Page 21 of Dirty Ink

“It’s obvious?”

Mason’s voice was raised now, too. The waitress lowered her eyes at us over the top of her glasses but did not move from her place behind the counter. There was no one else in the place. No one to hear us yell but each other.

“Yeah!” I shouted.

“Yeah?” he shouted back.

He and I both stood up at the same time, knees knocking against the table. The coffee cups tipped over and coffee went everywhere.

“Hey!” the waitress shouted, and it wasn’t an Irish accent that I heard but an American one. The street outside the diner wasn’t dark but dazzling with a rainbow of flashing lights. Mason wasn’t glaring across at me with a heaving chest but smiling up at me, his eyes dazzling not with that rainbow of flashing lights but with me.

“Why?” Mason shouted. “Why is it so stupid to ask a simple question. A simple question, Rachel.”

“Because it is!” I shouted back, fists balled angrily at my sides.

“How did you find out, Rachel?”

No longer yelling. And that terrified me.

My mind searched and searched for another explanation. For a way that I would have found out that about the marriage certificate that didn’t involve a diamond ring, a lowered knee, a bottle of the most expensive champagne money could buy. My cheeks grew red because I was getting angrier. Angrier because I was getting more and more desperate. Angrier because I didn’t quite understand why I was so desperate. Why I couldn’t just tell him the truth.

“Goddammit,” I cursed, tugging at my hair.

“Just tell me,” Mason said, and I was more desperate because he wasn’t yelling.

I wanted him to yell. I wanted him to scream. It was stupid and pathetic, but I didn’t want him to give up on me. On us. Fuck, fuck, fuck, my mind screamed.

“Rachel,” Mason said, and the way he said my name was familiar.

It took me back. To a time he had said it before. To a time when he said it and I was certain that it was the first time in my life that someone had ever truly called me by my name.

“I remember,” I said. Mostly to myself. Mostly under my own breath.

But Mason heard.

“What?” he asked.

Was it hope I heard? Or was it hope that I wished to hear?

I looked up at Mason like I was coming out of a daze. The answer was so obvious. So simple. I’d almost missed it. Almost completely missed it.

“It’s a stupid question,” I said, all my confidence and bravado surging back, “because I never ‘found out’.”

Mason stared at me warily. Mistrustfully maybe. I was sure he wanted to trust me. Almost sure.

“What are you saying?” he asked.

I flipped my hair over my shoulder and raised my chin. “Are you telling me that you don’t remember our wedding?”

Mason hesitated a moment. Then he scoffed.

“Are you telling me you do?” he asked.

Again mistrust. Again hope. Or at least that’s what I wanted to believe.

“Of course I remember getting married,” I said. I lied. “How could I forget?”

The truth was I remembered nothing of any marriage ceremony, any marriage license or certificate or dress, any marriage vows or kiss or walk down the aisle. I remembered the sex. And I remembered the tattoo. One I was able to hide. The other still haunted me. And my dreams. And my happiness.

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