Mandala’s already lively when I turn up at ten AM. I move past the curtain toward the blaring metal music, where Ginger and Hideo are working on a couple of customers. I grunt a hello—not wanting to distract them—and move on to the back room. A couple of girls, both dressed like goths, are lounging on a sofa, one of them flipping through a flash book while the other takes pictures of herself on her phone. Kayla’s sitting at the work desk, drawing.

I move beside her, picking up the bundle of unopened mail and working through it.

“You done with those girl troubles then?” she says, without looking up.

I pause, mid letter opening.

“Girl troubles?”

Kayla stops this time, turning her head slowly toward me to reveal a knowing smile.

“That was the first day off you’ve had since I started. I doubt you even get sick.”

I turn my eyes back to the letter, finish off opening it.

“Yeow,” Kayla says. “That look tells me everything I need to know. Well, if you wanna talk about it—you know where to find me.”

I pull out the bill, study it for a while, then realize I’m still in no state to focus. This thing’s gonna bug me for days until I let it out. I sit down next to the drawing desk, watching Kayla sketch a bird in flight for a while. It’s a departure from her usual repertoire but it looks incredible all the same, and I tell her so. Meanwhile I zone out to the sound of the buzzing coming from the tattooing chairs, the girls erupting into a conspiratorial laugh over something on their phones.

She’s a good kid. Barely into her twenties, but far wiser than she ought to be. Having a kid young will force a person to do that. She’s a survivor. Decided soon after her ex walked out on her and little Ellie that her bad neighborhood in Atlanta wasn’t any place to raise her daughter by herself, and left it all behind. She was a mess when she first came here. An emotional wreck, full of crippling self-doubt, but I could see there was something in her eyes, something that said she’d give it her all if she had just half a chance. I was right. For the past three years she’s worked harder, learned faster, and improved quicker than anyone I’ve ever known. She’s already one of the best, and she’s already thinking of starting up her own place. By the time she’s thirty she’ll have given Ellie everything she ever dreamed of.

“You know what’s funny?” I say, after a while. Kayla stops and glances up at me. “My dad’s getting out of prison soon. Five year stretch this time.”

“Shit,” Kayla says, putting her pen down to show she’s giving me her full attention now. “Seriously?”

“Called me last month. Asked me to come pick him up.”

“Are you going to?”

I shrug and look over at the girls. Suddenly they seem so young, so innocent, so oblivious. They laugh again, and it seems like it’s in a different language somehow.

“Even if I don’t, I’ll probably be the first person he comes to see. No idea how he even got my number.”

“You probably put tattoos on half the people he’s in with.”

I laugh heavily and let the joke linger in the air a while.

“Feels like my entire past is coming back this week.”

Kayla looks at me keenly for what feels like a minute, as if reading my mind and trying to figure me out.

Eventually, she says, “Why don’t you deal with it then?”

I snort a little.

“Ain’t no dealing with a past like mine.”

Both of us turn to look as a lanky teenager comes into the back, greets the girls, and sits down next to them. Kayla turns back to look at me forlornly.

“This girl…” she says. “She’s really got a hold on something in you.”

“Just an ex,” I say, not believing it myself. “I’ve got a lot of them.”

“And none of the other ones make you do those puppy dog eyes.”

I shrug, trying to act casual. “I’ll never understand why people go digging up the past, looking for answers to things already settled.”

Kayla smirks. “Sounds like it hasn’t settled for her, though. You either.”

“She thinks knowing what went wrong between us will help. If anything, it’ll only hurt more.”

I smile at Kayla, but it fades quickly, and only makes the sadness a little heavier.

“Why don’t you let her decide that? Just tell her what she wants to know if that’s what she’s really after. Lay those demons to rest, for both of you.”

I shake my head.

“Because she wants to know why I left—and I swore I wouldn’t tell. She wouldn’t like it. In fact, it might ruin her. Maybe it’s healthier for her to just hate me. God knows, I’m used to it.”

The girls laugh again and Kayla waits for them to stop before speaking again.

“Maybe not. Maybe that’s just a detail,” Kayla says. “Maybe she needs to know if it was real, that what you had was genuine. That you really loved her. Maybe that’s enough. You did love her, right?”

Of course I loved her. I never stopped.

I think it, but I don’t say it. Still, Kayla sees it in my eyes, in my silence, her face going soft and sympathetic.

