“Okay, so here’s the deal,” Christopher said, leaning across the counter toward me. “I want to go on a date with you.”

I’d spent the whole previous day after Christopher left my apartment getting lost in thoughts of how his mouth felt against mine. Imagining what would’ve happened if he’d stayed. Making bets with myself about what the skin of his shoulders would taste like, or how his stubble would feel on my inner thighs. Then I’d forced myself to come into Melt this morning, because I’d known if I stayed away I’d start to feel awkward.

But the idea of a date made me feel awkward for much less pleasant reasons. Dates always felt forced and overly scripted and I never felt like myself on them. And I didn’t want to not be myself with Christopher. Besides, it seemed like the perfect occasion for him to realize he wasn’t actually into me. I shot him a faux-shocked look and gestured around us to the empty café where we were currently sharing coffee and conversation. My sleeves were pulled down over my hands, so the gesture probably looked a bit like I’d pulled loose from a straightjacket.

“Yeah, yeah, a date that does not take place within the walls of the establishment where either of us are the proprietor. Agreed?”

“Uh, well, agreed in theory, but I work until late and you open the shop early, so I don’t know when we’d do it. Besides, just know that in my world the d-word portends disaster, and I thought things were going kind of well, so. Be warned.”

“What disaster could it portend?”

“Sweet innocent angel, I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

He grinned and shook his head. “Come on a date with me. Tomorrow. Seven a.m. I’ll get Stevie to open for me.”

“Seven in the morning? So you’re skating past disaster and straight into torture?”

“Ginger.” He took my hand, pushed up my sleeve, and ran warm fingers over the inside of my wrist. He traced the ink around to the back of my hand. “Come to breakfast with me. At Morning Glory. It’ll be great.”

“Why is it so important to you that we go have a date in a diner rather than here?” I asked, genuinely curious. “I mean, truth, Morning Glory has better breakfast food than you, but.” I winked at him and he raised a hand to his heart like I’d wounded him.

“Um, because I want to take you out on a real date…”

“Paging tautology, party of one.”

“Fine, fine, okay. Because I want to kiss you again. Okay? There.”

My eyes shot to his mouth. Soft lips surrounded by rough stubble; the way the tips of his incisors bit into his bottom lip when he smiled. Heat flushed through me.

“What does that have to do with a date?” I asked dazedly, and looked up into his eyes to find them trained on my mouth too.

He stepped around the counter and was in front of me in seconds. His broad chest pressed me back against the counter, and suddenly my senses were overwhelmed by him. His scent was all around me: something green, like aloe, the clean cool scent of fabric softener, the spice of whatever he used in his hair, and the smell of his skin, warm and slightly musky.

“You’re right,” he said, voice soft and low. He cupped my cheek and touched my lower lip with his thumb.

“Huh?” I said stupidly, but I wasn’t listening to him. His eyes were like fire and water together—some impossible conflagration—his lashes dark reddish brown.

When his lips touched mine his eyes fluttered shut and I felt a wave of tenderness for him. Then it was replaced with heat as our mouths moved together. Slow at first, but then he made a sound in the back of his throat and leaned into me, sliding his hand into my hair like he couldn’t get close enough.

My heart beat faster and the kiss sent shivers down my throat and into my stomach. I pushed up onto my tiptoes and threw my arms around his neck. In the space of one breath he groaned, grabbed me around the hips, and lifted me up so I was sitting on the counter. I hooked my calf around his thigh, pulling him toward me. He tipped my chin back and kissed me again, a deep, slow kiss that gave me time to feel the softness of his lips and the sharpness of his teeth. The slick tease of his tongue against mine.

I made a sound in the back of my throat as heat ripped through me, and felt his answering arousal in the hardness pressed against my stomach. We were lost in each other. The shop disappeared as Christopher took over all my sensations.

We broke apart suddenly at the sound of tinkling bells.

“His mother!” Marcus cracked up.

