Page 33 of The Love You Fight For
His smile is full of pride as he pops the other half of my chip in his mouth and then nods.
“Yep. Pretty fucking good,” he says, and I laugh.
“Another facet?” I ask around another mouthful, and he winks at me in response.
I follow him into the living room where he puts the platter of nachos and the bottle of bourbon on the coffee table. He takes a seat on the couch on one side of the table, and I sit on the love seat on the opposite side, so we’re facing each other.
“How many tattoos do you have now?” I ask randomly, and he glances at the ceiling as he thinks it through. I can practically see him counting in his head.
“I don’t know. A lot. They’ve all started to blend together at this point. Do you have any?”
I smile and nod.
“I have two.” The surprise on his face makes me laugh out loud. “I have one on my shoulder that I got the day I turned eighteen, and I have this one.”
I pull up the silky sleeve of my pajama top to reveal the small tattoo on the inside of my upper arm. He leans forward to get a better look, and when he sees it, an amused chuckle escapes him. I know what he’s thinking. Why on earth would Samantha Harper have a linework tattoo of two tiny gnomes holding hands? I tell him the answer before he can ask the question.
“Lennon has the same one. We got them when she lived in Paris.” I point to the gnome holding a daisy. “This one is Lennon. Daisy. Because she says I need to be reminded that it’s okay to be soft.”
He brings his eyes from the tattoo to my face.
“And the other one?” he asks playfully.
I point to the other gnome. The one holding a dagger.
“This is me, obviously. Dagger.” I smirk. “Because Lennon needs to be reminded that it’s okay to cut a bitch from time to time.”
He breaks out into laughter, scrubbing a hand down his face and wiping at his eyes, and his laughter triggers my own. I’m giggling like crazy within seconds as I try to tell him the story of Lennon and me stumbling into the Parisian tattoo parlor on a random Wednesday afternoon. We’d had too much wine and not enoughfood, but the tattoo artist didn’t turn us away. I think he found us amusing, and I know for a fact he overcharged us, but it’s fine. I put it on my father’s credit card.
“Okay, your turn,” I say when I’m finished, my cheeks still aching from smiling so big. “Tell me about one of yours.”
He cocks his head to the side as his eyes bounce between mine.
“A funny story or a sentimental one?”
“Sentimental.”
He pauses as he thinks, and then he stands and leaves the room. He comes back within seconds and hands me what looks like a brass antique pocket watch on a chain. It’s heavy and covered in intricately carved designs of vines and leaves. I turn it over in my hand gently as I inspect it.
“Open it,” he says, so I do.
“A compass,” I muse, turning it back and forth to watch the needle move and noting the numbers engraved on the inside of the brass cover.
“This is a two-fer,” Chris says, and when I glance up, I see him pulling off his shirt.
I school my face into boredom, even though his tattooed, muscled torso is anything but boring. I hadn’t realized he had so many. His arms and part of his torso are covered in ink, color and grayscale all throughout. I see flowers, a map, a sunrise, three dates, and some script before I tear my eyes away and lock them on his face.
“Real smooth,” I say flatly, suggesting he picked this tattoo just to show off his sculpted chest, and his mouth tips up at the corner.
“Right here is the compass.” He points to the inside of his left bicep.
It’s an absolutely perfect rendition, right down to the numbers on the inside cover, but the needle is pointing east instead of north.
“This compass was my grandfather’s. I used to carry it everywhere with me, but I cracked the glass once when I was working and scared the shit out of myself. Got it repaired, but now it stays safe in my bedroom.”
“So you got the tattoo so it’s still with you,” I say, and he nods. “And the numbers? They’re coordinates, right? Latitude and longitude?”
He turns slightly and points to a piece on his rib cage. A small log cabin sitting amongst pine trees with a lake in the distance.
