I once wrote “Beth Mills smells” on a bathroom stall at my junior high after she told everyone that the summer camp I attended was actually asthma camp.
After leaving the First Bank building cafeteria, Nick gave me a piggyback ride to the tattoo shop, letting me bury my cold nose in his neck without complaining, and when he finally stopped, he straightened and I climbed down. The 402 Ink storefront looked cool because it had no markings at all, other than a red neon sign at the bottom of the window.
He pulled open the door, and I followed him inside.
He said over his shoulder, “Getting scared?”
“Not at all. Bring on the needling.”
I strolled through the lobby, where there were drawings of tattoos all over the walls and the ceiling. I was nervous, yes, but mostly I was excited. Getting a tattoo was something I’d never considered, something I never would’ve had the guts to do before this whole repeating-days fiasco.
Now, however, it felt like something I had to do while I had a free pass. It would serve, however temporarily, as a printed reminder of the day where—for once—I did what I wanted instead of what I thought I should do, instead of doing what everyone else expected.
I barely had a chance to take it all in before I heard Nick say, “Is Dante working today?”
I raised my eyes from the wall and looked at him, standing in front of the reception desk. “So you do have a contingent.”
He just looked over at me and winked.
I’d always thought winking was cheesy until that day. Nick’s winks made me warm and melty.
The person I assumed to be Dante came out from the back room and they did a whole handshake thing while I strolled the room, looking at pictures. After a solid ten minutes of low-talking, I heard Nick say, “What are the odds that you could fit my friend Emilie in this afternoon?”
“Sure.” Dante glanced over at me and asked, “Do you know what you want? And have ID?”
I pulled my ID out of my pocket, walked over to him, and ran a hand through my hair. “Yeah. Here. And it’s just seven words. I took a screenshot of a font I like.”
“What seven words?” Nick put his hands in his pockets and looked at my ID suspiciously.
“None of your business.”
“That’s four,” Dante said.
“Keep in mind that this is on you for life, Hornby,” Nick said.
I don’t know why, but I really liked it when he called me by my last name. “Er, doy, Stark.” But little did he know that I’d wake up tomorrow on another February 14, skin fresh and un-inked.
Dante had to go help someone who walked in after us, and Nick gave me a look. He leaned closer, lowered his voice, and asked, “Why do you have a fake ID?”
My face got warm as I stuttered, “I don’t—I mean, it’s not—”
“I’m not going to tell on you.” He nudged me with his elbow, and my stomach went wild with butterflies. His deep voice rumbled out, “I just can’t believe bookish Emilie Hornby has a fake. A fake library card, maybe, but a fake driver’s license? Not so much.”
I felt a little less ridiculous and said, “Chris works with a guy who bought some kind of black-market machine and he practiced on us.”
His mouth dropped into an O. “Chris? Ultra-nice Chris from Drama?”
“Yup.”
He shook his head, smiling. “You goody-goodies are out here running wild. Who knew?”
“Ready?” Dante was back, and I followed him to a room, grateful Nick was with me; I was actually a little nervous. When I showed Dante what I wanted—one of my favorite lyrics—Nick said, “Are you sure? I mean, I get that you’re feeling brave today, but in a few years, or even hours, you might regret having this tattooed on your skin.”
I said, “Believe me, I know what I’m doing.”
I didn’t, or at least with regard to the technicalities of a tattoo I didn’t. I started to get nervous as Nick sat down on the chair to my left, and Dante grabbed the stool to my right. After Dante wiped down my forearm, rubbed on the template, and turned on the gun, I quickly learned just how painful getting a tattoo was.
I mean, yeah, it was relative. It wasn’t like getting a tooth extracted or getting stabbed in the face with a screwdriver, but it felt like someone was sticking a needle in my arm and then dragging it down my skin.
Because, you know, they were.
“So how do you guys know each other?” I felt the need to say something as Dante leaned over my arm and worked me over, even though I knew exactly how they knew each other. “Just from Nick’s tattoos?”
Nick said, “You’re so nosy.”
“He works here.” Dante didn’t glance up, but said, “Stark’s our little bitch; he didn’t tell you that?”
I raised an eyebrow and grinned at Nick, and he gave me a head-shake while half smiling. Looking at his face made me think of the almost-kiss, and I don’t know if my face changed or not, but his did.
His jaw flexed and his eyes were hot as the moment hung there. It felt like there was an invisible string, pulling me in his direction. An invisible string that had an electrical current that actually felt stronger than the needle dragging through my skin. I swallowed and blinked.
What had Dante just said?
“No, um, he failed to mention that detail.”
“What, are you ashamed of us, Nickie?” Dante teased.
