Page 14 of Jagged

"You're not bi." I flopped my hands in my lap. "And Kari has cheated on everyone she has ever dated equally, including you. That is a fact separate of identified sexuality."

"Okay, Karen," she said in a mocking voice.

"You're a douchebag sometimes." Anger bubbled in my chest as it often did when we got into it. "Seriously, can you just stop?"

"Fine."

"And Dax is coming here later, and you know how Kari treated Willa. Just keep your mouth shut for once." I laid into her, a little harder than usual, but sometimes she needed it.

"Okay! My god. Fuck you, asshole. You're fired." She shoved my shoulder and I rolled with it. "If Dad was alive, I'd tattle on you to get you grounded."

"If Dad was alive, maybe you wouldn't act like such a jerk all the time."

"Maybe he was a jerk, too."

"He wasn't," I said, leaning back on my hands while letting the skateboard roll side to side beneath my feet.

"How do you know?"

"Because I knew him. Not well, but I did."

"I didn't," she said, glancing at me as the steam seemed to leave our scuffle.

"I know."

Quiet fell between us when the music and conversation stopped. Frankie and I didn't grow up together, and hardly knew each other back then. Adulthood changed that when we discovered our matching last names and same lost father story.

"Think he'd hate having two queer kids?" she asked out of nowhere.

"I don't think so." I shrugged, then lounged back on the table for a moment while staring up at the artwork on the wall above my head. All of Frankie's work, hand-drawn and framed, displayed her talent just as much as the framed photographs of the tattoos. We didn't have much in common, mostly nothing in common, except we were both good at art.

"Think I would be less of a jerk if I grew up with you?"

"No." I met her gaze now. "Because then you would've been in the system, too."

"To be fair, you were the one who ended up in the alternative system." A cocky smirk tugged the corner of her mouth. "Not me."

I laughed at that and shook my head. "Yup. Sure did."

To my surprise, Frankie patted my arm in what seemed like a gesture of affection. Rare for her, and rarer for me.

"I got this new dynamic green ink." She held up the bottle and wiggled it at me. "Wanna?"

"Hmm." I narrowed my eyes at her. "The X-Files thing that I wanted?"

"Sure." She laughed and rolled her eyes. "Black X, glowy neon border. You got it. This color should do it. It's got rave reviews for the new tech involved."

I dropped my arm onto the table extender and let out a dramatic sigh. "You've convinced me."

"Woo." Frankie clapped her hands once. "Be right back."

And as usual, that was normally how I ended up with new ink. Seventeen tattoos this year, six of which were smaller, impulsive glyphs that Frankie made up for me on the spot. The catharsis of it, the needle scratching my skin, always brought a sense of calm as I watched the colors melt over the area. I never took my eyes off her work, on places that I could see anyway, and let myself fall under the spell of the buzzing discomfort.

Dax and her wife arrived a little while later, and with my forearm wrapped and ready with its new ink, I headed to the back room to work on the mural. It wouldn't take me long to finish now with the majority of my day abandoned by my whims. I worked quickly, as I always did, and focused on the smooth glide of the paint as it left the can in my palm. I loved the sound, the smell, despite the mask I wore, and the bursts of colors everywhere. The entire wall filled with my work brought a sense of satisfaction to me as I added the finer details here and there.

The first place I ever tagged belonged to my grandmother. Her garden shed. The place where she kept all of her supplies and the pack of cigarettes that she thought I didn't know about. I smiled while reminiscing on those days. They were my best ones, for the most part. Even with my parents overseas constantly, part of me settled into the life they left me with. I didn't resent them too much, but I never understood why two people in the military would have a kid just to leave it behind all the time. They knew they were going off to serve. They knew what their jobs entailed and yet, they forcibly birthed me onto this Earth just to leave me alone. I reminded myself that I had my grandmother who loved me more than anything, and for that I was grateful.

She didn't love me so much when I turned the entire side of her greenhouse into a graffiti-covered mural of a wildflower field. She didn't love that at all.

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