Brix nodded. “Got room for an extra? Farmer gave me a few more than I was expecting.”
“I’ll take a couple, just don’t tell the missus.”
“Awesome.” And so it went on. Brix rehomed forty-two hens, leaving him the five he’d committed to taking himself and three extra he’d need to place with whichever friends he hadn’t already foisted rescued chooks on, which wasn’t many. In fact, as he loaded the leftover birds and the crates onto the van, he couldn’t think of anyone who’d have the room, no one except . . . Aw, shit. Perhaps he’d be seeing his father sooner than he’d planned.
Brix shut up shop, pocketing the nominal monies folk had paid for their chooks—barely enough to cover the fuel—and got back in the van. Damn thing stank of chicken shit, but the stench was worth seeing the hens packed off to new homes, even if it did mean giving up his lucrative Saturday slot in the studio.
On cue, Brix’s phone rang again, the number for Blood Rush lighting up the screen. He plugged in the hands-free, then put the van in gear, reversing in an arc until he was facing the right way. “Yeah?”
“Morning. Did I wake you?”
“What do you think?”
Lena, the studio’s receptionist, chuckled. “I think you’ve been up for hours, saving all the chickens in the world from the pot.”
“Very funny.” Brix hung a left. “How many of my girls have you got up at the commune?”
“Eighteen at last count, so don’t try it.”
“But—”
“I mean it, sunshine. All the lectures in the world about commercial egg production won’t give me any more room. You don’t want the poor things stacked up worse than where they came from, do you?”
Of course he didn’t, and she knew it. Brix sighed. He’d have to go home and make more space, and take what he couldn’t house to his dad. “So if you haven’t called to take my extra girls off my hands, what do you want?”
“I called to see if you can do an extra hour on Thursday. Some dude’s coming all the way from London, so he wants a long sitting.”
“All the way from the big smoke, eh? Surely he isn’t coming just to get inked?”
“That’s what he said. He nabbed your cancellation when I posted it first thing. Said the city studio he was booked at closed down overnight. Artist did a moonlight flit or something.”
Fair enough. Brix was used to folk coming from all over the South-West to get inked at Blood Rush, but there was no shortage of awesome tattooists in London. Perhaps the dude was after a particular style. Brix let his mind drift over the designs he’d compiled the night before, ready for the week ahead. “Is this the dot work you emailed me about at 5 a.m.?”
“The very same. I’ve priced it at four hours, so if you stay till six on Thursday, you can wrap it up.”
Brix concurred, wondering for the umpteenth time how he’d manage without her. Lena looked pretty much like every soul who came to work at Blood Rush—neon haired, inked, and dangerous—and she ran Blood Rush so well he often joked that if she could do the ink herself he’d be out of a job. “What time is my afternoon appointment?”
“Two thirty. Are you going to be late?”
“Moi?” Brix turned onto Truro’s Station Road. “You say it like I’m late all the time.”
“You are. I had to break into your house and pour a bucket of water on your head last week.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Brix couldn’t defend his tardy ways. He hadn’t even learned to tell time until social services had forced him into school when he was twelve. Before then, he’d relied on the sun, just like his dad. After all, who needed a watch when you had nowhere to be? Sometimes he missed those days.
Brix said good-bye and disconnected the phone from the hands-free, tossing it on the seat beside him. He turned the radio on and fiddled with the dial, searching for something that wasn’t commercialised crap. Radio Padstow was the only setting he found that didn’t make him want to launch the stereo out of the window. Fuck, I’m getting old.
He set the pirate-rock track to a low volume as the van rumbled past the train station. The station was the busiest in Cornwall, and Brix was used to seeing all types of folk flow in and out of it on any day he happened to pass by, but as he crossed the bus entrance, a lone figure on a bench caught his attention. The man was slumped, hood up, with his head in his hands, and Brix had never seen such a picture of abject misery.
The van slowed, Brix’s foot subconsciously easing off the accelerator. Something about the set of the man’s broad shoulders was familiar. Brix eased to a crawl as he passed the bench and then stared hard in the wing mirror. The man’s hands were clenched into tense fists, but dark ink stained the tendons of his right hand, snaking out into an intricate web of black-and-grey Brix would recognise anywhere. Jesus Christ, it can’t be. But it had to be, because the unique design was the first of its kind that Brix had ever done, etched nervously onto the trembling hand of his gorgeous new apprentice eight years ago.
Brix shook his head—I’ve got to be seeing things—but he pulled up and jumped out of the van anyway. Whoever the raven-haired, bearded fittie was, he looked like he needed help. “You all right there, mate?”
The man didn’t move. Brix ventured closer, his gaze drawn to the ink. The dots spread out over flawless skin, weaving an image Brix already knew—a stag, with its antlers wrapped around the index and little finger, strong and proud, interwoven with the delicate touch that made dot work so special. It had aged well. Brix reached the bench and knelt down, tracing the antlers with his fingertip. “Calum? Is that you?”
“Calum? Mate?”
“Huh?” Calum looked up blearily and blinked at the latest apparition to cross his path since he’d fallen off a train at the bottom of the world. Great. Now he was imagining the first bloke he’d ever got a hard-on over. Would this nightmare never end? Not that imagining Brix Lusmoore was much of a nightmare. Even in the midst of the clusterfuck Calum’s life had become, Brix was bloody gorgeous. Shame he wasn’t real.