The Reinvention of the Rose Read online

  It was a state I’d never – to my memory – experienced until this past year or so. Maybe I’d been too mentally occupied before, with analyzing my past performance or planning future excellence, but these days… man.

  I was really on my own fucking nerves.

  That was the only way, even privately, I could articulate how it felt to be standing in the mirror, the sharpest of my blades in hand, unnecessarily dramatic as I contemplated carving off my rose.

  It was ridiculous.

  Logically, I knew that, and yet… I didn’t feel like I could live with it, a single second longer.

  It had been there as long as I could remember, branding me as an asset rather than a fully-realized person. A single red rose, petals beautifully spread and intricately detailed – a loveliness that belied the underlying cruelty it represented.

  An exquisite flower, on a dangerous woman I didn’t want to be anymore.

  Didn’t have to be anymore.

  And yet… I was still marked.

  On a deep breath, I lifted the blade to my skin, barely flinching as I pressed it into my flesh. It pricked, yes, but I couldn’t bring myself to draw my own blood, even though I’d been trying for the last hour.

  Histrionic much?

  I tossed the knife onto the dresser, running over the tattoo with my fingers instead. It was flat to the touch, but even with my eyes closed, I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there – it was too deeply embedded, in more than my skin.

  An ugly stain, in the fabric of who I was.

  Yeah.

  I can’t look at this shit anymore.

  I quickly ruled out the knife, knowing damn well I’d never gather the fortitude to flay it off my skin – not under these conditions. In some type of high-danger, life or death situation, I’d slice the damn thing off and keep it pushing.

  In a reality where I could just as easily walk across the street for a tea and leisurely enjoy it from the comfort of a plush chair in the coffeehouse window without a care in the world?

  Not so much.

  Full removal required more paperwork and follow-up than I was comfortable engaging quite yet, so it wasn’t an option. I knew a few other girls like me, who’d opted for a coverup, and felt at ease with that option.

  Now that I’d started making the mental shift from “survive” to “actually have a life” … maybe that would help me, too.

  This wasn’t going to be like the pathetic persuading I’d had to go with myself to go to Urban Grind.

  Nope.

  I didn’t give myself time to think it over, I threw on some clothes to cover the naked state I’d been in since I exited the shower with slice-and-dicing on my mind.

  And then I headed out the door.

  DistInk’d was… loud.

  Aurally, and visually, both in an aesthetically pleasing way.

  The music was loud, the people were loud, the walls plastered in pictures and drawings, several ignored flat screens flashing everything from news to binge-streamed movies and shows. I got a few curious glances as I walked in, but I mostly went ignored except for the girl behind the front counter, sporting at least four facial piercings.

  She smiled as I approached, putting down her cell phone to give me her attention. “What you need, love?”

  “A coverup,” I told her, distractedly, as my eyes scanned the wall behind her, taking in what I assumed to be the work of artists on staff. Once my gaze landed on one I liked, I pulled aside the wide strap of my tank top, showing her the rose. “I don’t ever want to see this again. And I want to work with whoever did that,” I said, pointing to a photo of a hyper-realistic koi fish inked across someone’s shoulder.

  She glanced behind her, her gaze following my directive. “He’s gonna be expensive,” she warned, once she landed where I was pointing. “Especially for a coverup.”

  “I don’t care,” I told her. “Is he here right now? I’ll pay extra if I can walk out of here with something new, today.”

  She raised an eyebrow at me, her gaze falling to where my strap was still pushed aside. “You getting over a bad break-up or something?”

  “Yeah. Something like that.”

  Her pierced lips stretched into a sympathetic smile as she nodded, sliding off the chair to stand. “Aiight. He finished up with somebody else a little while ago. Let me go see if he’s up to it.”

  She disappeared behind a beaded curtain leading into the back of the shop, while I took the opportunity to do a bit more looking around. I had this gran plan to have the rose covered, but no idea what I wanted to be in its’ place.

