Blurred Lines: Tattoo Romance (Bodies Ink and Steel) Read online

  “Sorry, I didn’t bring my glasses in,” she said as she turned away from the monitor.

  Oh fuck.

  You wear glasses?

  I glanced at Tyler and grinned. He pointed toward the street and nodded his head eagerly.

  I shifted my eyes upward until my gaze met hers. “You wear glasses?”

  Girls who wore bold thick-framed black glasses had been a weakness of mine since eighth grade when I was introduced to Mrs. Reisling, my well-endowed and very nearsighted home room teacher. She didn’t wear low-cut tops as often as I wanted her to, but when she did, every boy in class tried to catch a glimpse of one of her three pound gravity defying tits. In hindsight, I was sure they were fake, the product of a very talented plastic surgeon. At the time, however, I viewed her as defined perfection, her bold school girl glasses included.

  I stood, staring blankly at my new client, trying to imagine her wearing a bold black-framed Prada or maybe something from Cartier’s newest “fuck me senseless collection”. Three or four seconds later I was fighting with my subconscious self, trying to regain control over my rather eager - and always one step ahead of my brain - male anatomy.

  I gazed beyond her and at the monitor as I desperately tried to think of something else to occupy my mind. Standing in front of her during her first session with a full blown hard on wouldn’t be the welcome I expected she was prepared for.

  Maybe during her second or third session I could rock a stiff cock, but certainly not on the first.

  “I can’t see without them, but I hate to wear ‘em,” she said.

  Hearing her voice caused me to shift my focus away from the monitor. Standing there studying her, she seemed incomplete, half-dressed, and out of place. Something was clearly missing. She really needed to get those glasses.

  “In your car?” I asked, still trying not to focus on her face.

  She nodded her head as she brushed her dishwater blonde hair over her shoulder.

  I shrugged as I turned toward my work station. “You should probably get ‘em so you can see what I’m doing.”

  It was ten o’clock in the morning on a Wednesday, not typically a time of day when we were swamped with clients. I had owned the shop for two years, and even though business was slowly on the increase, we were far from steady with customers early in the morning on a Wednesday.

  “Yeah, go get your glasses. Grab a little plaid skirt and a fucking lollipop while you’re out there,” Tyler said sarcastically as he continued to mess with one of his tattoo machines.

  Luckily, it appeared she didn’t hear him.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said as she tugged her shirt over the waist of her jeans.

  I watched her every step as she walked toward the door without seeming to care if I paid attention to her or not. As she pushed the door open, she glanced over her shoulder. I attempted unsuccessfully to seem uninterested.

  “Dude…” Tyler said as the door closed behind her.

  I turned toward him and grinned, well aware of where his comments were going to be directed.

  “Who is she again?” I asked as I sauntered toward my work station.

  “Friend of a friend.” He paused, turned his stool half way around, and continued to taunt me over his shoulder.

  “I wonder if she’s got the skirt and the lollipop in her car. That’s a bad little bitch, Blake. Be pretty tough to fight the urge to get in her pants, huh?” he said.

  “Stop it. Friend of a friend, huh? Be a little more specific?” I asked as I pulled the drawer of my box open.

  He shook his head. “Not really.”

  I looked up from the collection of tattoo machines and glanced over my left shoulder. Tyler was my first employee, and had quickly become the brother I never had growing up. He was in his late twenties, obtained half of an engineering degree at the local college, and dropped out primarily because he was bored. A few months later, he began serving an apprenticeship under another local tattoo artist, and became licensed immediately prior to me opening my shop. As soon as the lights were on and the door was open, he offered his services along with paying a healthy booth rent, stating the shop he was working for was a drama-filled distraction to his otherwise simple way of living life. In my shop, from what he shared with me, he was able to relax and enjoy being an artist.

  “What the…you’re seriously not going to tell me who she is or where she came from?”

  “Listen. It’s simple, but complicated. You know those deals where sometimes it’s best just to keep your mouth shut? Well, this is one of those deals. And, you’ll get her name when you make a copy of her ID. Don’t forget that, you simple minded fuck. And you’re trying to quit, anyway,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  He narrowed his gaze and stared. “You’re trying to quit fucking the customers, remember?”

  I glanced toward the door. “Tell me, but make it quick, she’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Not gonna happen, bro,” he said as he turned away.

  “Jesus, Tyler…”

  “You said you’re going to stop fucking the chicks that come in here. I’m just trying to help you out, bro,” he said flatly as he continued to fuck with the tattoo machine he held in his hand.

  “Listen, fucker. You need to tell me whatever you…”

  The sound of the buzzer from the front door caused me to look away and warned me to stop talking. All recollections of Mrs. Reisling soon faded as Riley whoever she was walked into the shop wearing the biggest, boldest, hottest pair of old school frames I had ever seen. I swallowed heavily and patted the cushion of the seat in front of me.

  “Grab a seat right here,” I said as I slapped the leather surface with the palm of my hand.

