Page 73 of Que Será, Syrah

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True to her word, she does ride me—in the more traditional sense, this time. Straddling my hips, taking me inside. The soft weight of her on my legs, pinning me down, pressing against my sack, pushing me into the bedding, is a kind of claiming. With every downward stroke, she owns me. With every upward glide—well, that’s just sweet, sweet torture.

It’s all I can do not to grasp her hips and direct her rhythm, like I did the night of the storm. Instead, I palm her breasts, trapping her nipples between my fingers, teasing them in much the same way her teeth trap and tease her bottom lip. And maybe that’s a kind of claiming, too.

Afterwards, we spoon together. I brush her hair aside, press a kiss against the back of her neck, and let my fingers wander idly tracing the curving letters that make up her tattoo. And then she does talk, a little, about how the rest of the tour went. There was a bee-sting that required another ambulance be called, but it turned out all right. And I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something else, something bigger, that she’s still not willing to talk about.

“W-r-e-c-k-l-e-s-s,” I spell out the letters of her tattoo. “Tell me about this.”

She cranes her neck and glances up at me. “What do you want to know about it?”

“Anything. When you got it and why. What it means.”

She laughs softly. “Well, that’s quite a lot to unpack. Do you want the official story, or the truth?”

“The truth. Always.” I don’t even have to think about that. “But I’m also curious to know what the ‘official story’ is and why you even have one.”

“Well, Deputy,” she says teasingly. “Any official story is basically a cover up. Surely you know that?”

I slide down the bed a little, enough so that I can run my tongue over the letters. “Uh-huh. But why do you need one for a bit of ink?”

“Well, first of all, I got it when I was seventeen.”

I nod. Of course. I should have guessed. The legal age for tattoos in California is eighteen. No exceptions made for parental consent, like in some other places. “Ah. Gotcha. Let me guess. You were drunk, at a party, and someone in a backroom was playing with his first machine?” I have a couple of tattoos like that, too—not nearly as good as this one, however. Or as big.

When it comes to tattoos, size definitely matters. And I spend a long, long moment wrestling with yet another unexpected flare of jealousy. The tattoo covers maybe a third of her upper back. It would have taken a while, and she’d have probably been topless. Remembering her as she was the night we met and imagining that version of her lying face down on a bed somewhere, a haze of smoke hanging in the air, crowds of teenagers wandering in and out of the room to gawk—that’s messing with my brain. Big time.

“A party?” she laughs at that, sounding a little scandalized. “Nooo. Fake ID. A friend of a friend…of a friend? I dunno. There might have been one or two more degrees of separation in there. Anyway, he was just starting out, working as an intern in a big shop down in Oakland. The let him practice after hours on anyone he could pull in. Basically, he was working for tips and experience.”

“I was gonna say, that’s pretty good work for an amateur. Other than the spelling.”

“Yeah. That’s the bigger reason.”

“The funny part is that he actually did a spell search before he began. You know, to make sure he was getting it right? He looked up wreck and extrapolated from there.”

“Ironic.”

“Isn’t it?” After a moment, she continues. “So, anyway, I think I wanted a tattoo mostly because I didn’t have one. And partially because I wasn’t supposed to have one yet. But I was also really tired of people calling me reckless as an insult. So, I take chances—so what? I think that’s brave.”

“I can see that,” I say gently massaging her shoulders, which were growing tense, now that she’d switched over to defense-mode.

“So, that’s the actual story. I decided to own my recklessness, to celebrate it as a positive quality. Unfortunately, I ended up proving my critics’ point. That’s where the official story comes in.”

“So, the official story is…?”

She turns and bats her eyes at me. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m just really proud of my driving record. No wrecks. I am one-hundred-percent wreck-less.”

A wide grin threatens to split my face. “And people buy that?”

“You’d be surprised,” she mutters darkly. “Plus, I’ve mostly lived in Europe, since then. Most of the people who’ve seen it probably didn’t realize it was misspelled, or they thought they were wrong.”

“Well, if it bothers you, you can always get a coverup,” I suggest.

“Yeah. I just don’t know what I’d cover it with.”

“You could always turn the W into a phoenix,” I say, tracing over the letter. “Wings, here and there. Body in the middle. Some of the flourishes already look like they could be flames. Maybe add some red and orange to accentuate that?”

“That…could work,” she says in awe-struck tones. “In fact, that sounds really pretty. How did you think of that so fast?”

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