The look on Christopher’s face when his mother walked through the door had been priceless. He’d retreated behind the counter immediately to hide his erection, but he couldn’t hide his flushed cheeks or mussed hair. He’d cleared his throat and tried to go back into grown-up mode, introducing me to his mom and telling me he’d see me later, but he hadn’t quite been able to pull it off.

“So what does Daniel have to say about all this?”

My stomach tightened. “I, uh. I haven’t told him yet.”

“What? Why?”

I’d been asking myself the same thing. Usually, I’d’ve told him right away. Usually, it would be no big deal to text Daniel, Hot guy alert! Also, tried a new granola bar flavor. But telling Daniel about this hot guy felt momentous. It felt like admitting that I maybe, just a little bit, kind of, had a crush. More than a crush. It meant making it real.

Marcus’s expression was pained, like he could see my train of thought.

“This thing with Christopher will probably blow up in my face at any moment, let’s be real. He cares about stuff like making people happy, and he’s got real parents, and he’s…at peace with the world or something, you know?”

“This is bad?”

“Come on. The only people at peace with the world are either too stupid to know any better, they’re sociopaths devoid of empathy, or they’re self-deluded, privileged fuckers who are fundamentally incapable of acknowledging reality. And lemme just say, he ain’t stupid. I don’t know, he probably wants…normal person things like meatloaf and peas and…children, and…I don’t know. Never mind.”

“I’m ignoring you because I know you aren’t really that shallow. Also—” He tweaked my hair knowingly. “Because don’t forget that I know you love meatloaf. And peas. But your secret’s safe with me.”

Come on, go on a date with me? Christopher texted the next day, after we’d finally exchanged phone numbers.

“I kinda dig the whole hiding secret notes in napkins and climbing fire escapes at the crack of dawn to be in touch and all, but it’s convenient to be able to let you know if I’m running late, or dead in a car accident,” he’d said.

“Yes, I’ll hold my breath for your future calls from beyond the grave,” I’d told him, but programmed his number into my phone and been pleased when he’d put me in as “Ginger” with no last name needed. Not that it was a common name or anything. But still.

I’d thought the whole “making out on the counter of his diner” might have convinced him there was no need for a formalized date, but apparently I wasn’t that lucky. And maybe with Christopher, going on a date would be different. Maybe.

What’d you have in mind?

It’s a surprise ;)

Surprises frighten me. They usually involve insects, public humiliation, or stand-up comedy. Actually those last two are the same thing. In case it isn’t clear, I hate insects and stand-up comedy. If you take me to one of those zoos that’s for bugs or to a stand-up show I will never speak to you again.

Hand to god it’s not stand-up and there are no bugs. But why do you hate?

BECAUSE THEY CRAWL INSIDE YOU AND EAT YOUR BRAIN. Well more like because they’re all secretive and hidden and then they JUMP out at you.

I meant why do you hate stand-up but point taken. I really don’t like those water bug things.

*Shudder* No those are terrible. Most art allows for a variety of responses. Comedy tells you the one response you’re supposed to have.

Well, maybe it’s just not art, then?

Yr telling me. If you don’t have that one reaction then it feels like it fails. And I don’t like watching people fail at stuff in front of a crowd.

But it doesn’t always fail…

*Gritting my teeth while sitting surrounded by ppl staring at a stage knowing there’s a 97% possibility that it will fail for me emoji*

Ok, got it. Not your thing. No comedy, no bugs, no problem ;)

*Rainbow vomit emoji* Also it makes me uncomfortable to see ppl try so hard to be liked. Middle school flashbacks of shame by proxy. Full body shivers of horror.

NOTED. I will never ever subject you to comedy.

Um but real talk: was it gonna be comedy?

NO! Jesus, fine, I’ll just tell you.

*Angel with a halo emoji*

Do you want me to?

Mmmmmmm. Ok, keep your surprise. When?

Friday night? Can you get done early enough to meet me at 8?

Can’t Friday—going to NYC. Tattoo convention.

The convention was coming at a bad time, what with Malik’s art show looming, and the extra business from the G Philly article, but I hadn’t known about either when I’d signed up for it last year. I was looking forward to meeting up with tattoo friends I only saw at cons though. And I had two people I was going to see if I could hire for Small Change.