Nick said, “She’s too nosy and doesn’t need to know shit.”
That made me snort. “Whatever. Nickie.”
Dante thought that was pretty funny, but I couldn’t laugh because Nick was looking at me like that again. The intensity of his gaze rendered me incapable of all thought and communication as Dante grunted and muttered syllables while finishing my tattoo.
When Dante was finally finished, he showed me the tattoo and I gasped, lightly running my fingers around the newly inked spot on my arm. “Wow—this is incredible.”
I had a marvelous time ruining everything
I loved it.
Dante left the room to go get something, and Nick stood. He stepped closer to me and slid his hand under my forearm so he could raise it to his eyes. My breath got stuck in my chest as he moved his thumb just under the tattoo—ever so softly—while he was so close to me that I couldn’t remember what the world looked like beyond his face.
“I like it,” he said, his thumb still brushing back and forth over my skin. It felt like he was talking about more than the tattoo as his face hovered over mine, an inch away.
“Let me just put this on your arm,” Dante said as he charged back into the room, a tube of something in one hand and Saran Wrap in the other, “and you can be on your way.”
Nick took a step back, and I was too shocked to do anything other than nod and try to make my heartbeat slow down. Nick walked out of the room and Dante talked to me about how to take care of the tattoo while he put salve on it and covered it in a bandage and plastic wrap. I barely listened, knowing the tattoo would be gone when I woke up to another February 14.
When Dante led me out to the lobby, my DONC partner was standing over by the front door, talking to a guy with spiky black hair and tattoos all over his arms. My cheeks got insta-hot when Nick glanced over at me, and I quickly followed Dante to the counter.
I paid, and when I was signing the receipt, Dante said, “How’d you get the little hermit to come out and play?”
“I actually bullied him into coming.” I handed him the piece of paper and he smiled a really nice, really warm smile.
“Well I’m glad. Nickie’s grown up too fast since the accident and he needs to have a little fun.”
“Accident?” I glanced behind me to make sure Nick didn’t hear and think I was being nosy. “Nick was in an accident?”
“Not Nick—Eric.”
“Eric…?”
“His brother. Today’s the anniversary?”
Nick came over and straightened the look book on the counter. “You ready, Hornby?” He didn’t look like he overheard anything, and I couldn’t help but feel like I stumbled upon something Nick didn’t want me to know.
I nodded and cleared my throat. “Ready, Stark.”
Nick said a goodbye to his friends, and I yelled, “Thank you!” as we walked out the front door.
“Jesus, it’s cold,” Nick grumbled, zipping his jacket.
I hugged my own jacket—no, his jacket—tighter to my body. “Have I thanked you for your delightful coat?”
“No problem.” He looked at me, and his eyes roamed down over the big coat before he got a funny expression on his face. He swallowed visibly and his jaw flexed, and he was quiet for a moment before finally clearing his throat and saying, “So where to next?”
I glanced to my left and pointed to the ladder beside us that ran up the side of a squatty brick building. My eyes followed its upward trajectory, and it looked like the building was only a few stories high. All I wanted was to distract Nick from whatever had just made his face look sad, and when you combined that goal with the fact that it was the DONC, climbing onto a rooftop seemed like a great idea.
“Nope,” Nick said.
“Because we were already up on a balcony?”
“Because if we’re going up on a roof, we’re taking something hot to drink.” He turned his attention from the ladder to me. “And I know a better spot. Come on.” Nick grabbed my hand and pulled me, tugging me closer as he started walking down the sidewalk. His legs were so much longer than mine that he was practically dragging me.
“Slow down,” I said, and laughed.
“It’s too cold for slow, Em.” He brought us to a stop, turned around, and gave me his back. “Get on.”
“Again?” I asked, a little breathless over the intimate use of my nickname. “I can walk faster—you don’t have to carry me like a small child.”
He looked at me over his shoulder. “Nah—I like it. Keeps me warm and I get buzzed on your perfume.”
We shared a funny smile before I climbed on, like we were wordlessly acknowledging this attraction. I wrapped my arms around his neck and he said, while grabbing my legs and holding them tighter against his body, “Let’s go.”
He took off, walking so fast that it was the speed of my run. Luckily there wasn’t much pedestrian traffic so it was easy for him to trudge down the street with a passenger clinging to his body.
“You okay back there, Hornby?”
“I’m getting heavy, aren’t I?”
“Getting?”
“Shut up.”
I could feel the vibration of his laugh through his back and I laughed too, tightening my legs around him and earning another laugh. He went another block, then put me down when we got to a small coffee cart on the corner. THRIVE COFFEE appeared to be a charmingly restored camper that was all shiny wood and contemporary finishes.
