Page 34 of Everlasting

“You are, in fact, altering my appearance with a needle, so I think it’s a perfect description.”

“So, what does all of it mean? I assume if you don’t actually like getting tattoos, that this has to mean something to you.” Erin’s question and her reasoning for it brought me up short. She was right about all of that, which made me wonder how far off my game I was because that was something I usually tried to puzzle out when I first saw people’s ink.

“Well, the cherry blossom tree is to represent my journey in life. The two King cards are pretty self-explanatory, I think.”

Erin nodded her head. There was one for Toby and the other for Kane. I could have hugged her right then for not leaving Toby out of her journey, but that wasn’t necessary. Gretchen may have moved on after my brother’s death, and rightfully so, but she had never forgotten him. I had to hand it to Kane, because he made sure that Toby was never forgotten too. Each playing card dangled from a branch on either side of the tree. Then, right in the middle of the trunk of the tree there were two angels and one set of angel’s wings carved into the wood.

“The angels are Nate and Grace,” she told Erin, speaking of her children with that special lilt she always got in her voice when she mentioned them. “The wings are for my baby with Toby,” she went on and none of us missed the way she still choked up a bit when she talked about them or said my brother’s name. We didn’t point it out either. Whenever I think on the past, the one thing I hold dear to my heart is that she would have made a wonderful sister-in-law and addition to our family. I knew this because she ended up being just that anyway. We may not have been blood, but Kane was my brother, just the same as he was Erin’s.

After that, we left Sarah to it for a bit so that I could draw something out for her. “So, you didn’t think the tattoo was obvious?” I asked, wondering why she made Gretchen spell it out for us.

“G needs to talk about it more. Besides, she’ll be asked once in a while by people who don’t know. It’s good practice for her, being able to get out the meaning without breaking down emotionally over it. Better she do that among people she loves than with strangers.”

“You really are the best human being, you know that right?”

“Of course, I do! Why do you think we’re friends?”

“Because I’m awesome,” I joked.

“Nope, because you unfailingly point out how awesome I am all the time and feed my starving ego.”

I laughed at my best friend then. “You’re an idiot. I don’t think your ego has ever starved a day in your life.”

The smile vanished from her face as her eyes took on a distant, glazed over appearance. “My ego has been starved before,” she mentioned before snapping out of it and sighing in a loud and obnoxious manner. “Let’s not go down dreary memory lane today. Shall we draw pretty pictures and place them upon my skin instead?” The last was given in a horrible attempt to sound both British and posh. Needless to say, Erin failed, but I couldn’t bruise her ego by telling her that. Not after I had just inflated the damn thing for her.

The best part about having the women I did in my life was that they had taken one of the absolute worst mornings I’d had in ages, and they turned it around for me. For a little while, I forgot about the photo, about Deck being missing and naked in the arms of another woman, a very pregnant woman, and I just became Ever, the tattoo artist, sister, mother, and friend that told horrible jokes and laughed too much to make up for a childhood where laughter wasn’t really on the menu.

When I went to bed that night, I wasn’t thinking about all the negative things that had been killing my spirit for months. Instead, I closed my eyes thinking about my friends, my family, and the Deck that was here for me just days before he went missing. I knew, the moment I drifted off that it would be him I was dreaming about. Not the part of him I’d seen in those pictures, but the man I had fallen in love with. I could not have been more wrong though.

“Hey, Sis!”

I was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t be dreaming of Deck tonight, but that voice… I couldn’t be mad that he was in my dreams instead. I turned a genuine, wide-grin on my brother and asked a dumb question. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to help,” He told me, but he seemed oddly rushed. I wasn’t sure why since this was my dream, so I guess that meant I decided when it ended. “I need you to listen.” I nodded and stayed quiet because it was so weirdly realistic being there with Toby. “There’s a place that gets talked about. It’s a little way out of town in a damn run-down looking shack of a house. I need you to go there. There’s a person who can help you talk to me.”

“I’m talking to you now though,” I argued.

“Little Sis, I’ve been trying to do this for years. You never let me in before.”

I scrunched my brows up both at his endearment and the fact that he had supposedly been trying for years to communicate with me. “Then how did it happen this time?” I wanted answers as to why he called me Little Sis, but I think I already knew. He had adopted something he’d heard the guys calling me. Which begged the question, was that because this was my dream and Dream Toby was just my imagination, or Toby had been watching over me since he’d been gone.

“You’re exhausted. I think you were just too tired to fight yourself and your belief that I’m really here.”

“Toby,” I whispered to him, “Are you really here though?”

“I am. I want to help you find Deck and bring him back home, Sis. I can’t do that without your help though. There’s something blocking me from seeing where he is.”

“I don’t know where he is,” I whined.

“I know you don’t, but I think the person you need to go see will be able to tell us how I can find out.”

“What person?”

He laughed then, whether it was at me or himself I didn’t know until he started talking. “Don’t make fun, and don’t decide it’s too stupid to go if I tell you.”. I didn’t agree or disagree with him, just waited for him to carry on. “I was told she can talk to the dead,” Toby explained.

“A psychic? You want me to go see a psychic about Deck? Are you nuts?”

“No, I’m not. Hear me out. She’s not a psychic. She can speak to the dead, that’s something different. Don’t get hung up on the titles, Ev. We both need her.”

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