It was a few days after my date with Christopher, and I still found myself thinking about how we’d mauled each other in the alley. How hot it was. And how, when he’d walked me home, instead of coming upstairs, he’d placed a gentlemanly kiss on my cheek and looked at me intently. Then kissed the fuck out of me, and said goodnight with a wink that left me throbbing for him.

And how when I’d picked up the phone to call him the next day like I’d wanted to, just to hear his voice, I’d balked. I hadn’t wanted to seem too needy, too…what?

Vulnerable.

“So, we’re having Thanksgiving. Me and Rex,” Daniel said. I leaned back on the couch and stared at the ceiling, wishing he were here.

I’d been texting Daniel, trying to get him to come home for Thanksgiving. It was selfish, really. I knew he didn’t have the money but I wanted to meet Rex and was kind of dying to have him meet Christopher and… I don’t know, basically I needed him to call me on my shit and it was impossible without him seeing it. Besides, I knew that if he came I’d let myself off the hook about going to my parents’ for Thanksgiving.

In all the years Daniel and I had been friends I’d only had one relationship that I’d call serious. I’d had plenty of dates, plenty of ill-advised tattoo-world trysts, and any number of casual hookups, but no relationships that had been long-term or serious.

None except Marcus.

And we had kind of broken each other’s hearts. The fact that we were now such good friends and were able to work together was owing entirely to the fact that we’d broken each other’s hearts in exactly equal measure, so we’d been able to cry it out together. And somehow our complicated year-long relationship had flipped almost immediately to the kind of deep friendship that was sometimes only possible when it was colored with relief that the romance was gone.

That had been eight years ago, though, and I doubted it gave Daniel much of a basis for comparison.

No, I wanted him here because I needed someone who understood how fucking on edge it all made me feel. Who could give me a reality check about whether I was acting like myself or if I was letting my feelings for Christopher compromise something essential about myself. If I was somehow losing pieces of myself I’d worked so hard to claim, as Christopher and I got closer.

I needed Daniel. But he couldn’t afford to fly home and I couldn’t afford to fly him here. So I did what I always did when I was disappointed but it was no one’s fault. I made jokes about it and let us both off the hook.

“You’re not going to your parents’ at all?” he asked.

“Psh. I might stop by. Of course it’s not much use trying to go to dinner at the house of someone who sucks up all the oxygen in the room. Makes it kinda hard to eat, ya know?”

Not to mention the fact that my mother watched every mouthful I ate like a billboard was announcing IMMODERATE above my head, and watched how much wine I had like I was one sip away from an AA meeting.

“Christ,” Daniel said, and his tone of infuriated sympathy was so familiar I couldn’t help but smile. And miss him even more. “Do we know anyone with a normal fucking family?”

I hesitated. I was in the bathroom, looking in the mirror. I did that when I talked on the phone. Watched myself react, like maybe I could learn what other people saw when they looked at me.

“Ginge?”

“Well, actually…” I said. In the mirror I looked nervous. Younger.

I kind of couldn’t believe I’d kept quiet about Christopher. Maybe a small part of me had held on to the information because I was hurt Daniel had left. Not because he’d left me—I knew that he hadn’t. But because I’d been missing him so much and was so resentful at the world that he wasn’t here. I’d held on to the news because I resented not having him here to tell.

It just hurt to know that I could be left at any time.

“Actually?”

“I kind of…met someone. And his family seems about as normal as they come.” I said it in a rush, like maybe the added detail would distract from what I was saying.

“Holy shit, you already met his family? Tell me.”

“Well… You know him, actually. You remember that sandwich place that opened down the street from the shop at the beginning of the summer?”

“The one you said had real bagels?”

“Yeah. Anyway, you remember the cute guy who worked there?”

Thinking of Christopher as “the cute guy in the sandwich shop” was a trip. I remembered the first time I’d seen him, though, sweating through a ratty old T-shirt and cut-offs in the summer sun, as he’d carried flats of supplies into the then-unnamed shop.

“Uh, dude, not to judge, seriously, but that guy’s like eighteen.”

“No, not the kid with the glasses! The redhead.”

“Oh shit, right. He’s hot, in a Josh Homme kind of way.”