The person who was working looked at us through the ordering window and said to Nick, “I saw your parents yesterday, and your mom still looks pissed at me.”
Nick grinned and said, “You wrecked her car—does this surprise you?”
The guy—his name tag said Tyler and he looked like he was probably in his early twenties—laughed and started telling me a story about the time Nick gave him a ride to work in his mother’s car and it got stuck in the snow. Apparently, Tyler was supposed to just give the car a little gas when Nick got behind it and pushed, but Tyler thought it made more sense to gun it and “blow that bitch out of the snowbank,” which resulted in the car shooting forward, swerving and slamming into a parking meter.
Nick was full-on laughing. “Ty got out of the car, looked at the damage, and then seemed genuinely offended by what the parking meter had done.”
It was kind of amazing, witnessing Nick looking totally happy. I was almost overcome with the desperate need to do whatever necessary to make him like that all the time.
“This is Emilie, by the way,” Nick said to Ty, and we exchanged nice-to-meet-yous.
Then Tyler asked, “Shouldn’t you kids be in school right now?”
“We actually should,” Nick said, turning his smiling eyes on me. “This criminal convinced me to ditch with her. Now she wants to climb onto a roof in the cold like this is a goddamn movie.”
“Nice.” Tyler nodded his approval. “Taking her through T.J.’s, then?”
Nick nodded. “Yeah, but we need hot drinks first.”
“The usual, Big Man?”
“Make it two.”
Tyler disappeared from our line of sight to make our drinks, and I said, “Who are you, Nick Stark?”
He narrowed his eyes, and a gust of wind blew between us when he said, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, people our age don’t have actual lives. We hang out with school friends and maybe, like, drive to the mall. But here you are,” I said, gesturing at the coffee stand and the downtown buildings, “With grown-up friends and, like, a downtown life. Are you a secret agent? Are you actually forty?”
His eyes moved all over my face and he said in a low voice, “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
“They always say that, but do they really have to murder?” I tucked my blowing hair behind my ears and said, “Can’t it be ‘I could tell you, but then you’d have to promise to keep my secret forever’?”
“Two large mochas, extra chocolate, double whipped cream.” Tyler appeared in the window with two huge paper coffee cups.
I looked at Nick, who clearly had a massive sweet tooth, and said, “I have a cavity just from hearing that order.”
“Right?” Tyler grabbed Nick’s debit card and they started talking about someone I didn’t know as he rang up the order, and I just watched. Nick seemed so comfortable—so warm—when he was with his friends, and that was a side I hadn’t really seen before. At school, he always just seemed like he was trying to get through the day without having to talk to anyone.
This… was so different.
After we finished at the coffee stand, Nick led me one block over, where we went inside an unmarked apartment building. He refused to answer any questions, simply walked ahead of me. We took an elevator to the top floor, went down a long hallway and into the maintenance closet, and then Nick gestured to a ladder that sat between two rusty boilers and looked like it led up to a cage. “I’ll go first and open the hatch if you’ll hold my cup.”
I blinked. “Um, what? What hatch?”
He held out his steaming drink and said with his eyes on mine, “Do you trust me?”
I just nodded and held out my free hand.
“Good girl.” He gave me his cup, then turned and started going up the ladder to God knows where. I heard his shoes on each metal rung, and then all I could hear was the sound of hardware before a gust of icy wind blew around me and the boiler room was flooded with light.
“I’m coming for my coffee,” I heard him say as he climbed back down, “so don’t try to start climbing with full hands.”
A second later his legs came down in front of me and he grabbed his coffee. “You should probably go up first, so if you slip, I’m here to break your fall. Do you think you can climb one-handed? If not, I’ll leave my cup down here and I can carry yours.”
“Wow.” I looked up at the chute and said, “So chivalrous.”
He raised his eyebrows and said, “That, or I really like the looks of those leather pants from behind.”
If someone else had said that, I might’ve wanted to slug them. But his lopsided grin told me he said it on purpose because he knew it would rile me up. I rolled my eyes and started climbing.
Once I got to the top of the ladder and stepped out onto the roof, I was assaulted by freezing-cold winter air. Nick emerged behind me, and before I could even look around, he said, “Close your eyes.”
I did, but I said, “This seems like a bad idea on a roof.”
“I know, I know,” he said, and I felt him grab my free hand and start to lead me. “But I promise not to kill you. I just don’t want you to see it up here until you’re in the perfect spot.”
“I already saw the city from the forty-second floor. How different can this be?”
“You have no idea.” I let him maneuver me, leading me around things until finally, he stopped. His breath was warm on my cheek as he leaned in close and said in a quiet voice, “Okay, Emmie—open your eyes.”