“Look, Teo, you’re like a brother to me. I respect you so much. And I don’t want to tell you what to do. All I know is, it ain’t healthy to live with a bunch of loose ends. You either tie them up, or cut them off altogether. Otherwise they’ll bug you forever.”

It’s amazing what words can do. Ever since Kayla said that, I keep picturing that nagging, unresolved feeling as a dangling thread in the back of my mind, something that’s just gonna stay there until I figure out how to handle it.

The day’s busy enough to pass quickly, even with four of us in the shop. I spend most of the afternoon working on someone’s neck tatt; hard, exhausting work that needs a lot of concentration, and a lot of making the customer feel comfortable.

Ginger and Kayla playfully fight over the choice of music all day, more people drop by to hang out in the back room. By evening it’s clear that this is going to be one of those nights where the back room gets so packed that people end up standing around like it’s a house party. Folks start bringing crates of beers, and soon there’s a perpetual, changing circle of people by the back exit smoking. It’s a night where Ginger gets louder and friendlier because there are a lot of friendly faces around, and where even more people come around because Ginger’s in a loud, friendly mood.

I like these kinds of nights, even when they get rowdy enough to destroy my stuff, even when they end with fights and people regretting that they drank so much. More intimate than a bar, more spontaneous and unpredictable than a party. It feels like a place where people can relax, say dumb things and not be judged for it. A place where it doesn’t matter who you are, because if you’re here now, you’re cool. Even with the swearing and the boozing it feels compassionate, brotherly.

It feels like family—or what I presume most families feel like. A dysfunctional group of people that I didn’t necessarily choose to be here, but who I know and care deeply about anyway. But tonight—family or not—I’m just not in the mood. That hanging thread keeps me from laughing as hard as I normally would, keeps me from truly experiencing the present moment.

A song comes on the stereo—one everybody knows the words to—and even those who hate it sing along, bonded together by the sound of their own voices. That’s when I drain the rest of my beer and slip out the back.

I take a few steps away from the smokers’ group and pull out my phone. Unconsciously I navigate to Ash’s number, and just stare at it on the screen.

It’s hard to face the past. It’s hard to navigate the emotional confusion of hurting someone. It’s hard to condense seven years of baggage into words. But I tell myself I’m not doing any of that. I’m just hitting a little green button on my phone, and seeing what happens.

The phone rings as I pace beneath the night sky. The sound of my boots on the concrete, the muffled noise from inside the shop, one voice—probably Ginger’s—adlibbing a little over the chorus.

How many rings was that? I watch the shadows dance away from a passing car’s headlights. Where am I at now? A ‘really excited to speak to you’ amount of rings? Or a ‘this is an emergency and I desperately need you to pick up’ amount of rings?

It feels like forever. So much so that when the rings stop I prepare myself for the machine, the long pauses and rambling I’m about to record into it.

“Hey,” Ash says, sounding cautious and quiet.

“Hey,” I say.

And then…silence. Maybe a whole minute’s worth. No ‘are you gonna say something’s, no awkward ‘are you there?’s. Just the silence of two people on the same line, listening. As if just knowing that the space there, for us to talk, is enough, that the connection of an open phone line is all we need for now.

The things I want to say tumble over themselves in my head. ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘Are you ok?’ ‘About last night…’ ‘How are you?’ until I get to the single thing I want to say most of all.

“I wanna see you again.”

There’s a silence again before Ash speaks, and I wonder if she’s doing the same, sorting through all the things in her mind that she wants to say but can’t.

Finally, she responds. “I don’t know, Teo…”

“Could you really leave it like that? Like this?”

She’s quiet for a moment. “No…”

“I wanna see you again,” I repeat.

“Yeah,” she sighs, and it sounds like resistance is leaving her voice. “I kinda wanna see you too.”

I feel the smile stretching across my face. “You free Saturday?”

“Yeah.”

“How about the pier?”

“Oh,” Ash says, and I can hear the smile in her voice. “Sure.”

“Outside Blue Plate? Midday?”

“Sure. I’ll see you then.”

There are another few seconds of silence, of things unsaid, of that open connection, and then we say goodbye. When I look up, I see Kayla standing a few feet away, a knowing grin on her face.

“You eavesdropping on me now?” I ask, but I’m not really angry. “How long you been standing there?”

“Long enough. You taking care of those loose ends?” she shoots back.

I grin back at her. “Maybe I am.” At least, I sure hope so.