“I know, right? That’s exactly what I thought.”

I told Daniel the story of dropping my bagel and scaring the bejesus out of Stevie. I told him how I’d met Christopher’s mom and how I’d seen his dad come in a few times now to fix things. How nice they seemed, even though I’d only spoken to them briefly.

“So, why don’t you have Thanksgiving with him? What’s his name, by the way, so I don’t just think of him as Josh Homme—or as The Ginger, which would be confusing.”

“His name’s Christopher. And I don’t know. I think it’s too soon.”

It was definitely too soon. I was sure Christopher was going to his parents’ and it was way too early to rock up into his perfect family, especially on a holiday. Hell, I’d never met Marcus’s parents and we’d been together for a year.

“You could always invite him over for a post-dinner Thanksgiving burrito at your place,” Daniel offered.

Cinders was a hole-in-the-wall spot a few blocks from here that served holiday-themed burritos—Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Easter, Valentine’s Day. You name it, Cinders had a burrito for it. But Thanksgiving’s was our favorite.

And, actually, that wasn’t a bad idea at all.

When I got to the shop, everything was chaos. It was already one of those days, I could just tell, and it wasn’t even ten a.m.

Lindsey was on the phone, scribbling in the appointment book, clicking through the shop email and trying to drink a juice at the same time, and when she saw me she waved me over. I thought she wanted me to hold her juice for her but she just waved a hand at the inbox so I could see we had about forty emails titled some version of “Appointment” or “Consult.”

“All right, we’ll see you on the third at six p.m. Okay, have a good one.”

She hung up the phone and swiveled around in her chair. She sat cross-legged, put her palms on her knees, closed her eyes, and took a deep, centering breath.

Between breaths, she said, “Ginger. Ginger, I love you, but I’m gonna kill you. We’re all, collectively, gonna kill you. If you don’t. Hire someone. Or two. Or three.”

I started to apologize for the hundredth time, but she held up a quelling finger, the picture of logic and certainty.

“Babe, I know you want to find the perfect person. We’d all love that, ideally. But, for real, right now? Having only two artists? It looks really unprofessional and bad for business. It keeps people waiting. It means they feel rushed. And I don’t know what social media voodoo this dude worked when he did whatever the other day—but we’re totally slammed. You and Marcus can’t keep up. You’ll tattoo your freaking fingers off. So. You’re the boss. Do something about it.”

She was completely right and I felt like a total idiot. “When’s my first appointment?”

“At one. Marcus is on his way in.”

I nodded, then turned around and walked back upstairs to my apartment to get my wallet and coat.

“Where are you going?” Lindsey called as I made for the front door.

“To do something about it.”

Half an hour before my appointment, I walked into the shop to find Morgan finishing a piercing and Marcus cleaning up his station from a walk-in.

“Hey, y’all,” I called. “I bring reinforcements. Well one, anyway.”

As cavalry went, Phee wasn’t exactly overwhelming. He was young. Very young. And he had almost no shop experience. But we were desperate and I hoped he’d work out in the short term. Hell, I hoped maybe he’d turn out to be great and I could hire him more permanently after a trial period. But I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.

“This is Phillip. Phee,” I said, pushing him forward. “Phee, this is Marcus, Morgan, and Lindsey.”

He waved and kept his gaze on the floor.

“Phee’s really good—he tattoos at that new shop on Baltimore Ave., in West Philly.”

“But mostly from home,” he said, so softly I could barely hear him. “It’s cool, you can tell them.”

“He’s totally self-taught and I ran into him one night last year when I was going to Daniel’s and he was tattooing Daniel’s neighbor.” I didn’t mention that I’d read him the riot act for tattooing someone outside, on a back porch, while smoking a cigarette, and using ink from a hobby shop. But I could tell he was good, even through the crude tools and lack of shop experience.

“So. Lindsey’s shop manager. She’ll get you set up. Sorry I can’t do a whole getting-to-know-each-other routine right now. I’ve got a client coming in. But maybe we could all go get a drink soon or something?”

“Is he even old enough to drink?” Morgan muttered under her breath, looking at Phee.

He looked down harder at the floor and I shot Morgan a please-for-the-love-of-god-be-nice look.