Oh, bummer. When are you back?

Sun pm.

Ok, well, I’ll try you again next week I guess.

Would it help you to make up an emoji? *Leering, vaguely patronizing emoji that I’m using to distract from an uncomfortably sappy feeling of being glad that you’re bummed I’m not here this weekend* <— see?

Ha, hmmm… Ok. *Patient on the surface but agitated at the thought of not hanging with you this weekend emoji* How’d I do?

That’s a description of a feeling, not an emoji.

Dang. Harsh. How about *Twiddling my thumbs and sighing while pacing my sandwich shop emoji*?

Aw. Better I guess. More visually dynamic in any case. But “twiddling” is kinda creepy bc “diddling.”

Noted. Got it!

Then he sent a picture of himself making a face like he was weeping and pining. Then another of him winking.

I fell into bed Sunday night completely exhausted and aching in every muscle. After spending three straight days tattooing from early morning until late at night, networking during every minute of downtime, and hardcore socializing over drinks with friends, my hands were claws, my back a knot of pain, my head and eyes throbbed, and my brain was oatmeal, pleading with me in a tiny voice not to make it see or speak to anyone for at least a week. If oatmeal could plead.

I had managed a quick voicemail to the shop phone that Lindsey would find when they opened, saying that I was taking the day off and not to come get me unless the shop was actually on fire.

I slept until noon, took the hottest shower I could stand, then sat on the couch with a cup of coffee in one hand and a bowl of coffee ice cream in the other, dipping spoonfuls of ice cream into the coffee to make tiny floating islands that I devoured one after another like a capricious god.

I should’ve been working on my paintings but I was finding it difficult even to reach over to deposit my empty bowl on the coffee table. When was the last time I’d taken a day off? Not since before Daniel left, I didn’t think. I’d give it ten more minutes and then I was going to paint. Really, I should’ve done something useful like go to the grocery store or do laundry, but those were absolutely not happening. I sketched absently on the back of an envelope from the bank.

As I sketched, my mind drifted to Christopher. He’d texted me a few times while I was in New York, but though each text had put a smile on my face and kindled a warmth in my stomach, I’d always been gloved up and covered in blood and ink when they came through, so I hadn’t answered.

I grabbed my phone to text him back, when I realized what I’d sketched was him, in three-quarter profile, like he was turning toward me. The blade of his nose catching the light, the cut of his cheekbone throwing a shadow, the curve of his brow above those extraordinary eyes. Jeez. Hung up much, Holtzman? Distracted by my sketch and what it might mean, when the phone suddenly rang in my hand, I accidentally swiped to answer the call without looking.

Because god knew I would never have answered a call from my sister intentionally.

“Ginger, finally! I’ve called you a thousand times!”

“Yeah. Very early in the morning, when you knew I’d still be asleep, so I find myself questioning the sincerity of your desire to talk to me, sis.”

“Most people grow out of sleeping until noon after their hormones stabilize, you know.”

My sister had the same ability to irritate me now as she had when she was a know-it-all teenager. She and my mother were twin engines of passive-aggression and judgment, and nothing I’d ever tried had the power to bring down the plane. So mostly I just did the only thing I could, and refused to take them seriously.

“Well, I guess I’m just permanently unstable,” I told her cheerfully. “So, what can this unresponsive, unstable sleep addict do for you?”

“Well, obviously I need to know what you want to do about Thanksgiving.”

My sister had this way of speaking like she worried that if she didn’t really hit the important words hard then no one would understand what she was saying.

“Oh, of course, obviously.” I rolled my eyes. “What do you mean, do about it? Aren’t you guys going to Uncle Saul and Aunt Jo’s like usual?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to discuss with you, if you’d ever answer your phone. Uncle Saul had some kind of…cardiac episode or something, I don’t know, and so we can’t just ask Aunt Jo to go ahead as if everything is normal!”

“Okay, well why don’t you just invite them to Mom and Dad’s?”

“It’s just asking an awful lot of Mom, don’t you think?”

