Page 8 of Hustle

Looking in the mirror, I slide bright red lipstick on and pop my lips.

Body art and makeup: They layer between me and the world like armor. Even my tattoos are carefully crafted, lovingly designed, and woven through with intentions.

Getting my full sleeve tattoos done took forever. But I’m covered in flowers all the time, and of course, my Empress.

The Empress Tarot card: abundance. Creativity. A new life. All things I’d needed so badly in my life at the time I discovered her.

I’d named my tattoo shop after her, and she’s the centerpiece of my left sleeve tattoo design. When I was lost, she’d found me.

It’d been a rough time. I was a kid, eighteen, when Seamus Doyle walked out of my life, again, this time pissed I wasn’t going to college. Hell, he never stopped to consider that I’d barely passed high school.

That’s Seamus: so tied up in the possibilities that he didn’t stop to think about whether those possibilities were something you actually wanted. He is so focused on the future he misses the present.

And in that moment, we’d both lost something.

Seamus had been my rock. The friend I could trust, an anchor to the big family I never had. A little uptight? Sure. But he carried too much on his shoulders even then. Sometimes though, his tunnel vision for how things should be caused him to miss what was right in front of him.

Like me. Just exactly the way I am. No matter how hard I fight, I can’t keep memories of that day from flooding back. Even after all these years.

* * *

It’sa beach that’s not too far from where the Doyles live, but just far enough that Seamus can get away.

He always wants to get away.

I don’t mind a change of scenery. But I’m better at just finding my place wherever I am.

It’s still icy cold spring, and I pull my threadbare jacket closer around my body against the chill. Goodwill doesn’t exactly have the best options, and I’m not wearing that church-donated shit. Not after the original owner saw me in class and mocked me for three weeks straight.

Fuck them. I’d rather freeze.

The wind pulls my long dark hair forward, catching a tendril and making it dance, before it drops and starts again.

Someday, when my mother can’t stop me, I’m going to cut it all off.

Seamus paces, anger and frustration and something else boiling just below the surface. He’s got an envelope clutched in his hand. Finally, he spins and looks at me.

The force of those electric blue eyes sets every nerve ending in my body on high alert. His hair, lighter than his brothers’, flops down over his eyes before he impatiently shoves it back.

That’s Seamus. Always impatient. Always meticulous. Always striving for the next thing.

“I got into Harvard.” He grits it out.

Waves of competing emotions sweep over me. Elation; I’m so proud of what he’s achieved. It’s a big deal for kids like us to go anywhere, never mind fucking Harvard. Confusion. Why does he sound mad? And the beginning edges of something else, like fear and sadness and anger that roll into a single emotion.

Desolation.

Because it’s right there, the beginning of the tear in the fabric of our friendship, relationship, whatever the hell this is, that’s going to send us in different directions.

“Say something, Evelyn.” He takes several steps in my direction, so close I could reach out and touch him.

I don’t. But I want to and it’s taking every ounce of control I have not to throw my arms around him and hold on with everything I’ve got.

“I’m so proud of you.” My voice is so quiet it’s barely audible over the crashing waves and insistent ocean wind.

His eyes soften, the hard, intense mask that he wears slipping. I’ve never met a more complicated person than Seamus. Layers upon layers, a constant unraveling at odds with his need to put up walls.

But not always with me.

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