Page 27 of Shit Happens in Ivydell

Yep. She’s your cockblock.

Be safe.

The weight of that isn’t lost on me. He’s lost more than anyone I know because of a car that didn’t stay safe.

We will. See you tomorrow.

My fingers hover over the screen. It seems like I should sign off with more, but there’s not a universal word or phrase for what I feel for him. This is another in-between aspect of my life with an uncertain future. I don’t know where we’re headed. It doesn’t feel safe. But I don’t want to shy away from it.

I zip up my bag, turn off the lights, and find Josephine already sitting behind the wheel with the air-conditioner blowing her curls. She turns down her music and stops singing when I get in. “Did you let Stinger know I’m stealing you?”

“Totally outed you as a cockblock.”

“He’ll just want you that much more when I bring you back. He should thank me in advance for the wild sex you’ll be having tomorrow night.”

“Definitely not passing that along. I have no way of knowing what I’ll be in the mood for tomorrow night.”

“Pretty sure you’ll be in the mood to fuck your hot boyfriend.”

My body shudders. “Whoa. Easy on the labels.”

“Aw, denial. That’s cute.”

She drives for about an hour before pulling into the parking lot of a tiny taco stand. It’s not a chain fast-food place. We eat at a sun-faded picnic table and wash it down with homemade aguas frescas. These tacos are my new love language.

When we get back on the road, I take my chances with a personal question. We’re not in Ivydell anymore, so I figure it’s worth a shot. “Why Albuquerque?”

“It’s where I’m from.”

“You never wanted to leave?”

“I leave sometimes. That’s how I met you.”

“Right. But aren’t you just going from one desert to another? Nothing else ever called to you?”

“So many other things did.” She runs a hand through her curls. “Look up Ink Trials, season four.”

I search it on my phone, knowing because she followed the name with a season it’s going to be a TV Show. “Holy shit. You were on a reality show?”

“Not just on it. I won. Instead of competing in the same studio, we all did two-week internships at famous shops, and all the owners rated us at the end of each term. Every time we made it through another round, we switched shops. The goal was to survive them all, but that meant being able to navigate all the personalities and management styles of the owners, on top of meeting the clients’ expectations, and being the best artist. We had no idea what was going on in the other shops, how our competitors were doing, until the end of the two weeks when it was time to move.”

“You had to move every two weeks? For how many weeks?”

“Twelve. From Houston to Detroit to Chicago to New York to Miami to Los Angeles.”

“You remember the order of all your moves without even thinking about it?”

“I’ll never forget it.”

“Was there any downtime in between?”

“We usually had Sundays to ourselves, if our flights stayed on schedule. Every other Friday, there was a video conference where we all heard everyone’s ratings and comments. That’s howwe found out if we were headed home or to our next shop. Either way, we were all on planes the next morning. If we were going to a new shop, we started there on Monday.”

“That’s intense.”

“I collapsed in my hotel room in LA after the final episode. It wasn’t good. Three months of insane hours and pressure, being screamed at, criticized excessively because nice doesn’t boost ratings, and all the infighting between the competitors . . . it took a toll.”

“How could you fight? Y’all weren’t even in the same location.”

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