Lengths (2 page)

“Oh, hey, sorry ‘bout that,” gorgeous surfer-boy finally says.  “I don’t have an
official
appointment, but I called and talked to Rocko earlier. He said it was cool if I came by.”
              Sigh.

“Of course he did.”

“So, is it alright if I flip through the books?” He points to the heavy leather portfolios, but his eyes stay fixed on me, sexy, friendly, and sparked with that tiny kernel of hungry appreciation I now know as lust. One look from him and a thousand hormonal dominoes tip over and click to every part of my body that can get hot or wet or racing.  

“They’re over there.” I motion to the stack of black books piled on the small table and order my body back under control. Lust is a little bit new for me, but I have to get used to the race and thrill. This guy isn’t the first or the last who’s going to make me feel this way. And that’s definitely a very good thing.

“Thanks.” He nods and raises one eyebrow to match his crooked smile. Is he always smiling? He grabs a couple off the top of the stack and plops onto the worn sofa. I cringe a little. Surfer boy may be responsible for keeping me here late, but he definitely isn’t bad to look at, and that sofa has seen its share of Rocko’s after-hours conquests.

I slide open the top drawer of my desk and pull out my cell phone.
              7:05.
Crap.
There’s no way I’m going to be out of here in time to make it to Ryan’s by 9:00. I send him a quick text telling him I’m going to be late, and toss my phone back into the drawer.
              “Hey,” I call. “Come here.” I wave the appointmentless guy over.
              He looks around confused, and presses his hand to his chest as if he’s asking, “
Me?
” The front of the store is empty apart from the two of us, so, obviously, I’m talking to him.
              “Yes, you, come over here, the weather’s fine,” I say, rolling my eyes.
              He closes the book and walks back over to my desk. He’s wearing a plain white t-shirt, nice and tight on his biceps, with a pair of Ray-Bans tucked into the v-neck. Casual. Easy. I like.
              “You can sit here,” I say, pointing to an extra office chair next to mine.
              “You missed me when I was all the way over there? That’s seriously flattering.” He winks.
              “Hardly, just trust me on this one. It’s a better option.” I wrinkle my nose at the couch and try not to imagine all the diseases crawling around in the cushions like loose change.
              “Alright. You have a trustworthy face, you know. Anyone ever tell you that?” He grins and plays along, taking the seat at the end of my desk despite his confusion.
              My eyes keep flicking over to him, more often than I should let them. I take in his long frame and taut muscles and pay more attention than I strictly should. I attempt to go back to organizing the day’s receipts, but forget what I’m doing long enough to notice the strands of dark hair that are matted together, most likely from the seawater.
              “Do you, um, need me to fill something out or something? This looks like a respectable shop that’s all about the paper trail.” His grin is cocky and laid back all at once.
              I blink several times to draw myself out of my lust-induced daze.
              “Uh, I just need your name. For the book, I mean.” I open the book with jerky, clumsy hands and curse under my breath. I’m not usually this asinine.
              He doesn’t try to be coy about watching me. “Deo,” he says.
              “Deo? Is that short for something?” I ask before I can stop myself. I know how annoying it is to have your name questioned.
              “Nope, just Deo. D-e-o,” he spells for me. “Last name is Beckett.”
              “Okay.” I write it down even though I don’t really need to. Rocko wouldn’t care if his name was just Deo. Or Ginger. Or Jesus Christ of Nazareth, as long as he’s getting paid. “So, Deo, you came to get a tattoo and you really have no idea what you want?”
              He runs his palm across his scruffy cheek and shrugs.
              “No, I’m not real sure. I have these two bad boys already,” he says. He pulls one shirt sleeve up and reveals a heart with the word “Mom,” through it, then, as if it can’t get any worse, he turns and does the same to the other arm, showing off an eagle with the flex of his bicep and a low chuckle.
              “You have got to be shitting me.” He doesn’t seem offended in the least when I laugh at him.               Actually, his smile is conspiratorial, like we’re sharing an inside joke. “How unoriginal can you be?”
              He pushes his sleeve back down, and I feel an embarrassing disappointment.

