldn’t be one of those pain in the ass mother-in-laws, you know,” she said, deliberately ignoring my last statement.

  I tried to choke back my laughter. “Right.”

  “I mean it! I wouldn’t be all uptight about shit. I wouldn’t be giving my daughter-in-law a hard time about what type of diapers she was using on my grandbaby or whether she should formula feed or not.”

  It occurred to me just then that my mother had clearly spent some time thinking about this. Was she off her fucking rocker? Clearly, yes.

  “You can be as uptight as you want about it, because it’s not going to happen.”

  “Oh, I don’t believe you for a second. It’s summer—it’s the best time of the year. People falling in love every single day. I bet you’re going to meet someone this summer and it’s just going to be the best thing ever.”

  “I’m not sure what part of ‘I’m taking a break from dating anyone’ you don’t understand.”

  She let out a laugh, which sounded more like a maniacal cackle. I wondered how many cups of coffee she’d already had today.

  “There’s no way you’re going to go the entire summer and just be by yourself,” she said. “That’s a good one, though.”

  “It’s not a joke.”

  “That’s like Wade saying he’s going to go a night without a PBR.”

  “Don’t compare me to that shitbag.”

  “I admire that you are even entertaining an idea like that to begin with, but it’s not going to happen. So, you might as well just let loose and have some fun.”