“Well, I’m not asking for anything from Mom because I don’t even know if I’m coming. Thought: have you asked Mom what she wants to do?”

“Of course, but you know Mom. She’ll say she’s happy to do it but she’ll stress over the whole thing.”

“Yeah, Eva, I do know Mom, and that’s how I know—as do you—that she’s gonna stress over everything no matter what. So just ask her. She’s an adult. If she says she wants to do it, then she’ll do it. And if she doesn’t want to, she can say that.”

Though she wouldn’t. My mother and my sister were allergic to saying what they meant. There was always some ulterior motive, always some prize for something lurking behind what was said, even if they were the only ones who knew what it was. I’d stopped playing along years ago but even opting out had its price—it implied complicity.

“You have somewhere you’d rather be, I assume, as usual?”

It had been years since I’d spent Thanksgiving with my family. Usually Daniel and I hung out together, or I kept the shop open late, since there were always people seeking refuge from their own families. This year, I would probably just hang out at home by myself. It seemed nice to take a breather. I didn’t answer fast enough though.

“Mom and Dad won’t be around forever, you know,” Eva continued. “If you ever bothered to call them then you would know that Dad’s not doing that well.”

A bolt of panic shot through me. Somehow, I’d never considered the possibility that I needed to worry about my parents. My mother seemed too mean to die, and my father wouldn’t dare without my mother’s permission. Even though I didn’t get along with my family, the thought of losing them had shaken me. “What? What’s wrong with Dad?”

“Well, I don’t know, Ginger.” She spat my name out and I wondered if she’d just made that comment to needle me?

“Seriously, Eva, what the fuck. Is something wrong or not?”

She sighed in this long-suffering way that my mother may as well have copyrighted. “You know it would be nice if you could pretend you cared about Mom and Dad,” Eva said, and I could practically picture her nose up in the air.

“Yeah, it’d be nice if they actually cared about me,” I muttered.

“Well it’s not like you really make it easy for them, though, do you?”

And there it was: the harsh reality that there was no such thing as unconditional love. There was only acting in ways that made people decide you were worthy of it.

“I don’t really think my job is to make myself easy to like,” I bit off.

It had been the hardest lesson to learn; taken the longest to believe, since everything insisted the opposite. I still had to repeat it in my head sometimes, and even then it didn’t always work.

“Yes, well, we all know how well that’s turned out for you,” Eva sniffed.

And that was me at capacity. I had to hang up before I got caught in the quicksand of Eva.

“Okay, well, a customer’s here, I gotta go,” I lied.

“Just think about Mom and Dad for once, okay?” Eva said as I ended the call.

I dropped the phone on the couch, suddenly exhausted. It was the typical Eva-effect. I gave myself ten minutes to stare into space and sulk.

I was over changing who I was to try and make my parents happy; had been for years. But the fact that I’d stopped trying didn’t mean I ever stopped wishing things were different. My mom had always found fault with everything I did. With everything I was. The things I most valued in myself—my strength, my outspokenness, my self-possession—she demeaned. To her, I wasn’t strong, I was rude and thoughtless. I wasn’t outspoken, I was antagonistic and embarrassing. I wasn’t self-possessed, I was a misfit rebelling because she wished for acceptance.

And whenever I’d allowed myself to hope that my father might come to my defense, might see something positive in me where she saw only faults, I’d been disappointed. I wasn’t sure if he actually agreed with her or simply refused to argue, but it didn’t really matter; the effect was the same.

At ten, I’d been confused by their lack of approval. At thirteen, I’d been hurt. At sixteen I’d been furious. And at twenty, resigned. These days, I liked to think I saw them more clearly than they saw me. But the truth was it was infuriatingly easy for them to get in my head sometimes. To hear my mother’s voice as I looked at myself in the mirror, or my father’s silence as I searched for a dissenting opinion.

It had been different for Eva. She’d always cared what my mother thought and fit in with it. And the parts of her that didn’t fit? I wagered she’d sloughed them off as systematically as I’d encouraged mine to show themselves.

