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“I have plans,” I say, and only feel a little guilty about it. Years ago, I’d have killed for an invitation like this.
“See you around, then.”
“I know where you live.” I mean it to sound like a joke, but because I am me, it sounds like the prelude to chopping her body into tiny pieces and making a feast for the campus squirrels. “But not in a creepy way.”
The worst part is, as terrible as Lucie’s been to me in the past, part of me does believe we could be friends one day. I’m not sure when, and I don’t know what that friendship might look like, but if there’s one thing I recognize in another person, it’s loneliness.
And I’m heartbroken that no matter what progress we’ve made, it’ll all be erased by tomorrow.
DAY TWENTY-ONE
Chapter 26
“THIS WOULD BE CUTE ON you,” I say, flipping a page and pointing to a photo of a guy with an onion tattooed on his armpit. We’re sitting on a shabby leather sectional in a Capitol Hill tattoo shop. “Or a massive… Art Garfunkel? Right in the middle of your chest?” Not Simon & Garfunkel. Just Garfunkel. There’s a real chaotic energy there, and frankly, I respect it. “You think you could rock that?”
Miles gives me his patented you exhaust me sigh. “What I think is that I’m having many, many regrets.”
Over the past week, we’ve had, to the best of our abilities, the time of our lives—at least, with the limited resources available to us as eighteen-year-old college freshmen. Yesterday, in an effort to pack the ultimate college experience into a single twenty-four-hour period, we rounded up as many people in the quad as we could and attempted to break a Guinness World Record for most Frisbee catches, just falling short. I toppled headfirst into a tree when I tried to learn how to slackline. We went downtown and rode the Great Wheel for hours and tried every sample in Pike Place Market. We bought a Porsche from a very skeptical car salesman and Miles taught me how to drive stick, and neither of us murdered the other.
Three weeks I’ve been stuck, and many more for Miles, and I have to admit, all the excitement is starting to feel exhausting. No matter what we do, I always wake up to Lucie’s voice. I always get a text from my mom at seven thirty, and that skateboarder always crashes into the swing dancers at ten to four. Over and over and over.
“I think we’ve made a decision,” I say after about twenty minutes, bringing the book up to the counter. Lately, I’ve started to feel like we’re only going through the motions of living life to the fullest, and I’m not going to lie: part of me hopes we’ll wake up tomorrow with properly regrettable tattoos and a profound sense of relief.
“I can take you both right now,” the artist says. “Couple’s tattoos?”
I make what I hope are heart eyes at her, even as my stomach does something odd and unfamiliar. Something fluttery, like maybe the Olmsted Eggstravaganza was a bad choice this morning. “Yes. And we trust each other so much, we wanted to let the other person pick them out.”
“Isn’t that romantic,” she says in a flat voice, as though I’ve just told her we plan to feed each other food we’ve scraped off the side of the street for lunch.
Miles points to a page in the book I can’t see. “This one for her,” he says, then flips forward a few pages. “With this on it.”
“And I did my own design for him. If that’s okay.” I hand over a piece of paper. I am not an artist. I cannot wait.
The artist, a woman with a lavender bob and ink spiraling up her arms, introduces herself as Gemini and leads us back to a private room. I volunteer to go first, since Miles is looking a little pale.
“You’re getting yours on your forearm,” Miles says from a seat a few feet away from the tattooing chair. “Because that’s supposed to hurt the least, and I’m a nice person.”
“And you’re getting yours in a very secret, very special place.” Though I’m relieved he didn’t pick somewhere that would require exposing my back rolls or the roundness of my belly. But that relief quickly turns to worry that he picked my forearm because he’d rather not have to look at other parts of my body.
Gemini preps the area, cleaning it with rubbing alcohol and then swiping a razor across it.
“Don’t look,” Miles calls. There’s more glee on his face now, his eyes light. All at once, the strange swirly feelings from the night in his room come rushing back, turning my cheeks warm. It was accidental, the way his foot touched mine. And it didn’t mean anything when his gaze lingered—or when mine did.
Thankfully, as soon as the machine starts up, all those feelings are banished to the back of my mind. The pain isn’t as sharp as I expected it to be, though I still grimace as Gemini works.
“All done,” she says about an hour later, and I glance down at my forearm and burst out laughing.
It’s an anthropomorphized mozzarella stick, which is only made clear by the small dish of marinara sauce next to it. The stick has arms and legs and dots for eyes, and it’s wearing a cape.
But the thing is, even with the sauce, it does not look like a mozzarella stick at all.
It looks like a crime-fighting penis.
“Big fan of mozzarella sticks?” Gemini asks.
“The biggest,” I say, shaking my head at Miles, who looks thrilled.
“It looks perfect on you,” he says, which is not the same as you look perfect or I would look perfect on you, and yet. And yet.
