Page 20 of Pelvic Flaws

“Hey, don’t be so rude,” I admonished, hoping to everything holy that Dex said yes.

“Yeah, of course you can, buddy.”

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah the angels sang.

“Awesome.” Charlie grinned and punched the air.

“What the hell is going on in here?”

We all spun around to see Annie standing in the doorway with her friend, Sally. As both girls looked past us, to the half-naked man standing in my lounge, I saw it on their pretty teenage faces – Jamie and Harry, the footballers, were forgotten. My daughter and her friend were having their first crush on an older man, and I didn’t blame them one bit.

Katie

“Katie,” Carl’s disappointed voice bellowed down the line. “Who the hell is this man who has been half-naked in front of my kids?”

Annie! The little grass, I thought as I slammed my car door – a car that Dex had arranged to be fixed and brought home for me.

“My friend, Dex,” I replied. “And he was showing the boys his tattoos.”

“What, we’re letting them have tattoos now? Don’t you think that’s something we should discuss?”

I rolled my eyes and sighed as I pushed open the gym door.

“No, because I’m not. Anyway, Isaac is nineteen, he doesn’t need our permission.”

“Fine, but answer the question. Who the hell is he, because I’m going to be honest with you Katie, I’m not happy about some pretty boy, tattooed, muscle man, who I don’t know being around my children.”

I had to grin, she may be a grass, but Annie had definitely laid it on thick with her dad at how good looking Dex was. There was nothing like the scorn of a child who felt abandoned and who’d had her crown as daddy’s Princess taken away.

“He’s a friend who helped me when that piece of shit car you bought broke down. He too-.”

“Not that again,” Carl grumbled, interrupting me. “If you looked after it, it should have years left in it.”

“I do look after it,” I protested. “It gets a regular service, but when the mechanic who fixed it says the something or other is worn and the thingamabobs are knackered, there’s not much I can do. Oh, and by the way, I’ve sent the bill for the repairs with Charlie. Make sure you get it off him when you pick him up after football practice tonight.”

Carl sighed. “Okay. So what does this guy do? Is he okay to be around the kids? Do you know whether he’s a paedophile?”

“He owns Heaven & Ink in town, is pretty famous in the tattoo world, according to Isaac, and I have no idea. Did Sophie’s parents check the register when your forty-three-year-old self, began dating their twenty-two-year-old daughter?”

I paused just to listen to Carl’s guilty silence and bask in it for just a few seconds.

“The point is,” he began, ignoring my comment as expected. “I know nothing about him.”

“Well you wouldn’t because you don’t have tattoos and he’s my friend, not yours.”

I didn’t add that I knew nothing about him either. There was no point in pissing him off further. What I did hate to admit, was that he was probably right. I should find out more about Dex. He could be married, or worse, a danger to my kids. It had just been lovely to be looked after and smiled at by a good looking man and I’d lost my head a little.

“Listen,” I said, waving to Mandy, who was already in the studio pulling her hair up into a high ponytail. “It’s not going to be a regular thing. He helped me out and I couldn’t not offer him a coffee. That would have been rude.”

“So why’d he have his shirt off?”

“He saw Isaac’s drawings and Isaac wanted to look at his tattoos. Like I said, he’s a pretty famous tattoo artist.”

“And?”

“And, he bought four drawings from your son. He loved his work and paid really good money for them.”

“Makes no difference,” Carl said, a little petulantly. “I don’t want him taking his clothes off in front of my kids again, especially not in front of Annie. She’s seventeen Katie. She wouldn’t shut up about him.”

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