I forced myself to shrug off thoughts of my family, throw on jeans and a threadbare Skinny Puppy concert tee, and drag myself downstairs to check on the shop and see if there was anything I needed to take care of after my weekend absence.

“Hey,” Marcus said, looking up from tattooing text on a woman’s ribs. “How was it?”

“Exhausting,” I sighed. “But not bad. The tattooing was great, though my hands are officially dead.”

I knew what he was most waiting to hear about though.

“Neither Sheila or Liza D. are gonna work out, M. I’m really sorry.”

Marcus made a face. “Shoot. How come?”

“How come, what?” Morgan asked, sliding into the desk chair to run her customer’s credit card.

I sighed and picked at my nail polish. I hated to disappoint them. “Sheila was going to move to Philly in a few months, but I guess her kid got into some super special arts school in Denver so she’s not going to leave now. Liza D. was looking really promising because since she and her wife split she seemed kinda jazzed to get out of New York for part of the week, but she says she can’t deal with the commute. Especially since in the winter she’d maybe get stuck here or there and miss clients or be stranded, et cetera.”

“I don’t blame her,” Morgan said as her client thanked her and left. “I wouldn’t want to either.”

“Yeah, I know, me neither. I just really thought she’d fit in here. Both of them would’ve.”

We sat in dismayed silence for a minute.

“Oh, one good thing though. Eddie Sparks came to my booth and was really into my work. Not just the tattoos, but my paintings as well. He took some postcards and said he’d definitely be in touch. Which, it may never happen, but it’d be great exposure for the shop.”

Morgan and Marcus both gritted their teeth, and I realized that I’d essentially just said in one breath that we were about to get busier and that we didn’t have any backup. Great.

The door opened, breaking the tense silence, and Christopher walked in, phone in one hand and a coffee in the other. He seemed surprised to see me.

“Hey, I was just about to text you to see if I could come up,” he said. “I brought coffee in the hopes that I could bribe you.”

“Giiirl,” Morgan said softly and shook her head.

Christopher looked pleased with himself. He held out the coffee, like a morsel to lure a skittish cat close, and when I took it he slid a hand around my shoulder and bent to kiss my cheek, his stubble a welcome scritch, his smell delicious.

He was wearing black jeans and an olive green T-shirt under his navy pea coat. I liked when he wore green because it made his hair and eyes look even brighter. “Where do you get your shirts?” I asked

He narrowed his eyes. “Is this a sartorial intervention?”

Marcus laughed. “Ginger thinks people should wear whatever they want at all times, so I strongly doubt it.”

I dipped a curtsy, holding out the hem of my oversized shirt so the concert dates of the Too Dark Park tour stretched around me.

“Yeah, no, I like them,” I said. They’re just…unusual colors for those kind of undershirts and it’s like this mystery I’ve wondered about ever since I met you.”

He leaned against the counter and smiled a little. “A mystery, huh? Maybe I shouldn’t reveal my secrets. So what possibilities have you considered?”

I ticked them off on my fingers. “That you used to work at a T-shirt factory and could take home free ones. That you have some extreme form of color blindness and have gone through life thinking they’re all black this whole time. Ummm, oh! That you once killed a man in a white T-shirt and as you watched his blood stain the fabric you swore an oath never to wear another white shirt until the end of time. Uh…that you just like the colors.”

“Wow,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t think anyone would ever guess the truth about that blood oath.”

Morgan snorted.

“I had a roommate years ago who used to buy these big packs of the white undershirts at one of those box stores. He wore them every day under everything. But for some reason the brand he bought always came with one colored shirt—maybe to get you to buy more colors? So you’d forget it was in there and wash them all together, ruining the white ones and forcing you to buy more? No clue. But he wouldn’t wear them and I kind of liked them so he just gave them to me. We lived together for three years and he went through those damn shirts like kleenex, so I have a lot.”

I grinned. That was fucking adorable. “Not as dramatic as the blood oath,” I said, shaking my head in faux disappointment.

“Few things are. How was New York?”

Morgan’s next client came in, and I maneuvered Christopher to the side so we weren’t blocking the counter. “Eh, it was pretty good. Mostly I’m just totally zonked and even though I slept a lot I kinda want to go back to bed.”

