Page 50 of Pelvic Flaws

I passed it to Isaac. “Here, sign it as yours and Topper, you get your client back in.”

Topper grinned and held out his hand for the drawing, as Isaac quickly signed it.

“Good job, Isaac,” he said when he handed him the paper.

“Thanks Topper, and thanks for letting me sit in. It was awesome.”

“Yeah well, when a chick wants to be inked on her rib cage and whips her top off, not caring one shit that she’s not wearing a bra, it’s always pretty awesome.

He gave Isaac a wink and holding the drawing carefully in both hands, left the room.

“Thanks Dex,” Isaac said as he watched him go. “It was really interesting. Topper was epic how he got out of her what she wanted. He made her close her eyes and describe heaven to him.”

I chuckled. “We all have different methods and Topper’s are more of the spiritual kind.”

“I had no idea tattoo studios worked like this,” Isaac said, his eyes full of awe.

“Not all do,” I replied. “But it’s how I trained and it’s something I believe in. A tattoo is for life and even though we can change them, ink over them, if we have to, I want to be sure our clients go away feeling amazing. They need to leave here with exactly what they want, even if it isn’t what they were going to ask for when they walked into the consultation.”

Isaac wiped his hands on his black, skinny jeans. “I was so nervous in case you thought it was crap.”

“No way. It was good, just those couple of changes, but that’ll come with experience.”

Isaac nodded. “Yeah, I suppose so.”

“Take a seat,” I said, nodding at the sofa against the wall of my office.

Isaac did and ran a hand through his dark blond hair, which was fashioned not unlike my own. He looked thoughtful, and I hoped he was considering that a career in tattooing might be a good step for him.

“So,” I said, sitting on the edge of my desk. “I have a proposition for you.”

A half hour later, on a handshake, I had a new employee and I couldn’t have been happier.

Katie

“They definitely had sex. You could tell by the way the duvet was going up and down.”

I rolled my eyes as Amy and Ellie, the two girls on my bank of desks, continued to talk about ‘Love Island’, their favourite TV show of the moment.

“Do these people really have sex on TV?” I asked, knowing full well what the answer was.

I did actually watch the show, but denied that I’d ever seen a minute of it. When it started, the girls were all excitable about it and never stopped talking about it. I grumbled about them watching trash, but was quite curious, so thought I’d watch a few minutes of it that night. Three episodes on catch up later, and I was hooked. I then had the dilemma of whether I told the girls, and Brad, our token man in the office, about me succumbing. I decided that it was much better if they considered me an old fart who listened to The Archers and watched nature programs – not that there was anything wrong in that, both kept my mother quiet for many an hour. I had to say though, it was hard trying not to pitch in with my thoughts on the latest recoupling and subsequent break ups.

The men were pretty nice to look at, too. Generally young enough to be my sons, which made it weird, but I was forty-five and hadn’t had my castle breached in four years; Piers Morgan was beginning to look attractive at this point. Obviously, my view on things had changed since meeting Dex. Now the boys on ‘Love Island’ weren’t so appealing, because they were exactly that – boys. There were a few with muscles, a few with tattoos, and a couple with both muscles and tattoos, but none had sexily styled silver hair and bluebell coloured eyes that twinkled with possibility.

“When you were younger, would you have gone on a reality show?” Ellie asked.

“Did they have TV in the olden days?” Amy flicked the page over of the magazine that she was looking at. Her question wasn’t asked with cruel intention, at twenty-years-old she truly believed that there had been no TV, telephones, or even electricity prior to her birth.

“Yes, Amy,” I responded, glancing at my screen, thinking I’d seen a call come in. When I realised I hadn’t, I turned back to Ellie. “To answer your question, no I wouldn’t have. I can’t think of anything worse than parading your dirty washing in front of the whole nation.”

“I think they have someone to do their laundry,” Amy offered, entirely sincere.

Ellie rolled her eyes. At twenty-five-years-old, it surprised me that she had less tolerance of Amy than I did. “I know what you mean,” Ellie continued. “But, they come out of there with all sorts of deals and sponsorships.”

“Which would be great for you, love,” I said. “But I’m not sure I’d be the ambassador that some of these companies would be looking for. I mean, can you really imagine me putting a picture on Snapchat or Instagram with the comment, ‘Use the code, ‘I look a tit’, to get ten percent off this amazing orange, animal print cat suit, with hearts cut out of the arse, that I’m wearing to go to Tesco in today.”

Ellie leaned back in her chair and started to laugh, while Amy looked up from her magazine, staring at me expectantly.

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