Honestly, though, Soph, what are you going to do if he’s interested in you right back, and he’s not one of those jerks?

  Elena’s eyebrows high five her hairline. “I mean, we’re in the basement, so have at it.” She jerks her thumb over her shoulder at the teeny, tiny, barred window at the top of the wall. Yeah, my hips would never let me make it out of there alive; I’d just be sad and stuck forever.

  “I didn’t ask you to bring the laws of physics into this conversation. I don’t want logic hanging around when I’m trying to be dramatic. No, seriously, though, how can I have this kind of reaction if he’s a giant dick?”

  Elena snickers. “I mean, he could have a giant dick, so there’s that.”

  I gasp. “What’s in this hot chocolate? Bourbon? Vodka? Actually, that sounds disgusting, let’s not talk about it.” I flick her paper cup, and the thing almost topples over but Elena catches it, her reflexes honed by hanging around accident-prone first graders all day long.

  “Commiserate with me. Commiserate.”

  “Just...be yourself,” Elena says, trying to keep a straight face, shrugging.

  I just glare at her and take my time blinking at her to make her realize what she’s done.

  “Excuse me? That’s all you gotta say to me? I need more of a pep talk, please. More pep, all the pep. Give me the pep.” I gently smack my hand against the table.

  “You’re such an interesting person, though. Just say whatever pops into your head. Maybe not that you wanna get married to him and that you’re thinking about the house you guys are gonna buy together, but just...be yourself. I think you’re an incredibly amazing person, and he will, too. And if he doesn’t then you have the answer, yeah?”

  “I hate it when you’re right. I really, really do. I hate it the most.” Even my own conscience sounds like Elena now, exactly like the voice of reason.

  Elena smiles, drinking some more of her hot chocolate. “I gotta go meet Beckett at the restaurant. Want me to bring you back some supper?”

  I shake my head. “Nah, I’ll be good until I get home.”

  Elena narrows her eyes at me, and I squint back at her, and then she nods and gets up to leave. “You’re going to be great. It’s actually really refreshing that you’re so nervous, just like the rest of us.”

  “Elena, I don’t know what lies you’ve been told, but I definitely don’t have my life together, and I honestly think I’ve regressed back to my high school crushes phase when I was entranced by a beautiful face. Don’t get me started on his accent. Yes, please!” I hold up my hand, all ‘I volunteer as tribute’ without any of the consequences attached to it.

  Well, I still don’t know if there will be consequences or not.

  Time will tell.

  “I’ve...I’ve never been in love, not really. Not that this is love, but it could be, you know?” I shrug it off, stopping my brain in the middle of those tracks. I can’t be thinking about this right now when I’m going to do nothing but tattoo him.

  “I just...I’d like to be in a happy, healthy, committed relationship. I’d like to be in love with my boyfriend. Is that too much to ask?”

  Elena nods and smiles at me, holds out her arms, and I get up from my seat and rush her for a hug, nearly getting hot chocolate all over me. Honestly, it would’ve been worth it, worth it.

  “Just...see how it goes? And call me at any time, or tell me when I see you at home, okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah, you bet. Say hi to Beckett for me.” I wave goodbye to her as she takes the stairs up and out of the back room, and I steel myself, trying to keep the last five minutes before I have to head back upstairs (my break finally over) and deal with Russia.

  I take one last deep breath, ignoring the flutter of nerves, the way I can’t seem to stop sweating, the way even the weight of my fake eyelashes is bothering me, and I usually forget about them as soon as I put them on.

  I stomp up the stairs and head to the front of the shop, hanging out by the reception desk, practically loaded down with binders of our portfolios, along with drawings lining the walls in different styles of art, meaning all of the same thing in the end.

  I glance up when the bell over the door rings, and Russia (gah, Russia), looking just as handsome as he did two weeks ago when we all were at Katie’s house for supper, where I thoroughly embarrassed myself by practically fawning all over him like some obsessed teenager—or like a fangirl, exactly how Elena had described me. I tell myself to quash it down, the butterflies chewing on my stomach lining, the nerves that make my fingertips cold and trembly, my lungs ignoring the command to fill up and let in air.