“Do you want me to go?” he asked. “I was mostly kidding about bribing you with the coffee. You can keep it,” he said, laughing because I’d instinctively pulled the cup close to me like he might take it back.

His smile was quickly becoming one of my favorite things to see, his laugh one of my favorite to hear. Did I want him to go?

I was peopled-out, but I found myself really wanting him to stay. I shrugged and the neck of my T-shirt fell off one shoulder.

“I’m just…tired and I talked to my shithead sister before you got here, which means I’m maybe not the best company, so you might not want to hang out with me.”

“I think I can stand it if you can.” His voice was soft and he ran a hand over my hair, then let his warm palm rest on my exposed shoulder.

“I—okay. For a little bit?”

He nodded and I led him upstairs. As soon as we got there, though, I realized the flaw in my plan. It was hard to just hang out and not talk when you had a small sofa and no TV. If Christopher were Daniel, we’d squeeze onto the couch and watch a movie on my laptop, or I’d put on a record and we’d lie on the floor, chatting only when we felt like it. But Christopher took up a lot more space on the couch than Daniel, and I didn’t really want to watch a movie.

I had stopped just inside the door.

“Want me to hug you?” Christopher asked from behind me.

“What?”

He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Well, sometimes I like a hug when I’m tired, or grumpy. So I thought maybe you would too.”

“You? Grumpy? Yeah, right.”

Christopher shot me a bright smile, proving my point.

“You like hugs, huh?” I scowled, wondering who got to hug Christopher when he was tired, or if he were ever grumpy, and felt a tiny twinge in my stomach at the idea of someone else’s arms wrapped around him.

“I do. Well, I like good ones.”

“And do you give good ones?”

“Well, I don’t know if you’ll think so. But if I were in the market for a hug I would definitely want a hug from me. Care to register an opinion?”

He dropped his arms at his sides, like he was making himself ready for any potential hugging. It was kind of silly, but the second he’d said it I realized that maybe I did want a damn hug. He did look like he’d give good ones. He was broad and strong but not hard with muscle. He smelled good and was wearing a soft fabric. He didn’t have any spiky jewelry that I could see…

I nodded and stepped into his arms, where I found myself wrapped up in probably the best hug I’d ever gotten. He held me to his chest tightly but didn’t squeeze the life out of me. He leaned into the hug like he was enjoying it, not doing me a favor. And he rested his chin on top of my head. I turned my face so my cheek was against the flat of his shoulder and let out a huge breath, relaxing into the shape of his body. I could feel the expansion of his stomach and chest as he breathed, the heat of his skin through that damn green T-shirt. The muscles of his back shifted slightly under my palms as he tipped his head forward and buried his face in my hair.

I’d hugged Daniel occasionally, but it was always quick and fierce. Morgan and Lindsey on their birthdays. Marcus when one of us’d had a hard day. But this kind of a hug? Where I just held someone and they held me? Where we breathed together as one unit? I couldn’t remember the last time it had happened.

Christopher smelled amazing, and the rhythm of his breath was lulling.

I let go reluctantly when it seemed like an inappropriately long time had gone by, and he looked a little disappointed. He trailed a hand down my arm like he was reluctant to break contact, and I leaned into it.

“So, what’s the deal with your sister?”

“Er, she called and I accidentally answered.” He raised an eyebrow in question. “Oh just, you know, planning Thanksgiving and, ‘Ginger, why don’t you at least pretend you care about Mom and Dad’ bullshit.”

“You don’t get along with your parents?”

I sighed and kicked off my shoes, sinking onto my bed. Christopher raised his eyebrows in question, and I patted the bed next to me. “Nah, not really. It’s kind of a choice to avoid them at this point. Because they always just…wanted me to be someone I was never gonna be. When I was younger, I tried. For a while. But nothing that ever felt like me made them proud or happy, and nothing that made them proud or happy ever felt like me. But now…fuck it, you know? I’m an adult and they don’t like me. It’s fine. But it’s not the most fun to go to holidays and family gatherings.”