“Trust me, my mom is original enough for the whole damn town. Getting these was like an act of total rebellion.”
              He is big, easy smile is so freakishly white and straight and handsome, it can’t possibly be human.
              My phone beeps from inside the drawer.
              “Excuse me,” I say, sliding the drawer out. Because I may be far away from home in this crazy, hippie town, and I may have thrown half my conservative morals to the wind, but I still have some manners.
              No problem. 9pm or 2am,

I’ll still be having my way with you.

I feel my cheeks ignite, even though Deo has no idea what the text from Ryan says. This side of me is so new, I sometimes feel like everyone, even strangers on the street, know. Not like there’s any way they could possibly know that I went from being home by midnight every night so that I could ensure I had plenty of rest before school the next day, to dragging myself into my apartment just long enough to shower and change before running to class. There’s technically no way they could know that this person sitting behind the desk at this tattoo shop used to work as a bank teller. And no one would ever come close to guessing that up until three months ago, I had only been with one other guy. And now, well, now I was staying far on the other side of committed.
              “Everything okay?” Deo asks. His eyebrows are raised and the glint in his eyes is one hundred percent conspiratorial. He knows.
              I slam the phone back into the drawer. “Yep, everything’s great. About this tattoo, though?” I wheel my swivel chair over to his side. “Where were you thinking of getting it?” I’m close enough to him now that I can smell him. He smells like a guy, in all the wonderful ways that only guys can smell. Musky and sweaty. But also like the ocean. And something sweet. Vanilla?
              “I’m thinking right here.” He points to a spot on his forearm. “Maybe. Maybe something that wraps around?” He says it like a question. Like he wants my opinion.
              I nod. “That’d be nice, especially with the placement of your others.”
              Without thinking, I rub my hand across the spot on his forearm. It’s tan and smooth and feels warm, like the sand that’s been baked by the sun all day. He glances down at my hand on his arm and gives me that freakishly perfect smile, and I jerk my hand away in knee-jerk response to it.
              “Do you live around here? Or are you just visiting?” I ask to offset the awkward jitters I’m currently trying to control. The answer is obvious from the olive color of his skin and his sun-lightened hair, both obvious side effects of a vast abundance of Vitamin D. I bet there’s even sand under his nails.
              “Born and raised. Never lived anywhere else. Never wanted to, either.” There’s something in the way he says it, something behind the simple words. Like he’s trying to convince himself more than me that it’s true.
              “So, is that your only tattoo?” He zeroes in on the place no one has ever noticed before. At least, no one has ever brought it up and asked me about it before.
              I reach up and touch the delicate skin behind my left ear, trying to conceal it, even though there’s no point now. How did he even notice that?
              I nod.
              “A ‘W’? Is that for your name? Talk about unoriginal,” he teases, bumping my shoulder like we’re old surf buddies. “So, what is it? Willow? Wendy?”
              “Whit,” I say. “My name is Whit.” I leave out the fact that the W behind my ear is not for my name, but for my younger brother, Wakefield.
              “Whit? Is that short for something?” he asks. Just like I knew he would.
              “Whitley. I know, it’s odd, but Deo isn’t exactly mainstream.” I try to preempt the usual questions. My parents had this weird idea that they should use their mothers’ maiden names as their children’s names, despite the fact that they weren’t even all that close to either set of their parents.
              “Cool. I gotcha.” He doesn’t dig for any more information, which is a relief and a disappointment. “So, this tattoo. You got any ideas? I want something with meaning. Something that I won’t regret, you know? This one’s for my mom, so no more lame rebellion ink.”
              Before I really know what I’m saying, words I never expected to utter are tumbling out of my mouth. “Well, there’s this one. I sort of drew it up for myself, but I think I’m done with getting tattoos. One is enough.”
              I slide a piece of white paper toward him.  He turns the paper every which way, trying to read the tiny script I’d written out to make look more like a thin band than actual letters.
              “
This is part of me now?
” he asks, his golden-brown eyes crinkling at the edges from the smile that takes over his face. The rough skin on his index finger scratches over the paper with a rasp.
              “Yep.” I’m now regretting showing him the drawing.
              “What’s it mean?” His eyes lock on mine, and suddenly, that no-worries surfer boy vibe vanishes. It’s replaced by something sweet and deep that cuts right through me and clean to the root of my heart, to the place no one can see because it’s still to raw and fucked up.
              “It can mean whatever you want it to mean. Like, maybe it means that you can’t change the past. You can’t right wrongs. But, I don’t know, you can try to make something meaningful of the future, you know?”
              I feel exposed.
              He can see inside of me. He sees that to me, the tattoo actually means that the guilt and the grief are all part of me.

