I check for any sign of recognition, but there’s none.
“Nice work,” she says.
She pulls on her gloves and snaps them into place. I’ve designed the piece myself, which is new for me. I’m not an artist, but I knew what I wanted—a clock face, but shattered. The hands are still visible behind the cracked glass, but they’re bent, mid-motion. Whatever the clock was counting toward, it isn’t anymore.
I want it on my ribs. I don’t examine why too closely.
Cora traces the stencil onto my skin. The paper is cold.
“This is not your first time,” she says.
“No.”
She doesn’t say anything else, just clicks on her machine and leans in. The needle hits, and I breathe through it. I’ve always been okay with pain. Lola used to say it made it harder to gauge when she was going too deep.
Lola.
She’s always on my mind, but I should’ve known I couldn’t do this without her right at the forefront. Her love for tattoos was so much a part of her that they go hand in hand. When I think of one, I think of the other.
She gave me my first tattoo at Rebel Mark, the shop where she was apprenticing. Her mentor trusted her and started letting her close the shop. If she was still there when I got done with practice, I’d go hang out with her there.
When I walked in on this particular night, she had the overhead lights low and the lamp on her station angled over the chair. The shop was a different place after hours. It feltlike it was hers. She’d rearranged everything the way she liked it, stencil supplies on the left, inks arranged by color family, everything just right. She was wearing a purple tank top with a small bleach stain near the hem, and her hair was piled on top of her head. She looked up at me with that expression she had when she was concentrating so hard on her art that everything else vanished.
“Want to get your tattoo tonight?” she asked.
“Really?” I’d been wanting one for quite a while.
“Really.” She smiled and motioned for me to sit down, and then held up a stencil.
The number 19. The number I’d had my whole hockey life.
“I love it,” I said as I sat in her chair.
She pressed the stencil down and smoothed it with two careful fingers and peeled it back, and the fact that she’d chosen this, that she just knew I’d want it, made me happier than I could explain.
She had me look at it carefully, so I’d be sure before she made it permanent.
“I’m sure,” I tell her.
She worked slowly and carefully. I watched her face instead of the needle. The small line between her brows. The way she bit the inside of her lip when she rounded a curve. I knew every part of her face. God, I loved her face.
When she finished, she sat back and looked at the number on my skin, then grinned at me.
“What do you think?”
“I think you’re perfect.” I reached up and put my hand on her jaw, and she leaned in, kissing me.
The second tattoo was a week later. I let her choose this one as well, and she looked a little nervous before she showed me the stencil.
“I actually have two choices, but if you don’t love either one, I’ll draw something else. It has to feel right, so promise you’ll say if it doesn’t,” she said.
“Promise.”
It wasn’t what I’d expected. The first drawing she showed me was of beautiful flowers.
“Rose and honeysuckle are the birth flowers for June. That was your mom’s birthday month, right?”
I was so touched that she remembered my mom’s birthday month and just by the sentiment of all of it, I reached over and put my hand on top of hers.