"I want to love you again, but I don't know how. Maybe I'm not like the moon. The moon is pure, an incandescent light in the midst of bitter darkness.
I have never been that forgiving."
WARNING: This is Book Three. If you have not read "affluenza"...
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"YOU DID WHAT?" Nova shouts, eyes bulging as he ruffles through different laminated tattoo prints. "In your office? While on a conference call? Are you out of your mind?!"
I tilt my head back, embarrassment clawing up my skin. "I know, I know," I mumble, bringing my hands to my face. "It was unprofessional."
"It was more than unprofessional. It was fucking stupid," Nova emphasizes, eyes wide. Shaking his head he finds a new stencil, pushing it in front of me. "What do you think of this one?" he asks.
I grimace a bit. The print was nice, just a bit larger than what I'd wanted to go for at the moment. Getting a tattoo wasn't necessarily what I'd planned to do today, but it always seemed to happen whenever I ended up at Nova's parlor. "I don't know," I mumble. "How about something a little smaller?"
He stuffs the stencil back in a drawer, nodding. "Okay, then. What do you want, Mr. Freaky Deak?"
I make a face at him. "Please don't call me that," I hiss, before tapping my chin. "How about a finger tat?"
Nova hums. "Okay, sure. You don't have a lot of ink there. Plenty of space. What are we thinking?"
I click my tongue, an idea that I'd had a while ago coming to mind. "Can you do a moon? A small, crescent moon? Right here?" I ask, gesturing to the inside of my left ring finger.
Nova nods, quickly grabbing his tattoo gun. He prepares my skin for the tattoo easily, a process we'd done a hundred times together. I didn't even feel it as he began poking at my skin. "Any particular meaning behind this tattoo?" he asks curiously after a small stretch of silence.
"Mm-mm," I mumble, listening to the whir of the tattoo gun.
Nova scoffs. "Please. With you, there's always a meaning. Are you gonna tell me or should I guess?"
I huff a breath, turning my head away from him and trying to find a way to word this without sounding pathetic. There wasn't, really, so I stick with the truth. The vague truth. "It was just a story I heard once. About the Sun and the Moon. Have you ever heard of it?"
Nova nods, brown cheeks turning up in a nostalgic grin. "Sure, sure. Mama H used to tell me and Moxie that story all the time. The Sun died every night so the Moon could shine."
"Yeah," I respond after a while, my voice gruff. "Yeah, that's exactly it."
Nova's eyes catch on mine. "Where'd you hear the story, hmm?"
I purse my lips. I'd been attempting to be cryptic, but I should've known that Nova would see through that. With a small sigh, I cock my head to the side. "Braylen told me," I whisper.
Nova turns off the gun immediately, leaving me with a frown and a half-drawn crescent moon. "Oh my god, what?" I exclaimed, glaring at him.
"You're making me do a couple tattoo on you with only half a couple present?!" Nova fumes, eyes wide. "This isn't what a guy who should be over it would do."