  What, exactly would be significant enough to dampen the rose’s power?

  I wasn’t sure.

  But what I was sure of, was the energetic shift that happened in tandem with the sound of that beaded curtain being pulled back again. I turned around in time to watch the neighborhood hottie make his entrance.

  As soon as his attention landed on me, a slick smile spread over his whole face – not just his lips, but the glint in his eyes, the sudden flare in his nostrils.

  “This can’t be the eager customer, Pri,” he said, addressing the girl from the counter as his dark-eyed gaze remained on me. “This woman isn’t interested.”

  My eyebrow went up. “Really?”

  “Stop it, Tristan,” Pri scolded him as she took her seat back, and picked up her phone. “She had a bad breakup, help her out.”

  “I didn’t actually say that,” I corrected, but she was already grinning at her phone, not concerned with either of us anymore. So I repeated it to him, instead, and only got a deepened smirk in return.

  “You’re not saying it isn’t true either,” he rightly countered, and I crossed my arms.

  “I’m not sure why it matters, at all, anyway. Can you cover my tattoo?”

  “I can do anything you can afford.”

  “I can afford whatever you can do,” I responded, already sick of him, from the depth of his eyes to the softness of his beard to the bulk of his biceps, which hadn’t been quite so apparent a few nights ago. I pulled my strap aside again, displaying the rose. “Are you fixing this for me, or not?”

  His teeth sank into his lip, purposely keeping his gaze locked on mine instead of looking at the tattoo. After a moment, he did, stepping closer to peer at it before he lifted his fingers to my skin, touching me in the same place I’d been sorely tempted to carve off.

  I… didn’t feel like stabbing him.

  In fact, I was drawn to the idea of leaning into his touch, but before that feeling had lingered too long, he’d pulled back.

  “It’s nice and flat, so that’s good. The color is deep and rich – good for a tat in general, but a little more difficult to cover, depending on what you want. You got a picture or something?” he asked, meeting my eyes.

  “I don’t know what I want.”

  “Aiight, come back when you do,” he said. “We can sketch it out, let you live with that for a few days, then make it permanent.”

  “No,” I said, stepping closer to emphasize how serious I was. “I don’t want to come back, I don’t want to sketch anything out. I want it tonight. Right now.”

  “I don’t do freehand ink on strangers, sweetheart.”

  “Name your price.”

  He scoffed, shaking his head as he took a step back. “It’s not about the money. I have a process, and I don’t know you like that to be throwing shit off.”

  “Please?” I asked, disgusted with myself for how desperate my voice sounded but… whatever. “I need this,” I told him, circling a hand around his wrist as I moved closer, begging with my eyes.

  It only took a moment before he blew out a stream of air through his nose, cursing under his breath.

  Bingo.

  “You don’t even know what you want,” he accused, in a clear last-ditch effort to get me to leave him alone.

  “A storm,” I replied, pulling the idea from nothing. “Dark, rolling clouds. Lightning. Sky.”

  “Damn
,” he frowned. “Not even something simple?”

  “Do I seem like a simple girl to you?”

  He chuckled, his gaze dropping to where I was still holding on to his wrist. “Nah. You seem difficult as fuck.”

  “But you’re gonna do the tattoo?” I asked, giving him the full-blown puppy-dog eyes I’d never met a man who could resist.

  A deep sigh lifted and dropped his broad chest, and he shook his head – not in answer, in resignation.

  “Come on back.”

  “You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

  I lifted an eyebrow at him as he gestured to the place in his inking room where he wanted me to take a seat.

  “No.”

  “Did you eat before you arrived?”

  “Should I have?” I asked, thinking about the big ass honeybun I’d ventured out for to serve as breakfast, and had subsequently served as an all-day meal.

  He looked up from a wall of different colored inks he’d been choosing from to tell me, “Yes, probably a good idea. You might be here a while.”

  Oh.

  Good thing I had nowhere else to be.

