Page 88 of Dark Ink

The echo of her footsteps, hurried away, then finally they too were gone.

Rian

My bags were packed at the door. There was a finality to them being there that I’d been avoiding for a long time. It was right. It was good. Still, I avoided looking at them as I scratched at the back of my neck.

“Well, I guess that’s it,” I said, nudging my tattoo gun a bit to the left.

Ryleigh bumped me with her hip.

“You know explaining all of that was completely unnecessary,” she said. “I’m kind of a pro.”

She had a wink ready for me when I looked down at her. I smiled weakly and sighed, dragging my fingers through my hair.

“Actually,” she added, tapping her chin in contemplation, “I’m kind of the best.”

She held her hands out like she was sorry. Her palms were dotted with tiny doodle tattoos; she’d always been impatient. As long as I knew her. When she got the idea for a new design in her head, there was no waiting around for someone to practice on. She’d tattoo herself. And if she’d run out of practical places to add one, she’d use the impractical ones. It gave her palms a perpetual dirty look, like she was a naughty child always getting into the finger paints.

“Actually,” Ryleigh said, eyeing me with those mischievously flashing green eyes of hers that had gotten her into a world of trouble throughout the years, “I’m kind of way better than you. Really, your clients are going to beg you not to come back. Are you ready for that?”

I rolled my eyes and shoved the little spitfire away, but in truth I appreciated Ryleigh’s signature bravado. She was treating me no differently than she ever had. Even all the way back at art school she was a pain in my ass. It was a little taste of normalcy. And I was grateful for it. For her. She was one of my best friends despite her leaving suddenly from Ireland years ago and spending the last few years galivanting across Europe like a gypsy. She was one of my longest friends.

Mason and Conor emerged from the kitchen, thermos of coffee ready to go.

“Just wanted to say thanks,” I said quickly to Ryleigh. “Coming here from Berlin and covering my chair, it—”

“Shut up,” Ryleigh said before drawing me into a hug. It was fiercer and stronger than you’d give a woman of her size credit for. I squeezed her back even harder.

“Really it’s you who’s helping me out,” she added so quickly and almost so softly that I couldn’t hear her. But before I could ask her what she meant by that, she tugged me close again and whispered louder this time, “Get better.”

“Shut up,” it was my turn to say.

She stuck her tongue out at me when I pulled away. I hesitated, searching for any hint that something wasn’t right with one of my best friends. She just gave me the finger. I returned the favour; everything was as it should be it seemed.

I sucked in a shuddering breath as I laid my hand one last time on my tattooing chair. By the time I exhaled, I was already out the door. Into the rain.

* * *

It was silent inside the car as we sat, engine idling outside the facility. Rain fell in windswept torrents against the windshield. The blades had stopped swiping the slashing streams of water away long ago. The headlights only penetrated a few feet ahead through the low rolling morning fog.

I sat in the passenger side seat, Conor in the back, Mason in the driver’s seat. All three of us stared forward, not wanting to say goodbye yet.

We’d had a long, hard three weeks. A few days in, when it was clear enough that I wasn’t going to die, Conor had stopped coming up to my room, the spare room upstairs at Dublin Ink. A few days after that, I’d heard him as he destroyed half the parlour downstairs: holes in the walls, chairs bent and broken, the neon light that said “ublin nk” shattered into a million pieces.

I’d listened as he screamed his lungs out at me, taken his rage like a pile of sandbags against a tsunami. I’d held him when he finally broke down and cried. He’d been scared. I’d scared him.

Mason, surprisingly, was the rock. The one with consistent meals and pamphlets for getting help and clean washcloths across my brow. But he was also as distant as a rock. He hid himself behind the business of getting me better. It was only just the night before that he finally said, pausing by my suitcases packed at the door, “Just…get better, yeah? If anything happens to you…”

It was as close as we’d get to saying I love you.

“That’s it?” I asked. “You don’t want to scream? Break things? Hit me?”

He smiled weakly. “I’m afraid if I do any of that I’ll break myself.”

Mason was barely holding himself together. Conor wasn’t much better. Rachel and Aurnia were doing their best to help, but it was me. It was me who had to make things right.

“I, um, I—I tried calling her,” Mason said, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye in the car.

I kept my gaze fixed forward. Even when Conor’s big paw came to rest on my shoulder. I patted his hand.

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