  She now looked five years older and ten times more attractive. I realized a good portion - if not all - of my attraction to women in glasses was a result of an unfulfilled childhood fantasy of boning my large-breasted glasses-donning school teacher, but it didn’t matter. At that moment Riley was causing me to all but forget my entire eighth grade year of middle school.

  “So, you said you’ve done quite a few like this?” she asked as she sat down.

  I nodded my head as I reached for my book of fonts. “Yeah, quite a few.”

  “How many?” she asked.

  “Two fucking hundred,” Tyler respond over his shoulder.

  “I don’t know an exact amount, but it’s probably over a hundred,” I said as I opened the book.

  Tyler glanced toward us and shook his head in apparent disgust.

  I glared at him and shook my head. The last thing I needed was him trying to talk her out of getting the tattoo and having her leave before I got a chance to know more about her. I shifted my eyes toward Riley, and as she studied the book of fonts, I studied her.

  Beautiful. If I had to describe her in one word, there wasn’t another word that would do her justice. I had always perceived using beautiful as a description to be lame and cheap, but to describe Riley as anything but beautiful wouldn’t give her credit where the credit was due. Sitting and gazing down at the pages of the book, she defined beauty in more ways than I could have sat and counted.

  Unconsciously, and almost as if she had no idea I was at her side, she reached for the hair which hung down beside her face - partially obstructing her view of me - and brushed it behind her ear. After turning another page, she tilted her head to the side, grinned, and shifted her eyes to the pages of the book again.

  “Every fucking high school girl up at East High has come in here for one of those as soon as she’s eighteen. Get something original, Jesus,” Tyler mumbled as he spun his stool around.

  I shook my head at his off-hand remarks, relieved that Riley was paying no attention to him.

  Tyler wasn’t afraid to speak his mind, and if anything, he was a little too eager to do so at times. Often his remarks toward women in the shop got me into trouble. It seemed he was always trying to push me beyond a limit I was comfortable with, coercing me
to do something I would normally shy away from if he was away from the shop. Recently, after much pleading for him to do so, he had begun to act as my conscience, and was attempting to assist me in my recovery from screwing the patrons.

  I glanced at Riley, attempted to see beyond her glasses, and shrugged.

  “It seems like every high school girl up at East High has been in here to get one of those as soon as she’s eighteen. It’s almost like an epidemic,” I said.

  She inhaled a slow breath and breathed her response. “Are you serious?”

  I glanced beyond her and toward Tyler, who was behind her and well out of her field of vision. He widened his eyes, shrugged his shoulders, and gave another snide remark.

  “Put some little black birds flying out of the last letter, and have ‘em flying up her back and onto her fucking neck, that’d be original. What a stupid bitch,” he mumbled.

  I glared at him until he turned around.

  “Yeah, it’s a pretty common piece,” I said.

  She shook her head, swept the loose hair over her shoulders, and shifted her eyes to meet mine. “I don’t want what everyone else has.”

  My gaze shifted slowly from her face to her feet, taking every inch of her in along the way. Her figure, no differently than her face, defined perfection.

  “Well? What do you want to do?” I shrugged as I focused on her shoes.

  “Seriously, have you done a hundred of these? Like this exact phrase?” she asked.

  I shifted my eyes upward and nodded my head. “Yeah, probably.”

  She shook her head and handed me the book. “I don’t want it, then.”

  Tyler raised his hands over his head and began to clap. I tossed the book of fonts to the side and reached for the neck of her shirt, attempting the entire time not to stare at her glasses.

  “Get a jalapeno pepper wearing sunglasses. It’s the free tattoo of the week,” Tyler said over his shoulder.

  “We’re all about originality at my shop. It’s kind of what tattoos are about. You know, expressing yourself. Would you consider yourself to be a common person?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Don’t get something so common. Get something original,” I said.

  “Like?” she asked.

  “Go big or go bigger,” Tyler shouted.

  I shook my head, frustrated that he wouldn’t stop making snide remarks.

  Tyler stood and walked toward my work station. As he twisted a rubber band around the needle of his tattoo machine, he stood behind us and studied Riley. After a long moment, he turned to face me and shrugged.

  “What’s her story?” he whispered.

  I shrugged my shoulders and leaned toward Riley.

  “What’s your story?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?” she responded.

  “Well…” I paused, not certain of how to proceed.

  Tyler stood behind her with his arms crossed, studying her. After a moment, he turned away and shook his head in frustration.

  “Simple question. What’s your fucking story? Everybody’s got one. You know, why you here? Why’d you decide all of a sudden to get a tattoo? Someone die? Have a kid? Break up with some dick? Meet someone and fall in love? Have a fucking epiphany last night at midnight? It’s got to be something,” Tyler mumbled as he walked away.

  I waved my hand in his direction, all but forcing him to go to the other side of the shop and hopefully be quiet.

  “You know, your story. What brought you here? Why’d you decide all of a sudden to get a tattoo? Did someone close to you die? Did you have a kid? Did you just end a shitty relationship, you know, break up with some dick? Did you meet someone and fall in love?” I asked.

  “The third one. Broke up with some dick,” she said.