  I watch him walk into The Red Seal, looking like he’s ready for a photoshoot, the swirlies of snow following him inside, like a Hallmark romance movie scene where the two love interests see each other for the first time. “Hi,” Russia says, glancing at me as he walks up to the reception desk. His smile is bigger than a house, his blue eyes practically glowing, and my heart thumps hard. “We have an appointment.”

  I nod, because that’s what you do when another person talks to you, and you need to respond in the affirmative. “We do.” I fall back on training, making my vision fuzz out so I don’t have to really see the semi-perfection of his face, the way it’s so freaking pleasing to my eye.

  “What did you have in mind?” I ask, keeping our distance from one another.

  I mean, we’re friendlier now because I’ve met him before, and we talked and everything, but we’re at my place of work, and I can’t flirt more than I normally do.

  I don’t want to give him that impression of me right now. I want to appear serious and professional, even if I’m dying on the inside, just a little.

  “I brought something with me, and you can draw it up?” he asks, fishing for his phone in his coat pocket. I notice the cut of it, the material looking expensive, but I thrift almost everything, so I really have no idea about anything fashion oriented.

  “Let’s have a look,” I say, holding out my hand for his phone, leaning closer to the reception desk, ignoring the youngest in our shop—Daisy (yup, like the flower) —come skipping to the front of the reception desk, being too chirpy while I’m dying inside as I look at the picture.

  It’s a symbol, looks like something Nordic, but I’m not too sure. “I can draw this as is, tattoo it as is, or were you thinking something more stylized?”

  Russia’s looking down at his phone, cradled in my hand, and this close, he’s truly breathtaking. I’m an artist, and I can admire symmetry – except for that bump on his nose. I want to ask about it so bad, but maybe today’s session won’t be a good idea. I want to make a good enough impression that he’ll want to come back.

  He points to the picture on his phone after unzipping his coat. “As long as the overall symbols are there so the symbol keeps its meaning. You can add your own style to it, and I would like it to be in color, looking something like molten gold.”

  I nod, glancing down at the picture. “Here, I’m going to send this to our printer in the back so I can have a hard copy to draw out. Where were you thinking of putting this?”

  “The inside of my left arm.” Russia points to it, the skin still covered by his coat.

  My professionalism is nothing but a thin veneer right now, standing this close to him, close enough to see the bluer-than-blue flecks in his eyes.

  I nod, clear my throat, force myself to focus.

  “Can you show me where you were thinking of putting it? Just so I can picture how big I should draw it.”

  He nods, chucking off this coat to reveal a plain white t-shirt underneath, bringing his left inner forearm up, spanning the width of it with his fingers. I let my mind and vision go fuzzy until I can see the tattoo there, my artwork on his body for however long he decides to keep it.

  “Yeah, okay, got it.” I nod, looking up at him, those wicked blue eyes peering through me instead of looking at me. I suppress a shiver—because of the cold and nothing else, really—and nod again, heart beating too fast just for me to be standing still.

  “Let me draw something up. You’re welcome to sit here and go through these binders. Yeah, these two here have some metallic-themed tattoos in them, so you let me know about the coloring and shading. I’m gonna go draw it up, and then we’ll see how it looks on your skin once the stencil’s done, yeah?” I fake the enthusiasm and the confidence I don’t feel.

  I know once I get my gloves on and my mind homed in on drawing the tattoo on his skin that I’ll be able to forget about how attractive I find him, but right now I’m a drowning woman.

  Russia nods, throat working with it, and I wonder if he’s nervous, and what kind of client he’s going to be getting the needle and me pumping ink into his skin, tracing out my artwork.

  Is there really a bigger ego boost, having someone else walk around with my mark on their skin? If there is, I haven’t really found it yet.

