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“Bruce, I don’t need to stay with Oscar.”
“Your brother?—”
“He isn’t my brother,” I say, putting as much force as I can into my words, although they still barely come out as more than a whisper.
“He’s happy to have you.” Bruce says, oblivious to my tone.
“Octy and I are going to move in together once she gets to town. I’ll only be alone for a week before she gets there, and I’d be more comfortable in a hotel.”
“Nonsense, you can stay with family, that way you’ll be in familiar surroundings.” Bruce just keeps talking, like he hasn’t heard a word I’ve said.
“I haven’t seen Oscar in fifteen years,” I protest, hating how hard conflict still is for me, even when Bruce, my stepdad, is trying to railroad me.
“Then this will be the perfect time for you both to spend some time together, he is your brother after all.”
“He’s not my brother,” I repeat, hating the frisson of fear that rushes through me at just the thought of seeing my childhood bully again.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the day I’d hidden outside on the back step and covered my ears to drown out the sounds of Oscar and Bruce arguing was the last time I’d ever seen him. Now as an adult, I know that he’d turned up at the house for Labor Day weekend, and instead of destroying my bedroom and making my life hell, he’d told his dad that he would no longer be visiting our house on holidays and that if Bruce went to a judge to try to force the visitation, he would apply to become an emancipated minor.
The ensuing argument that had driven me out into the yard was the last one Bruce and Oscar would ever have in that house. It took me two Oscar-free years before I stopped having panic attacks in the weeks before a holiday, and it wasn’t until I left home to go away to school years later that I could even think his name without having a visceral trauma reaction.
When my friend Octavia, or Octy for short, called me up and said that she was moving to Montana to work in her friend Betty’s new studio, I was super pleased for her, but a little surprised that she was willing to move away from Rapid City, where she’s lived for the last three years.
We met when she was apprenticing as a tattoo artist in a Las Vegas studio. I’d just graduated from college with a degree in marketing and had been employed by the owner of the studio, who was launching a lifestyle brand, and wanted someone to help him with his social media marketing.
The first day I walked into the studio, I nearly walked straight back out again. I was twenty-two, wearing a pantsuit, sensible black-heeled pumps and completely tattooless. The girl working the front desk actually laughed when I said it was my first day and that I was the new social media marketing associate.
Octy had been the one to tell Lauren to go fuck herself. She’d taken me under her wing, befriended me, and helped me survive the first few months, when no one else at the studio would even talk to me.
Octy gave me my first tattoo and my second. She helped me find myself and stopped me from quitting a hundred times in the year we worked together. When she told me she’d taken a job at a prestigious studio in Rapid Falls, I was heartbroken. Making friends hasn’t been easy for me since everything that happened in middle school, and when she left, I’d assumed we’d never see each other again.
Luckily, Octy isn’t the type of person who leaves her friends behind, so even though we haven’t lived in the same state for years, we keep in touch almost daily. Taking a job in the same studio as her again was an absolute no-brainer.
“When will you get to Rockhead Point?” Bruce asks, pulling me from my thoughts.
“Thursday. My bus gets into town at eight thirty p.m.”
“I’ll let Oscar know to be waiting for you. I’m so excited for two of my kids to be living together again. Mom and I have already started looking for flights so we can come and visit you both.”
Horror rockets through me. Being in the same town as Oscar is bad enough, but having Mom, Bruce, and my younger brothers and sister here too is more than I can bear.
“I’m sorry, Bruce, but I’ll be too busy to spend any time with you guys. The studio is a start-up, so I’ll be working all the hours to get everything set up for the grand opening,” I lie quietly, hoping he can’t hear the mistruth on my lips.
Not everything is a lie. The studio is a start-up. Betty purchased the building a while back, but opening the shop got pushed back while she had a baby. Now it’s full speed ahead, despite her being pregnant again, even though her son is only a few months old.
Truthfully, for the next couple of months, my job will be a lot of planning and not a lot of action. After Lauren unexpectedly quit from the studio in Vegas, I stepped in to help man the front desk and found I enjoyed it and that I could easily do my marketing work at the same time as greeting customers and scheduling appointments. Which is why I agreed to a similar role in Montana.
I still don’t look like a typical tattoo shop employee. The tattoos I have are hidden beneath my clothes, and apart from a tiny stud in my nose, the only interesting thing about me and my appearance is my hair. One night, Octy and I got a little drunk on a bottle of tequila a client had given her as a thank you for the epic tattoo she’d done on him. I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but at some point, a bottle of pink hair dye had been pulled out and my dull blonde hair had been transformed into a pastel pink color that makes me look and feel a hell of a lot cooler than I actually am. Despite it being the result of a drunken whim, I’ve maintained the color, and even years later, I still adore it.
Bruce blathers on for another fifteen minutes, until Everly, my younger sister, calls him, and he says goodbye and hangs up. Exhaling, I drop my cell on the sofa and let my head fall back into the cushion behind me.
Dealing with my stepdad always leaves me feeling exhausted. He’s not a bad person, he just sees and hears everything the way he wants to interpret it. A part of me wishes I hadn’t told my mom about my new job, because then she wouldn’t have told Bruce, and I would never have had to know that Oscar was a resident of my new town. But I’ve always been a terrible liar, and the moment Mom asked me how work was, the truth was out of my mouth before I could think any better of it.
But really, what are the chances that I’d get a job in the same tiny town he’s working in? In the last fifteen years, I’ve pointedly avoided seeing, talking, or thinking about Oscar Malik. All these years later, he’s still the bogeyman to me, and just thinking about him makes me regress to the scared little girl I’d been when his greatest pleasure was tormenting me.
Part of me knows it’s unlikely he’s still the bully he was when he was an angry kid, but honestly, I have no interest in finding out. Despite what Bruce thinks is going to happen, I have absolutely no intention of having anything to do with Oscar, and that definitely includes staying in his house.
Lifting my cell up from where I dropped it, I open up my text app and type out a message.