“Dude, I’m fucking drowning,” I groaned to Christopher, sliding onto a stool at the counter. I dropped my head onto my arms and the wool of my fisherman’s sweater scratched my cheek.

Though it was clearly going to be a great help having Phee in the shop, we were still ridiculously slammed, I was no closer to finding anyone else to bring on permanently, and my social media was still going at warp speed because Eddie had tagged the shop again, this time by reposting a picture from my Instagram of a large piece I’d done at the convention.

It started at the guy’s wrist with an old-fashioned silver candle holder—the kind kids hold in the illustrations for Victorian nursery rhymes—with a lit candle that was melting wax onto the guy’s arm, and sending smoke up to form a ghostly skull on his biceps. He’d tagged it with a bunch of stuff—hashtags amused me—but the one that gave me pause was #nodrama. It was an expression bandied about in the industry, but generally just meant that someone was easy to work with and didn’t sleep with their clients. It was true of me, sure, but I didn’t know what relevance it had, considering we didn’t work together.

Whatever the reasoning, it had set off a whole new avalanche of follows, tweets, reposts, tags, and a bunch of other stuff that had made my head spin and made me pass my phone off to Tara the second she got to the shop after school. She’d done a great job with the last batch…

“Huh,” I said, lifting my head off my arms. “Maybe I should hire her as a social media manager. I wonder if Lindsey would let me? It’d be good…teach her about money…give her some responsibility…it’s probably a fucking growth industry…”

Christopher’s hand on my arm startled me.

“I am aware that you’re not talking to me, you’re just kind of…stream-of-consciousnessing your to-do list in your head, but what are you talking about?”

“Tara—Lindsey’s daughter? She’s like a little social media phenom or something. Or, well, actually she might just be normal for a kid her age—no idea. I’m so old now. But she’s been dealing with the whole Eddie Sparks deluge for me because if I look at a screen for more than thirty minutes I feel dead inside.”

I gave him a brief rundown of the response we’d gotten, and how I’d brought in Phee to help out until I found someone.

“He’s a good kid, lot of potential. I, uh, I think he learned to tattoo from some cousin of his? It’s unclear. He never talks about himself. Doesn’t talk that much, period, actually. But he’s really serious about the work. I like that. I guess maybe he’d stay longer if I wanted? He definitely needs the money—no way he gets much work at the West Philly shop…I think he only works one day a week there. Anyway, the extra business is great, money-wise. I funnel basically everything I make into buying out the lease on the shop. But there are repairs and supplies and—”

I looked up, suddenly aware I was talking while staring out the window.

“Jesus, sorry, I’m doing it again. Sometimes I…process out loud. I’m just usually alone in my apartment so I don’t subject others to it.” I shook my head at myself.

In truth, I was stressed as hell and this was what happened when I started to creep near the edge of what I could handle without losing my shit. It started leaking out verbally. I knew the signs. I was painting whenever I wasn’t tattooing, and as a result I wasn’t sleeping much. I was getting more and more anxious about any small thing that took up time I felt like I didn’t have—showering, laundry, waiting for the train. Hell, I was starting to get impatient when it took a few seconds for my shampoo to lather.

At the shop I was usually good—having something to do kept me calm and there was always a clear next step. And outside the shop…well, there was no outside the shop. There hadn’t been for a long time.

“Hey. Ginger.”

Christopher bent down, leaning close to me over the counter. His gorgeous eyes were soft, and I got lost in trying to figure out what paints I would combine to get those colors. “Huh?”

“Come here.”

“Why?”

He rolled his eyes at me.

“You’re the most contrary human being I’ve ever met. Did I mention that yet?”

Still distracted, I walked around the counter and he pulled me into the storage space behind it.

“What are we—mmfg—”

Christopher nudged me against the wall and kissed me, swallowing my words. I grabbed his shoulders and he wrapped an arm around my waist and his mouth was hot and the scrape of his stubble electrified my chin. I slid my hands into his hair as he tipped my head back and kissed me deeper, pressing us together and sliding a hot hand up my spine under my sweater.

“Ooookay,” I said, breathless and dazed when he pulled away. “That’s a great reason.”