  I spend forty-five minutes drawing up two versions, one with the harsh edges around the symbol, the vegvisir, which is a Nordic symbol—I had to look it up. The other version I draw up is softer, more whimsical, more magical looking and in complete juxtaposition to the harsh edges, the deep cuts that I’ll shade in and make more three-dimensional once I get it on his skin.

  Satisfied, I truck over my stencils to the front, where Russia’s sitting on the couches.

  He’s got the binder I showed him before open, his hand covering the page, glancing up at me when I call out his name (well, his nickname), smiling at me with that smile that gives me the warm tingles straight down to my toes.

  “Found something you like?” I ask, peering down at the binder, taking a seat next to him in our makeshift waiting room area, the smell of his laundry detergent (something with lavender and vanilla, I think) hitting my nose as I sit close to him and lean in, looking down at his lap—where the binder is.

  “Ah, yeah, I can do that, no problem. You like this melted gold look?”

  Russia nods when I look up at him and I’m praying to whatever deity exists that my eyelashes do not look crooked right now. Nothing like making a crap impression when your damn eyelashes aren’t even.

  “So, you’ve got two options, or a mixture of both, I guess, if you want. It’s up to you.” I hand him over the two drawings, the harsher-looking one on the left, the softer-looking one on the right. “What do you think?”

  Russia nods, and I hate it when people nod right off the bat like they have no opinion.

  “Honestly, tell me what you like and don’t like. This is going on your skin. Tell me what you think about them,” I prompt, wanting him to be happy with it, wanting him to keep it on his skin, so that he doesn’t try to find some other artist to cover it up because he didn’t have the guts to speak up when I wanted him to, when I asked him to.

  “I love them both actually. Can you do an alternating style of both with the spokes of the symbol?”

  I nod slowly, thinking about it, looking down at my drawings. “Yeah, of course. That’d look amazing.” A fizzing excitement settles in my belly and sucks up my heart to my throat while I grab the sketches back and look down at them, grinning.

  With the molten gold look on top of them. Shit, it’s gonna look beautiful.

  A beautiful tattoo for a beautiful man.

  And I’m getting paid to do this.

  I honestly love my job. I love my job!

  “All right, come on back, and we’ll get you started,” I say, getting to my feet, almost, almost holding out my hand to him, like I’m going to drag him back to my workstation where I’ve gone and set up my inks, my machine, sanitized the bench, all of my pre-packaged needles waiting to be opened in front of him.

  Russia says something—probably in Russian since I don’t recognize it as either English or French—and my knees wobble at the sound. I keep my stiff-backed gait all the way back to where I’ve set everything up to get to work, the area smelling faintly astringent.

  I guide Russia to lie down how I want him to on the bench, rearranging myself and my tools so that his left arm is lying flat, the expanse of pale skin ready to be transformed by whatever I decide to leave behind there in the shape of the vegvisir.

  I can’t help but snicker because it looks like I already got Russia horizontal without having to do much work.

  This is what I call a win-win situation.

  “Ready?” I ask, my gloves on, my stool pulled in close.

  I watch his throat work in a nervous swallow, but his smile is all excitement, and if I wasn’t who I was, it would affect me worse than it already has.

  But even though I’m insanely attracted to him for no particular reason other than I like the look of his face, his smile is something else.

  “Ready. Are you?”

  I don’t answer the question, glancing away from his almost-symmetrical face, and get to work.

  I’ve got a tattoo to do.

  FOUR

  The bench is adjusted so Russia’s seated in a reclined position, his left arm stretched out in front of him on a placeholder. The stencil’s been placed, adjusted, and I look up at him from my seated position, eyebrow raised.

  “You finally good to go?” I ask, licking at my bottom lip, and I don’t want to talk about how my entire body feels engulfed in flames when he watches my mouth for a second too long, my attention span and focus taking a critical hit.

  It’s honestly warm in here, the back of my neck getting damp enough that I have to shake out my hair like a dog, from side to side, to build up a breeze back there, trying to cool myself down.

