Page 49 of Dark Ink

I feared his name on my tongue once more. Rian. Rian. Rian. I feared it hanging between us. A curtain of intimacy to fling open. A barrier torn down. An invitation I was sure I would regret. I feared what I would do once the yelling stopped. Once what I’d said about him jeopardising my future was all said. Once there was nothing but silence between us. The pretext dropped. The excuse revealed as flimsy. The grade dropped and forgotten at our feet.

It was almost enough to make me stay on the bus, to ride it round, all the way back home. To congratulate Stewart on another day clean. To make dinner. To pass out across my books.

But I was suddenly on the sidewalk, the bus doors closing behind me with a hiss and a clatter and that was really what I feared most of all: that I never had any bleedin’ choice. I was always going to find a reason to go to him. I was never going to be able to stay away. I would always be a whore. A slut.

The street that housed Dublin Ink was silent. No cars. No pedestrians out for a late-night stroll. No television sets from open windows. It was a step up from the neighbourhood I lived in. Though really more of a baby step.

I gripped the crumpled page with my grade and assessment more tightly in my fist as my footsteps echoed on the pavement. It was as if I thought I could protect myself with that flimsy little page. It was my weapon against an attacker from the darkened alley. It was my weapon against Rian. “See, I have a reason to be here. It has nothing at all to do with you. I still want absolutely nothing to do with you and the pussy-aching, thigh-tightening desire you bring. See!”

Music came as a subtle rumbling through the silent night. At first, I assumed that it couldn’t be Dublin Ink. It was late. The place would be closed or closing at least. But light shown through the thin gaps on either side of the curtains. And there it was, the sign on the little stained-glass window of the front door of the red brick townhouse. Dublin Ink.

I knocked. But I doubted they’d hear me over the damn music inside. I shoved at the door and after a beat of resistance, it swung open. Jaysus, I’d made some sort of mistake. The place was unrecognisable as a tattoo parlour save a chair or two pushed to the side of the room like forgotten wallflowers. If anything I would have said the place looked like one of those cheap chapels they have in Vegas for people too drunk to realise what a horrible mistake they’re making as they slur vows of eternity. There was an Eiffel Tower painted on the big wall of the atrium. There was champagne in red solo cups being passed by girls with bunny tails. Standing near the door was a bride with her tits out and a groom with nothing but a bow tie and pants. It was a shiteshow.

I would have bailed if I hadn’t seen Rian, a one in a million glance. The room was packed so tightly the windows dripped with condensation. It was only the perfect timing of a dozen or more heads turning, moving, ducking, leaning back to laugh, that allowed me to spy him across the room before he was swallowed whole once more.

I gritted my teeth, set my jaw, and ploughed inside, elbowing past what looked like the bride and groom. Rude, I know. But it wasn’t like I was on the guest list. On the way to Rian I had a beer spilled on me, an explosion of confetti sprinkled on me, and more laughter than I could bear hurled on me. It was horrible. Horrible because it was wonderful. And I’d never been all that well acquainted with wonderful.

Rian, to my extreme frustration, seemed entirely unsurprised to see me. I told myself he hadn’t been expecting this, expecting me; he was just high. It dulled his responses, numbed him. This wasn’t some trap he’d laid for me. And I certainly hadn’t just walked into it like some fool.

I held up the grade up and shouted over the music and noise. “This is bullshite!”

Rian was lounged on one of the tattoo chairs. Stretched out across it like an alley cat in the sun. His long fingers splayed across the leather of the armrests like he was floating on water. He seemed to not have a care in the world. This was simply unacceptable.

“You gave me this grade as a punishment,” I shouted, fighting the wave of anger that was cresting in my chest. “I demand you change it.”

I hated how young I sounded. How immature. How naive. Here was a wedding going on, adults socialising with friends and family, real life pulsing around me in time with the rhythm of the music and I was moaning about a B-. But there was no other option. It had to be the reason I was there out of the blue. It had to.

“You received the grade your work deserved, Ms Brady,” Rian said as he hauled himself out of the chair. “Now, can I get you a drink?”

Rian’s arm came to rest across my shoulders. I squirmed away petulantly.

“I met all the criteria you set out,” I shouted even as people around us began to stare. “I followed the syllabus. I turned it in on time.”

Rian’s lips brushed against my ear, his breath hot. He had no need to shout like a child with her tantrum.

“Which is why you didn’t receive a C, Ms Brady.”

This time Rian slipped his arm around my back, his hand coming to rest against my hip. He took the grade from my clenched fist. I was so stunned by his easy dismissal that I let it go with hardly any protest. Rian balled it up even further and stuffed it into someone’s cup as we passed. The disco lights flashed across his face as I stared up at him in astonishment.

“You can’t do that,” I said, feeling utterly pathetic.

Rian’s eyes did not come to meet mine as he guided me toward a makeshift bar in a crowded little kitchen.

“Why did you come here tonight?” he asked.

“Because of my grade. I need to graduate with honours to—”

“A B- won’t do a damned thing,” he said. “Why are you really here?”

I tried to wrench myself free of him, but he gripped me, dug his fingers into my flesh through my sweatshirt and old thrifted trench.

“You’re ruining my life,” I growled in frustration as I tried to pierce the skin of his hand with my fingernails.

Rian had me spun around, my back pinned to the wall, and his body pressed up tight against mine before I could hardly even gasp. His eyes were on mine now. Intense. Penetrating. Frightening. I would have trembled if I could have breathed. I would have breathed if I could have thought to. I would have thought to if I had any space left inside my head except an alarm screaming, “This is a mistake! A mistake! A huge mistake!”

“Would you like a drink?” Rian asked after several tense moments where the crowds moved around us, where the music beat against us.

“I have homework to finish,” I said, feeling years younger than twenty-one with my thirty-something-year-old professor’s groin against my hip in this foreign place.

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