He smiled, and I touched his dimple. It made his eyes go kind of soft and he dropped his forehead to my shoulder, then eased away.

“Do you want to come to Thanksgiving at my parents’ house?” he asked, and I froze, totally surprised.

Holy shit, that was tomorrow. And I hadn’t ever told Eva whether I was going to Mom and Dad’s. And Christopher was asking me to—

“Okay, before you panic—”

“I’m not panicking.”

I was one hundred percent panicking. And…I wasn’t exactly sure why. Hell, I’d been looking for an excuse to avoid my own parents’ Thanksgiving, and here one was. But it was so soon, and the way he’d asked was so casual, like maybe he would invite any friend or coworker or…whatever we were. And what were we? Everything had seemed like it was going well, but I found myself unable to trust it. Unable to believe the other shoe wasn’t about to drop.

My heart was pounding, I was suddenly far too warm, and my thoughts were scattered. But one emerged: I didn’t want to be just a friend who got taken home like a stray dog. I wanted it to mean something.

He snorted. “Your eyes just got this big.”

“No, it’s—your parents seem great—just…I…can’t.”

Christopher threaded his fingers through my hair. “You have to go to your family’s?”

I nodded because of course that was a totally reasonable explanation for why I couldn’t go. I was distracted by the roiling in my stomach that I’d made the wrong call.

But Christopher seemed unbothered, if a little disappointed, and skimmed his palm down my arm to take my hand. “Okay. Well, so no Thanksgiving. How about dinner. Tonight? I’ll cook for you.”

I swallowed, forcing myself to stay in this conversation, even though my brain was still stuck on attempting to process my Thanksgiving freak-out. “Ugh, I can’t. I have clients until like eleven.”

His jaw tightened. “How about breakfast tomorrow?”

“I have to paint. I’m so behind.”

My voice sounded strange and I had kind of slumped against the wall. Christopher nodded but the tightness in his jaw remained. “I get that you’re busy. I guess I just thought maybe now that you got some more help in the shop you might have time to actually…you know…” He gestured between us.

It was the actually that turned my confusion to anger. At the idea that what we’d been doing so far wasn’t…what, real? Enough for him? My stomach soured and I wanted to punch that actually right in the throat. Because this? This was the most actually I’d gotten in a very, very long time. But it seemed as though what felt like so much to me wasn’t much to Christopher at all. I bit my lip as anger slid into something like shame.

And shame was the one thing I absolutely refused to feel. Shame meant that I was feeling bad about who I was, and I’d worked to combat that for too long. Shame was the canary in the coal mine that signaled I was in danger of letting someone else’s opinions or expectations determine what I thought was valuable instead of my own.

He must’ve seen it in my face because he backed off and raised his hands. “All I meant—”

“Look,” I said, because I was pretty sure that “all I meant” was not ever the beginning of a comment that was going to fix anything. “Yes, I’m super busy right now, and yes, I get that it sucks if you want to hang out and I can’t. But my career and my art were part of my life long before I ever met you and I’m not just going to completely abandon them because you suddenly have several hours free tonight that you want me to also be free for.”

It came out slightly harsher than I’d intended, but I wasn’t going to apologize for the shop being busy and for having other interests. I wasn’t going to apologize for not dropping everything in favor of date night.

Christopher nodded once, all stoically gritted teeth and tight shoulders. “I should’ve given you more notice, I realize.” His voice was formal. Distant. “I apologize.”

He walked back out into the shop, his spine iron, looking straight ahead.

Marcus had been casting glances at me all during work. He could tell something was wrong. He always could. We’d both stayed late to finish large tattoos and were wiping down our stations quickly since it was almost midnight. I was mentally calculating how many hours of sleep I could realistically get if I wanted to get up at seven a.m. to paint when I knocked into my table, sending three bottles of ink to the floor, one of which splattered on my boot. Not that it mattered, since both were black. But I swore loudly and kicked the base of my chair. Which hurt. A lot.

When I looked up, Marcus was a step away from me. He was looking at me with such a familiar expression it almost jolted me back in time.

“Honey,” he said. “What the hell’s going on?”

And damn, it had been a long time since he’d called me honey.

I gestured to the ink splattered on the floor and he just stood there, waiting me out.

