Page 28 of Midnight Ink

I bite back the burn in my eyes. “If you don’t take a vacation, that’s it. I’m done.” I swallow hard when his eyes meet mine. “I can’t keep doing this. Having the same arguments. Watching you destroy yourself. I’m done. Either take these next two weeks off or find a new artist.”

Before I can change my mind, I’m out the door, hoping for once he’ll do the right thing.

SEVEN

IAN

As expected, Jamie isn’t answering my calls, and I’m too chicken shit to go find him. I don’t know if he’s even still up here. Jamie and Noah come up a few times a month now. It’s been nice having them here, and now that I know Jamie’s been practicing being behind the wheel again on the drive up, I feel like an even bigger piece of shit if that’s possible.

Noah’s going to kill me.

Why did I say that?

I’m sitting at my desk, writing a list to calm my mind over all the clients Julian rescheduled. It’s overwhelming. I don’t know how we’re going to catch up.

Which means I can’t. I have to call them back and apologize for the confusion.

Find a new artist.

Julian’s words sit like lead in my gut. I can’t lose him. I can’t, and it’s not just because of his brilliant artistry.

That was the first thing that came to mind. Not the shop. Not the clients. Him.

I can’t lose him.

This little tangle happens in my gut, like a web that’s winding around my insides and squeezing my stomach. This happens a lot when I think about Julian. I don’t know why. It feels a hell of a lot like guilt, and it happens every time I dare to let what I feel for Julian grow brighter. Bigger. When I let it take up more space than I should.

Right now, it’s being muted by a deep shame. I can’t believe he found me like that. I put all that stress and worry on him and I hate it. I know he’s right. I know he is deep down. Something has to give. Something. I just don’t know if I’m strong enough to let that be me.

It’s only two weeks.

Sometime last night I finally stopped puking my guts up, and I threw away the rest of the whiskey, for all that did me. There wasn’t much left in the bottle.

I drop down into Maddox’s chair. Thankfully, in my drunken state I didn’t destroy anything. I look at the pictures tucked into his mirror. Memories he had and ones we shared.

I think this is the first day since we opened I’ve truly taken off. I’m either tattooing or drawing a tattoo for someone. When is the last time I even drew for myself? Fuck, I can’t remember. I used to do it all the time before we opened. You’d rarely catch me without my sketchbook. There were so many nights I’d spent with Madd on a couch at his house, my house, or somewhere in between, both of us just existing next to the other. Him playing video games and me drawing with my feet in his lap.

A soft ache stretches across my chest.

Next Monday is the eighth.

I swallow and get up, since I don’t have to be here, and swipe the photo from his mirror of him and me. We went to a beach up north around the Great Lakes for our one-year anniversary. That was Maddox’s favorite thing in the world. He always wanted to visit Puerto Rico where his mother is from, but money and time were always our biggest obstacles. We had a jar we were saving money in for a vacation we never got to take. He was so busy working for the shop, and then working to fix up the shop, we never had a chance to do it.

I still have the jar upstairs. I have no idea how much is in it, though. I’ve never touched it.

I head up to my apartment—there’s a stairwell that leads up here from the shop—and I find the jar on Maddox’s nightstand and dump it out on our bed. Bills spill out of the jar. There’s tons of change too. I’ll have to turn that in.

When I’m done counting, we have about twenty-six hundred dollars saved. I had no idea he had this much in there.

An idea comes to mind.

My eyes lift to the urn on my dresser. His mother gave half his remains to Anna and she gave them to me. At the time she said she’d probably end up spilling them all over her carpet, but I think the real reason is that Anna can’t look at it.

I pick up the dark blue urn. His name and birthday are on the front. When his mother chose to cremate him, she wanted some of his ashes near their family plot in the cemetery. That’s why they have the plot, so he can rest next to his grandparents. She gave the other half to Anna in this urn. His mother adored Anna, and I know deep down she wished her son had been with her and not me. I haven’t seen her in years. Last I knew she’d moved.

My throat swells with emotion. I can’t keep going like this. Julian is right.

And the thing is, I don’t want to keep going like this.