“Who do they want you to be?”

“Eva,” I snorted. “Nah. Uh, they value the things that are recognizable to them as successful, attractive, normal, et cetera. And I’m…not. And some parents would, like, change their notions of what constituted those qualities in an attempt to connect with their kids, but apparently not mine.”

Christopher squeezed my knee and left his hand there, a gentle weight.

I wasn’t sure quite how to explain the effect my mom had on me. The way she felt poisonous, dangerous.

“My mom always made such a point of making sure I knew that I wasn’t…how she’d like me to be. Sometimes directly, but sometimes just passive-aggressively. Like, I remember when I was nine or ten, I really loved this movie about a family who moved to Alaska because the mom was a wildlife photographer and got a job taking pictures of polar bears. They had two kids, a son and a daughter who had to uproot their lives and start school in Alaska and everything. I watched it over and over. It was probably terrible, I don’t know, but it had all these shots of ice floes and little baby polar bears rolling around.”

Christopher ran his knuckles over my cheek and smiled. I twined our fingers together.

“The daughter starts learning all about nature by going on photo shoots with her mom and it turns out she’s super good at photography too—anyway, the point is that I would pretend I was the girl, and the couch was an ice floe and I had to jump from it to the kitchen floor so I didn’t get into the freezing water, and I would take the camera and take all these pictures. Well, pretend to, not with real film.”

Christopher smiled and lifted our joined hands to his lips, kissing my knuckles. It was an absent gesture. A sweet impulse. But the moment of tenderness was such a stark contrast to thoughts of my mom that it lodged in my throat.

“One day at dinner, after I’d been pretending I was in the movie all week, my dad said something about his coworker getting transferred, and my mom said, in this super pointed voice, how horrible it was to uproot your family so you could follow your own dreams. How selfish that was. And she was looking right at me. It took me a minute to understand why, because it seemed so random. But she wasn’t talking about my dad’s coworker. She was just making sure I heard that the thing I admired, she thought was garbage.”

It echoed in my head all wrong. Probably it sounded petty.

“I’m not explaining it well. There are better examples,” I said, trailing off.

Christopher was frowning, looking at me intently. “It sounds like your mom had a real problem with you.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

“It sounds like it was her problem, I mean. That something about you made her upset about herself. That kind of pettiness, especially toward your own kid? That’s not your normal I-wish-you-got-better-grades-style disappointment. That’s being threatened by something your kid makes you realize about yourself.” He frowned. “I hate it.”

I nodded slowly. My mom had always been so haughty and self-righteous it was hard to imagine her being threatened by anything but her hair frizzing on a humid day. But it felt true that her extreme rigidity signaled fragility.

The freckles on Christopher’s forearms were like a smattering of stars and I found myself trying to make patterns in them. Without thinking, I reached out and traced the shape of a heart in them. I stared at skin all day long as I tattooed, and I’d never seen freckles quite the color of his before, like a spray of golden ink. They were his only markings, and somehow I was glad they’d never been interrupted by tattoos.

“When I was in high school I was so angry, all the time,” I said as I made connections among his freckles. It was easier to talk like this, addressing my thoughts to someone’s skin. “Angry at the world, angry at myself, at my parents. Everything seemed like this rigged game, where the only way to win was to either become something I hated, or to burn the game down. The only thing I cared about was drawing. When I drew, I could make the world anything I wanted. Make things look how I wished they were. Change all the rules. And when I got into tattooing, I loved that I could do that for people. Could help them make their bodies into what they wanted them to be. It’s such a powerful thing, to rewrite your own skin.”

It had taken me years to get comfortable in my own; to style myself exactly as I wished. A friend once told me that some people choose their style to hide who they are and some choose their style to express it. And I wasn’t interested in hiding.

“That’s what I did, you know? I rewrote who I was. I got to decide what I did, what I valued, who I spent time with. It took a long time. And Eva and my mom… I hate who I become when I spend time with them. I turn into this, like, vibratingly horrible person. I can keep it together for maybe twenty minutes in their presence, where I try to laugh off the shit they say. But then I turn mean, and I hate it. Every conversation with them is like picking my way through a maze—one of those haunted corn maze things like they have in Jersey where you never know when rotting zombie scarecrows are about to jump out at you from around the hay bales.”