  “How long did the rose take?” he asked, as I shifted my attention to my other surroundings – his private space was much more refined than the general area of the shop. There was the ink wall, a stainless-steel sink and a bunch of storage, a gallery wall of ink I assumed he’d done, and an unfinished mural of a woman’s face.

  I blinked, realizing I hadn’t answered the question. “I can’t remember.”

  Not exactly a lie, but… not quite the whole story, either. I had very specific flashes of that day – the day I “got” my rose, supposedly something to be proud of. None of the details would come through clearly for me though.

  “Why no drinking?” I asked, trying to shift the subject.

  “Uh… lack of judgment is part of it,” he told me, sounding half distracted as he dug through one of the storage drawers. “But mostly, because it thins your blood, makes it harder to get the ink to take, yada-yah.”

  I watched as he stopped what he was doing to stretch his long, muscled limbs – an act that made me remember what “Pri” said about him before she’d gone to find him for me.

  “Am I fucking up your flow or something? You were about to call it a day?”

  A grin played on his lips as he kept gathering his tools and supplies in what I assumed to be a sterilized tray. “Nah, sweetheart. Every artist on staff has to put in a certain amount of hours for drop-ins. You got lucky.”

  “Stop calling me sweetheart.”

  He glanced up from transferring his supplies to the cart by the table. “What would you prefer?”

  “My name.”

  “Which is…?”

  Shit.

  I guess people wanted that, huh?

  Usually, if I were out amongst the public it was with a firmly planted identity in mind – I wasn’t “playing” someone else.

  I was someone else.

  That wasn’t an option anymore.

  Now, I was just… me. Nothing to hide behind, no intrepidly detailed fictional backstory to lean on.

  “Tempest,” I said, introducing myself by my own name – the only one I’d ever known, at least – for the first time.

  He smiled. “Nice. The “storm clouds” thing seems much more fitting now. I’m Tristan,” he said, offering his hand, which I accepted.

  His fingers swallowed mine in a firm grip, and the same get closer urge I’d felt earlier returned.

  A feeling completely foreign to me.

  I didn’t let that handshake linger.

  If he minded the abrupt way I pulled back, he didn’t mention it, dropping onto some strange stool-contraption and wheeling up to where I was seated.

  “I’m gonna have you take your arm out of your tank, and your bra strap, if you’re wearing one,” he said, switching to a very professional, matter-of-fact tone. “I need to shave that area, just in case, and sterilize it, so your clothes might get a little wet. And you might leave here with a bit of ink on them. Is that gonna be a problem?”

  I glanced down at my cut-off shorts and the plain tank top I’d tossed on. “No. I can keep my titty covered, right?”

  Tristan’s eyebrows went up. “Uh… yeah. I mean, unless you want the tat to go down that far.”

  “No. Just what’s needed to cover the rose,” I affirmed, then looked up to stare at the black-pained network of pipes that comprised the ceiling.

  “You’re not gonna run out of here and stiff me, are you?” he asked, in a tone that was only half-joking. “Pri didn’t take a deposit, have you sign a waiver or nothing, did she?”

  “No. And no. You’re not gonna give me a fucked-up tattoo, are you?”

  He scoffed. “That ain’t even possible, swee—Tempest,” he corrected himself.

  “Well then… unless you’re gonna have me go back out front… I guess we’re trusting each other.”

  I dropped my gaze to meet his, and he nodded.

  “Let’s get this started.”

  The heat of the needle against my skin was… blissful.

  With my gaze focused on the gorgeous mural decorating the opposite wall, I forced myself to feel it all – every prick of blazing hot metal, the filling of my pores with ink, the featherlight touch of Tristan’s hand as he moved.

  As he facilitated step one of my reinvention.

  Make no mistake – I was a woman who required reinvention.

  Intervention.

  There was no real circle of concerned friends or family or coworkers for me, though.

  I had to do it myself.

