Page 95 of Beneath Your Beautiful
“Point taken,” he said, getting back to work.
Killian reached for my hand and held it in his, and over the buzzing of the tattoo machine and Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll”, I could hear my heart slamming against my chest. I’d fallen fast, and I’d fallen hard, and I was literally inked on his skin for life. The tattoo on his chest was my design, my name was on it, and it had been inspired by his calling me a dirty angel. But it was also because I wanted to give his heart wings, instead of stabbing it with a dagger. I didn’t explain the symbolism to him, but maybe he understood it without my having to tell him.
* * *
Sundays had officially become our lazy day, although Killian and I went running this morning and he went to the gym but only for an hour. I was on his living room floor with my surfer girl piece spread out in front of me. Killian had pushed back the furniture and stacked the coffee table on the sofa to accommodate my twelve-foot-long street art piece. When I sketched this piece, it was like my brain was telling me to do one thing, but my hand was doing something entirely different. But I thought my surfer girl riding inside the barrel of the wave was turning out to be a good thing.
From the kitchen, I heard the whirring of the blender. Uh oh. Not again.Please don’t test my gag reflexes with another healthy smoothie. They were godawful. No joke. Yesterday’s delightful concoction was kale and God knew what else. I took one sip and it was one sip too many.
“How is it?” he asked.
I forced myself to swallow, even though I wanted to spit it in the sink. “Terrible. It tastes like…mud…and grass. Ugh.”
I kept my head down, and painted my psychedelic waves, hoping he would drink the whole batch himself.
No such luck.
“You’re gonna love this one,” he claimed, coming into the living room.
“I’ll pass.”
“I made it especially for you.”
Ugh. Why did he have to sound so sweet?
My gaze traveled up his sculpted calves, to his cargo shorts, and up his bare chest, my tattoo inked on his skin, and up to his clean-shaven face. I loved his face with stubble, I loved it smooth, I loved it framed by short hair or longer hair. I especially loved it with that adorable smile. Who could say no to those dimples? Not me, apparently.
He pressed a gigantic glass of something green and frothy into my hand and watched as I took a tiny sip. He frowned at my pathetic attempt to placate him, so I took a bigger sip. At least it didn’t activate my gag reflex. It wasn’t bad. Another sip confirmed it was pretty good.
“Well?” he asked, prompting me to deliver my verdict.
“It’s not as good as…say, cinnamon rolls or brownies…but it’s drinkable. Which is a huge improvement over the last few you tried to force on me.” I softened the blow with a smile.
“Drinkable? Admit it. You love it.”
I took another big gulp. Love was a stretch, but Ilikedit, and it was drinkable. “Yum. I feel healthier already.”
“It’s good protein,” he said, lowering himself onto a chair at the kitchen table nobody ever ate at. Probably because it was in the living room and covered with Connor’s sketchbooks, a stack of Connor’s paperbacks, a laptop, and a pile of bills Killian was sorting through.
“What’s in it?” I asked.
“Kale, spinach, cucumber, green apple, hemp seeds, mango, coconut oil…” I stared at him as he continued reeling off a list of approximately six-thousand ingredients, and he remembered to name every single one.
“O-kay. You sold me on it.” Because, really, anyone who had gone to so much trouble to get something healthy into my body deserved some respect for their efforts. The least I could do was drink the smoothie, so I leaned my back against the sofa and drank it while I looked out the window at the burnt-out warehouse.
Yesterday, Killian and I had walked the perimeter, casing it out. The lot adjacent to the warehouse is fenced in with chain-link but we found a gap between the two metal bars of the padlocked gate like someone pried it apart.
“It’s meant to be,” I’d said, thrilled we’d found an entry point which didn’t require further law-breaking. But since we’d gone during the day and the sign clearly said No Trespassing, we hadn’t attempted to enter. Yet. Once I finished this piece, we were going in under the cover of darkness. If we pulled it off, it would be an even bigger rush than the first piece had been.
I finished my smoothie, reveling in the heat and sunshine streaming through the windows. The temperatures had hovered in the mid-eighties for the past three days and even though it was fall, it felt like a summer’s day. My phone buzzed with a reminder to attend Zeke’s chill-fest, as he called it. Following swiftly on the heels of that, my dad texted to make sure I was alive and well. Ava texted to ask if Killian and I were going to Zeke’s party and, if so, could she get a ride. Then Hailey texted to ask if we were going to Zeke’s party and, if it wasn’t too much trouble, could she bum a ride.
When I sought out Killian to inform him of our plans, he had his head stuck in the cabinet under the kitchen sink and was doing something that required a toolbox and a lot of muscle flexing. Not a bad view—his bare torso was on display. I hopped onto the counter to watch while I brought him up to speed. “We’ll leave here at two, pick up Ava first, and then Hailey which is a little out of our way but not by much, and we’ll hang out at Zeke and Brody’s party for a couple hours. Zeke’s not working tonight but we can give Brody and Chris a lift to work when we leave.”
“What?” he asked, from inside the cabinet. There was a clanking noise going on down there, so he probably missed every word I said.
I sighed. “At one fifty-five, you need to put on a shirt and shoes. I’ll give you further instructions then.”
“Babe, I heard what you said. I’m a multi-tasker, remember?”