  We’ve got the radio station on the Top 40 hits, all songs I can hum and bop along to as I get my mind in gear for preparing for the tattoo, preparing to touch him.

  I don’t care what anyone says, putting a tattoo on someone, a complete stranger, it’s intimate for me. And while I won’t get into the metaphysical stuff or whatever, I’m putting something of myself onto him, and that might make some people uncomfortable, if they really let themselves think about it. I’m basically putting a part of myself, my heart, my art, my skill and talent, on someone else’s body so they can carry it around with them wherever they go, regardless of the person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, irrelevant to how they move throughout space and time.

  This is a human thing, from person to person.

  And while I usually love this part of my job, I can’t help but feel hesitant to touch Russia, not when I’m so insanely attracted to him.

  Like, what is that? And why is it happening right now?

  I’m turning twenty-seven this year, so aren’t I too old for this sudden infatuation with an actual stranger? Or is it just the idea of a man who can fall in love with all of me, and allow me to shine as brightly as I already do?

  I guess this crush is going to inevitably fade in a couple of weeks, and after I’ve completed his tattoo, I won’t be seeing him ever again (unless Katie gets involved, and I don’t know if she wants to do some chaotic good in her life and help me bag this guy or not, so I’ll leave that up to Fate).

  “Yeah, I’m good,” Russia whispers, almost not loud enough to hear over some new song by Ariana Grande that I don’t know the words to but can hum along to like a champ. He nods at me, a small, careful smile on his face, even as his throat works on a hard swallow.

  “We stop whenever you want to stop,” I say, cheeks catching fire at the mere insinuation of what I just said, even if the words I used make the statement no less true.

  “If you’re in pain, if you don’t want to continue, just let me know, all right?”

  Russia nods, glancing down at his forearm, the naked skin exposed, one of my gloved hands placed there where I can feel his pulse ratcheting up against his wrist.

  “I don’t have the highest pain tolerance,” he says, licking at his dry lips, pupils dilated as he looks at me.

  I try to not focus on the fact that he licked his lips, or the white strands in his beard mixed in with the dirty-blond that I find super appealing for some freaking reason.

  I instead look down at the pale expanse of his inner forearm, a tiny silver scar closer to his wrist than his elbow, a mark left over after all this time. His skin’s pale enough that I can see the green and blue of his veins snaking up his inner forearm, like the branches of a tree reaching out and out, even though human anatomy doesn’t really work that way.

  “That’s okay,” I reassure him, patting his arm with my free hand absentmindedly, all there, there. “Everybody has different pain thresholds. And honestly, we can talk only if you want to. If you want to sit quietly and think about something else, put your ear buds in and listen to some other music to distract you, I really don’t mind.” I nod at him, and those blue-blue eyes flick up to me from looking down at his arm, making my breath catch in the middle of my throat.

  I’m afraid if I start moving again, I’m going to cough hard enough to hack up a lung.

  Thanks, but no thanks.

  “All right, I’m going to start now,” I say, voice almost trembling until I clear the weird animal lodged in my vocal cords right on out of there. Yeah, he’s hot, and I’m attracted.

  So what? So what?

  I wipe down the skin with isopropyl alcohol and a paper towel, then shave any hair that’s sitting there, getting his arm ready to go, tossing the used razor after using it.

  I glance back at my tray, making one last mental calculation if I have everything I need (which I’ve already triple-checked, but this guy has got me off my game): my ink caps all perfectly sized to fit in the needles I’m going to be using, my vitamin ointment, my stack of paper towels. My machine’s been barrier filmed, I’ve got my nitrile gloves on, my power’s set to the right voltage I need before I press my foot pedal.

  Yup, good to go. Stop being so nervous, you’ve done this a thousand times before...

  I pull in one last deep breath.

  I start my tattoo machine, pressing the needle into his skin after filling it with ink, tracing the outline in a deep bronze color for now, the image already holding its shape in my mind, me just trying to make the theoretical into reality, the intangible into the tangible so he has a wicked tattoo.