  Starting with the obscuring of the red flower that had been part of my identity for much too long.

  Burned into my skin, a permanent designation of who I was and why I existed.

  A condemnation I’d lived with since… pretty much since I could remember, which wasn’t saying much. My very, very earliest memories, the ones I could only barely touch, even when I dug for them… they weren’t of swings or bike riding or recitals or hanging out with friends at the mall.

  They were of the Garden.

  It wasn’t so much that I needed to forget, more that… I needed something else. Different memories, from a different life I had yet to actually live.

  So, I focused – again, on feeling it all.

  Every prick.

  I’d gotten much too good at feeling nothing.

  Pain was a luxury I’d been mostly stripped of long ago – something to channel into a more beneficial feeling, but never sat with, or explored. Now that I was free to do and think and feel what I wanted… it was mine to reclaim.

  As strange as it was.

  “Never seen a woman be this serene about my needlework,” Tristan said from above me. “At least not without a little assistance.”

  I shifted my gaze from the mural to his face – that frustratingly good face.

  Dark brown skin, obsidian eyes, that thick, soft-looking beard that would likely feel good against the back of my hand.

  Probably even better between my thighs.

  “Is that a compliment?” I asked, meeting his gaze. He was looking at me, sure, but also into me a little too, in a way that was almost too much.

  Almost.

  I felt the invasion, but didn’t look away.

  I waited.

  He’d already pulled the tattoo gun away from my skin, but the motor kept buzzing as he stared. “It is.”

  “Okay. What exactly do you expect me to say?”

  “I tend to shy away from those, sweetheart.” Without warning, he brought the tattoo machine back to my skin, but I didn’t flinch.

  Not even because he’d called me sweetheart again.

  “Away from what?” I asked.

  The corners of his mouth lifted in a smirk. “Expectations.”

  Ha.

  He was indulgently tall, sinfully handsome, an immensely talented artist, based on what I’d seen, and in high demand, if I took into acco
unt how Pri had been sure to tell me he was expensive.

  Of course he shied away from expectations.

  “I bet you know a little about that,” he said, when I hadn’t spoken after a moment. “I get the feeling you defy a few expectations of your own.”

  “Nobody expects anything of me.”

  As soon as those words left my lips, I realized how dismal they had to sound. The truth was though, that I wasn’t a woman anyone expected anything from, because… I barely existed.

  I was here to fix that.

  Hopefully.

  I closed my eyes, and Tristan took the hint – he didn’t ask me shit else, for a while. He focused his attention on my ink – on the intricate detail work involved with turning my rose into a stylized storm, complete with lightning.

  The destructive force I was named for.

  At least, that was how I always imagined it, since I didn’t have a parent or sibling to ask, no box of old letters or archives to pull my history from. For as much as I knew of my own creation, I may as well have been born a fully-formed teenager, with no purpose other than earning and maintaining the rose I was paying some undisclosed sum of money to be delivered from.

  Freehand.

  I liked the sound of the word – freehand. It seemed fitting for the occasion – for the insane amount of gravity it held for me.

  “I don’t do freehand on strangers,” he’d claimed, and yet… here we were.

  In a tiny, sterile room, my breast bared down to the darkened fringes of my areola, with some rapper screaming over a beat in the background while I was reborn.

  A hundred pricks, and then a wipe away of excess ink, sometimes blood.

  Then another.

  Then an ink refill, or a color change, and then a hundred more pricks of the needle.

  The steadiness, the precision of it all, was soothing.

  The sterile gloves covering his hands was a perfect barrier, making it easier to focus on the utility of what was happening, instead of being distracted by his touch.

  Though, I’d quickly discovered Tristan was a hard man to completely tune out.

  With my eyes still closed, I called his face to mind – I’d already committed it to memory. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the flare of his wide nose, the mid-size gauges in his earlobes, the tiny mole on his top lip – the only slight imperfection to their perfect pink-brown fullness.