“What do you do?”

“They’re both this deep, deep kind of passive-aggressive. My sister’s totally self-absorbed. Like, could create a vortex with herself at the center self-absorbed. And my mom’s…cold. She can gut you with one sentence. So there’s no satisfaction in retaliating because she’s so cutting that to one-up her you seriously have to say horrible things. And I have. In the past. I’ve gotten sucked into it a hundred times. And it always makes me feel like a terrible person. Like I’m losing and she’s winning. The only way to win is not to play, so now I try to just laugh it off. Remind myself that I don’t want to be like her. But it’s basically torture to not call her on shit she says, because then there’s the chance she might think I agree.”

“You’re nothing like them at all, huh?”

“Bless you for saying that.” I sighed. “I don’t know. I hope that’s true. But sometimes…” I shook my head.

“What?”

“My mom’s a total perfectionist. She believes in Proper Ways of Doing Things. All that. Nothing’s ever good enough for her. And I just know I can be a little bit like that. With the shop. With my art. With…maybe with people, I don’t know. Not in the same ways. Obviously I’m messy and improper as fuck, but…I just don’t like the idea that I maybe make people feel like they’re not good enough sometimes.”

Christopher took my hands, rubbing the insides of my wrists with his thumbs and I bit my lip. “Morgan and Marcus don’t seem to think you’re that way.”

“Well, give it another month of me not hiring someone because I can’t find the right person and see if they’re still so pleased with me.”

“Look, I don’t know your mom, and I get that you and I haven’t known each other that long. But your intensity about the shop, how high your standards are, the way you want it to be as great as possible? All of that is because you care so much. It’s really clear. I could tell the first time I came in. It’s not because you have arbitrary rules or want people to do as you say. It’s because it’s your home and you want it to be great. I really admire that. A lot. Honestly, I wish I were more like it when it came to running Melt.”

A tiny bird-thing inside my chest fluttered its wings.

I looked down at our hands, his strong and pale, looking simple and elegant wrapped around mine, which were marked in layers of ink, my black nail polish half chipped off, like always.

“But what if…what if my mom thinks the same thing about herself?” I asked, keeping my gaze on our interlocked fingers. “She probably doesn’t think her stuff is arbitrary either. She probably thinks that telling me to lose ten pounds or to wear makeup in public or to behave like a competent adult, or, or—that they are ways to show she cares. That’s the thing… What if she actually thinks she loves me?”

My voice faltered and I found myself swallowing hard and staring across the room at a hand-carved puzzle box that one of my clients had made for me. In theory, puzzle boxes were made to be opened, but I’d never managed it. It had sat for years, and while it was beautiful as a work of art, I wondered if it was unfair somehow. To let something that had a purpose remain so entirely ornamental.

Christopher didn’t say anything right away. I’d probably just made things incredibly awkward. Like I was fishing for reassurance on a topic about which he couldn’t possibly offer it with any sincerity.

“Come here,” he said finally, and pulled gently, cradling me to his side with an arm around my shoulder. He was leaning back against my pillow, so I ended up kind of leaning into him. We just sat like that for a minute, breathing in unison.

I could feel the anger start to drain out of me. The sour fist that my stomach became whenever I thought of my family loosened, and I finally relaxed.

I slid down so I was lying on my side, and flung an arm over Christopher’s stomach. He seemed startled at first, but then he eased himself down too, so we were lying together. I let my eyes flutter closed. What would happen if I just drifted off to sleep? Could I trust him?

“I’m a pretty big fan of yours,” he said simply, pulling me closer and kissing the top of my head. It was pure sincerity and it lulled me into telling the sincere truth in return.

“I really like you,” I mumbled into his shoulder. “You’re great. I didn’t expect you to be, but you are.”

And even though that hadn’t quite come out like the compliment I had meant it to be, I could feel him smile into my messy hair.