“Fucking Christopher!” I said finally, and flopped heavily into the chair I’d kicked. “Making me feel guilty for being too busy to have dinner with him. Like I’m just gonna cancel on my clients. I mean, he knows the hours I work. It’s not a surprise! And then he’s all fucking pouty eyes, rigid jaw with his fucking fragile ego, like it was an insult against dating to not be free!”

Marcus nodded and stepped behind me, put a hand on each of my shoulders and started digging into the knots there with his thumbs.

“Like, I’m working on my stuff for a show! I have a deadline. I can’t just blow it off, even if it’d be nice to have someone make me dinner for once.”

I slumped forward. He always pressed just a little too hard, and it always felt amazing.

“He went to culinary school, so it’d probably be a good dinner too,” I said regretfully. “Plus he was clearly raised to eat balanced meals.”

I sighed, the sensation in my back leaching away a bit of my anger.

“I was so mean,” I said. “Totally interrupted him, shut him down. I was such a dick. Dude, I really freaked.”

Marcus made a sound that said he was listening and kept rubbing. There were certain spots where we were always sore, always aching. Places that the job hardened, as it turned our bodies into tools. After rubbing my shoulders for a few minutes, Marcus just rested his palm on the back of my neck and I breathed out the anger like a poison cloud.

Without the anger there was just fear. Fear of being rejected. Fear that someday I’d get so lonely I’d compromise in ways I didn’t want to. Fear that I’d be so afraid of compromising when I shouldn’t that I’d refuse to compromise when I should.

“If that’s what he wants from me then it’ll never work,” I said softly.

Marcus sat on the stool where I usually sat and faced me, and it seemed right that he be the one I told. He knew how I was in a relationship. He was the only one who did, really.

“Do you want it to?”

I covered my face with my hands to try and focus the six million lines of thought that zinged around my head whenever I thought of Christopher. Even his name sounded like some kind of incantation.

“I fucking like him so much. Dammit. At first I was kind of like, ‘oh, a cute white dude at a coffee shop, yes, I’ll take a quad shot and look at you, please.’ And then…”

I shook my head. Somewhere along the line, without my even noticing, Christopher had gotten completely under my skin. I’d started thinking about him at random moments, realizing that I was taking him into account when I considered options, and—okay, yeah—fantasizing about him. When we’d hooked up after our drink and draw date, it had been hotter than I’d expected. Christopher was so kind, so…I don’t know, Christopher-like, that I’d sort of expected him to be a little vanilla.

In reality, he’d been anything but. It had been explosive, impassioned, a little sloppy, and heavily laced with the promise that the next time would be even better—especially without the heaps of garbage nearby. But next time hadn’t happened yet, and at the rate I was free, it never would.

We occupied different worlds and I had no guarantee that Christopher got mine. I guess I had no guarantee that I got his either.

“It was just so easy with you,” I said, even though it wasn’t true and Marcus’s wry smile said that we both knew it.

“Some things were,” he granted, giving my hand a squeeze. “You going to your parents’ tomorrow since Daniel’s not around?”

I groaned. In my angst about Christopher I’d totally forgotten that in a clearly addled state I’d told Christopher I was.

“Eva called to guilt me into it like sixteen times and she kept insinuating that maybe something is wrong with my dad. She won’t say for sure, which is fucking typical of her. I actually haven’t seen any of them since my dad’s birthday, and that was six months ago, so now I feel like I should go. Just in case something really is wrong…ugh, I don’t know. Anyway, have a good time at Selene’s folks’. Enjoy everyone trying to fatten you up.”

Marcus grimaced and wrapped his arms around his skinny frame. Selene was fat and gorgeous and her whole family was fat and gorgeous and her mother and sisters treated Marcus like his skinniness was down to some kind of wrong-minded stubbornness. Still, they adored him and the feeling was totally mutual, so he put up with being called every variation of “skinny” on the planet, grateful they also called him “him” and thought his faster-than-average metabolism was the only regrettable thing about his body.

We hugged goodbye at the door and I squeezed him tight. “Thanks.”

“Ginge,” he said seriously. “Everyone has their shit. Don’t make the mistake of thinking he doesn’t just because it isn’t the same as yours.”