I snatch the paper away from him.

But he’s nodding like he gets it. Really, truly gets it. I can see the tendons in his neck stand out when he swallows and his nod is tense.
              “Sold,” he says, plucking the piece of paper back from my hands.
 

              -Three-

Deo

Rocko isn’t half bad for a guy with a soul patch and these ironic hipster tortoiseshell glasses. Even if he does have the hots for my mother.

Or maybe I’m high off all the endorphins the relentless prick of the tattoo gun always releases in me.

Or maybe, just maybe, that girl at the reception desk with all the right curves and her mysterious tattoo and her fucking irritating phone and saucy-as-hell, biting attitude is making this whole experience something way more meaningful than even my mom anticipated.

Whit. I like her name. I like the way her hips sway in her tight little skirt when she marches around in those hot heels, putting things in order with this sexy military precision. I like the way her eyes flick over to me, once, twice, a third time, and how her cheeks go pink when she realizes I’m still watching.

“So Whit designed this one?” Rocko clears away some blood and excess ink from my rib and I curl my fucking toes so I won’t wince, on the off chance she’s stealing a look my way. This is a tearing, open flesh wound on the raw skin and muscle of my ribs and it’s been the most agonizing half hour of my life. I thought I was tough-nuts because my arms were no big deal, but I didn’t know what it felt like to have the gun shooting straight pain onto my goddamn bones.

“Yeah.” I watch her tuck a shiny piece of the dark hair that just reaches her chin behind her ear. The tattooless ear. She bites her lip and I have to suck my next breath through my teeth. I always thought girls only did that to flirt, but she’s narrowing her eyes at some receipts that are fucking with her, and that bite is all real, sexy frustration, and I want a nip bad. I focus on Rocko, the pain, anything that will keep the threat of a raging boner at bay. “I thought it would be cool on my forearm, but something this badass needs to go where it hurts.”

“It’s a good spot for it. She’s got an awesome eye for detail, among her hundreds of other talents. I hope she decides to get her PhD somewhere in the area, because I seriously don’t know what I’d do without her.” He glances up and catches sight of the clock on the wall, one of those black cats with a tail pendulum. My grandpa has one like it in his office and thinks it’s the funniest shit. He raises his voice and calls in her direction, “Whit, I’m sorry, babe. You know you can say the word if I go over. It’s late as hell. Go, have some fun. Get.” He waves her away, and I make a frantic attempt to look down at my tattoo. It’s six fucking words. What’s taking so damn long? If this girl leaves before I get her number, there will definitely be more tats in my immediate future.

She’s got this little uptight walk, like she’s at some debutante ball, all straight-backed with these careful, graceful steps. But those hips…they’re fucking hypnotizing, and no stiff-spined walk can stop the pure sexiness of those gorgeous hips. “Rocko, it’s fine. Last time I left you alone, we had to call the lady to come in and fix the register.”

Relief floods through me, and then something hotter and better. She dips her head and looks at the ink on my skin, her dark eyes squinted while she studies it.

“This one’s on the house, nothing to ring up. Go ahead. A beautiful girl on a Thursday night in this college town? C’mon, I know you must have plans. Enjoy your youth.” Rocko notices Whit’s concentrated stare and switches gears, which is good, because the idea of her going out and enjoying her fucking youth without me there to help her out is making my vision blur red.               “First time you’ve seen your own design in ink?” She nods, and it’s weirdly shy for a girl so in-charge. “It’s a gorgeous design, Whit. Simple, elegant. You’ve got a real eye for this.”