Page 6 of Shit Happens in Ivydell

If she doesn’t even trust my soap . . .

“Listen,” she says, drying her hands with her own cloth, too. “When I go to conferences in convention halls, do you think those places are sterile? I don’t need an operating room. This is fine.”

“Do you want me to lean on the counter or lie on the bed?”

They’re just going to proceed like my opinion doesn’t matter? I live here!

“Maybe I don’t want his blood all over my bed. Did anybody think about that?”

Jensen smiles. “How much blood do you think is spilled when someone gets a tattoo?”

“For real,” Josephine says. “He won’t bleed onto any surface. I’ll be wiping the blood as I go. You never even went with a friend when they got a tattoo?”

“No. I was always afraid if I went, they’d pressure me into getting one.”

“You don’t strike me as an easy target for peer pressure.” She stretches gloves onto her hands. “I mean, if I can’t convince you to get one, I don’t see anybody else getting through to you.”

“Not now. But fitting in was really important to me at one point.” I bite my lip, wishing I hadn’t just revealed that. Jensen and Josephine probably never cared about being part of a crowd. They both have that lone wolf thing going on—not like creepy loners, more like people who are confident enough not to give a damn what anyone else thinks about their choices. I envy it.

I’m more that way now than I’ve ever been, but I still didn’t tell anybody other than Mom that I was coming here. It wasn’t because I didn’t care what they’d think; it was because I was afraid that they’d talk me out of it, or at least make me question it until I talked myself out of it.

Some of my friends are probably in a group chat right now because they’ve seen my pics on social media. I can just hear them talking shit about how I’ve gone off the deep end and run away to the desert. For all I know, they’re planning an intervention. A rescue mission.

But I’ve never been happier to have made a rash decision in my life. Aside from the impending tattoo session I’m about to witness, I’ve felt completely at home here.

“What do you want, and where do you want it?”

“I don’t know.” Jensen cocks his head. “Probably my shoulder. Something related to Ivydell. We don’t have a sign, but Bear Rock, maybe?”

“Love the rock. Don’t want to tattoo it on you. Let’s do something more vibrant.”

“What about something to do with wine?” I say, impaling the cork in an unopened bottle with my corkscrew.

“No.” His response is quick. And harsh.

“Sit in this chair.” Josephine pulls out one of my bistro chairs and turns it around so the back is braced against the edge of the small table.

He settles his bare chest into the back of my chair, wrapping his forearms around it and letting them rest on the tabletop,while Josephine wipes his shoulder clean and stares at his skin, tilting her head from side to side like she’s envisioning what she should immortalize there.

What I wouldn’t give to be that chair right now, wrapped in his strong arms with his chest pressed against me. I fumble a wine glass as I take it out of the cabinet, but I manage to steady it on the counter without breaking it.

Jensen sees my struggle and smiles. Adorable klutz isn’t really the way I want him to see me right now, but his smile makes it clear that’s exactly what he’s thinking. Josephine can’t see anything but his tight, tanned skin she’s about to adorn with fresh ink.

“I wish Ivydell did have a sign. I could work with that, add some cactus and maybe a rattlesnake . . .”

“Vintage Vibes needs a sign.” I pour myself some wine, and don’t offer them any since they obviously can’t drink it right now. More for me.

“That’s true.” Jensen nods, his voice softer at this suggestion.

Josephine crinkles her nose and knits her brows into a confused expression as she lays things out on a metal tray she’s sterilized and covered with a disposable pad. She doesn’t know what we’re talking about. Until this moment, that was an inside thing between Jensen and me.

“She named my place Vintage Vibes.”

“His was the only one without a name.” I take a sip of my wine. “It bugged me.”

“So, it’s actually the perfect image,” Jensen says. “You create the sign for the tattoo, and then someone can make it in real life to go in front of my casita. Then they’ll all officially have names, and Ivy can sleep at night.”

He smiles at me again, adds a wink to be sure I know he’s not being an asshole. There’s no doubt the man can be grumpy, and sometimes he comes across hard, but I’m learning to read him. Ialready knew he was teasing, but that wink reassures me of other things—most prominent among them is my desire to climb him like a tree right now.

---