  I really didn’t need the temptation. I almost wished she would have said she had met someone and fallen in love. It was difficult enough for me to fight my addictions of picking up a bottle of beer, having a drink, or smoking a joint with Tyler. Above all, my addiction to women was the worst, and Riley was easily the best looking specimen I had seen in a long, long time.

  Knowing she was single made matters much worse.

  “Talk her into getting a koi fish or a fucking snake. A koi depicts courage, and a snake represents rebirth, a transformation, and healing. Get a fucking snake and a koi,” Tyler said.

  “What do you think of a koi fish or a snake or something? They’re representations of courage, rebirth, healing…”

  She clasped her hands together as if she were cold, and squeezed her biceps against rather nicely shaped breasts. “You think that’s better than the Latin?”

  She looked innocent, young, and gorgeous. It was quite possible my six weeks of abstaining from sex had hindered my vision slightly, but in anyone’s eyes, Riley would have been beyond what one could describe as attractive. In my eyes, she was quickly becoming a person I was incapable of walking away from. The more I looked at her, the less faults I found. In five more minutes, she’d be perfect.

  I needed to quit admiring her before something bad happened.

  Tyler’s eyes widened comically. “Are you fucking serious? Having a snake tattooed on you says “I’m a bad ass”. But tattooing a statement on you that says “Hey, I’m a bad ass” says you’re nothing but a douchebag. Getting that Latin phrase, in my opinion, is fucking stupid. Get something that symbolizes your thoughts and feelings. Or, I guess Blake could tattoo something on your back that says ‘I met a guy and fell in love, we broke up, now I feel strong and empowered, and I think I’m headed down the path of living a new courageous life,’ and he could do it in Greek or Spanish or some shit.”

  Riley sat and gazed at me as if waiting on direction.

  “Well, I believe saying something with words is the easy way out. What if Leonardo da Vinci would have written a paragraph depicting his thoughts instead of painting the Mona Lisa? Can you imagine that? I think a picture is worth a thousand words,” I said.

  “Well, I’ll trust your judgement. I just don’t want to be like everyone else,” she said.

  “I’ve got a bad ass koi already drawn up over here,” I said as I reached toward my cabinet.

  After rifling through the many drawings on top of my cabinet, I produced the koi fish. I flattened the paper and held it in the air for her to see.

  “I like it. What color would you do?” she asked as she studied the drawing.

  “Orange on the fish. It’s pretty traditional. It stands for good fortune. We could surround it with blues, pinks, or purples. It’d really pop.”

  “Sounds great. Let’s do that,” she responded. “I really don’t want something a bunch of other girls have tattooed on them.”

  “It’s going to be a little more expensive than the phrase,” I said.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll pay whatever it costs.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” I said.

  “Problem fucking solved,” Tyler said.

  “So, you want to go with this?” I asked as I stood from my seat.

  She nodded her head and grinned.

  “Let me make a stencil and we’ll get started. It’s going to take about six hours, so probably two three-hour sessions. Is that alright?” I asked. “Oh, and I’ll need to make a copy of your ID. And I’ll have a form for you to sign.”

  “Okay,” she said as she reached for her purse. “Here.”

  I glanced down at her driver’s license as I walked away. Riley J. Campbell, D.O.B. September 24, 1993. She wasn’t even twenty-two yet, and looked every bit of twenty-five or twenty-six.

  “You haven’t got time to finish it today?” she asked as I walked away.

  I turned around as I shrugged my shoulders. “I’ve got time, but it’ll be pretty painful to sit there and get pounded on for six hours.”

  “Six hours of that needle will be a lot better than the poundings I’m used to,” she responded.

  “We’ll t
ry and finish it today then,” I said as I turned toward the copy machine.

  Tyler’s secrecy regarding who she was and her comment about being pounded on raised my level of interest in her considerably. If I didn’t offer to exchange a tattoo for sex, and instead spent the next six hours trying to get to know her, in my mind I’d still be recovering from my addictions and not succumbing to temptation.

  In theory, it sounded good.

  I knew all she would really need to do to cause me to grovel at her feet would be to have her hair in a ponytail. Something about a girl with a strong jawline and a ponytail always appealed to me. Riley had a great jaw, high cheeks, and when combined with her glasses, a ponytail would without a doubt put me over the edge.

  After making a copy of the drawing and her license, I turned to face her.

  “Hope you’re ready,” I said as I raised the stencil in the air.

  She reached for her wrist and then over her shoulders with both hands.

  “I’ll just get this mop out of your way,” she said as she twisted her hair into a ponytail, “And then you can get to work.”

  I did my best to look beyond her. As my eyes came into focus along the far wall, Tyler held both fists to his side and extended his thumbs upward. As his mouth curled into a huge grin he nodded his head in Riley’s direction.

  Damn you, Tyler, stop it.

  I shifted my focus to her. She glanced upward, grinned, and peered through her bold black fuck-me frames, knowing nothing of what she was doing to me.

  Or, maybe she knew everything of what she was doing to me.

  I returned her gaze, smiled, and sat down. As I spun my stool away from her and grabbed a pair of rubber gloves, I closed my eyes.

  God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.