Getaway Car [HS]

Chapter Thirty-Four

The tattoo parlor is a tiny, run-down building with dead grass and chipped paint on its exterior walls, but if Harry says they do a good job, then they do a good job. With how much ink he has on him, she can't be one to judge seeing that she hardly knows anything about it. For how unpromising its curb appeal is, however, the reviews online were stellar when she stuck a peek at her phone on the walk to the parking garage.

But, before they went inside of the parlor, she stopped him from unbuckling and looked up and down between his eyes and the pot brownie sitting in the cup holder, one small bite taken out of it for the time being, until she worked up the courage to ask.

"Can I try it?"

At first, she thought he might say no. The look on his face was one of skepticism, and even as he picked it up and broke a sliver of a piece off of it for her, he eyed her up suspiciously the whole time. Before she could take the piece from his fingers, he yanked it back from her reach and put his hand down on her arm in a silent order to pay attention to him.

He asked, "Have y'done this before?"

Beneath the question laid a deeper, more prodding one he didn't dare ask: Are you okay doing any drugs after what happened to Peter? It hadn't been something as tame as weed to claim her older brother's life, but between her experiences with him and what happened at the club without her consent, he wanted to be sure. The last thing he wanted was to have her panic and not be able to bring her down until time allowed the substance to make its way out of her system.

She shook her head.

"I haven't, but, I mean, Alanis does it, and she seems to like it a lot. You seem to like it a lot," she spoke softly. "Plus, I feel safer doing it with you. If I freak out, you're the only one who can really calm me down." She pushed her bottom lip out and batted her lashes at him for a second before breaking and begging him through a laugh, "Come on, it'll be a really memorable night. The first time I got a tattoo and the first time I tried pot."

He watched her for another few seconds with narrowed eyes, then placed the tiny piece of the brownie in her waiting palm.

"Fine. But only that much, dosing homemade edibles is sort of guesswork, so I don't wanna give you too much."

There was an undertone of an herbal flavor to it, but it was mostly hidden beneath the heaping amount of chocolate baked into it. Not particularly fond of the taste of chocolate, she had to take a swig of from the water bottle sitting in the cup holder from earlier in the day to wash it out of her mouth.

Now that she's sitting face-down on the chair with her shirt raised to expose her lower back, twenty minutes from when she first ingested the piece of his pot brownie, she doesn't feel anything.

Harry is sitting in a rolling chair he snatched from one of the other closed-off rooms designated for tattoo artists and their patrons right beside her head, watching the same artist who he frequently requests placing the two stencils on the lowest points of her back and triple-checking to ensure they're lined up correctly. After all, they'll last forever.

That was another surprise she hadn't seen coming. The tattoo is technically two of them. He said they had to go together with the idea he had, so she simply rolled her eyes and told him he could do anything except tattoo his name on her back. Or a dick. With him, she could never know what to expect. To that, he just laughed and told her to wait until she sees the finished product. He and the artist walked off to discuss the idea quietly in the next room over. Since he's a friend of Harry's, or as close to a friend of his as anyone but her can get, he was game with the surprise idea after pulling her aside and asking multiple times if she was sure.