Running In Circles || Nicholas Ruffilo

one

Cassidy

I turned in my key from my key holder position this morning. 

I finally had someone willing to take a chance on me and I am diving head-first into a tattoo apprenticeship starting tomorrow. I'm not going to lie, I know that I'm going to be damn good at it and I already know that I'm a great drawer, so the rest shouldn't be that hard, right? I suffered through whatever job paid me enough to save money to get to this point, and I couldn't be more sure of myself.

I went home and finally started the process that I had been waiting so long to do: a bright pink halo under my basically black hair. I couldn't have it at my job, but I had been dreaming of it for forever. Within a few hours, I felt more like myself than I ever have. 

Freedom is at my fingertips and ready to unleash its power.

-

Davis told me to meet him at the shop at eleven, since they open at noon so that I could learn setup and meet everyone when they come in. I knocked a few times on the front door, not too soft nor loud, and Davis opened the door right after. His hair was down, his silver streaks on full display.

"Hey, Cassidy!" he greeted kindly, propping the door open further for me. "You excited?" 

"For sure," I mused, noticing that I was mumbling a little bit. 

"Sweet, let me show you around more thoroughly," he ushered, locking the door behind us. "So while I personally do not do tattoos, I do draw a lot of flash, so my little station is right here," he said as he pointed to a generous sized desk; it looked like he was working on a Nintendo sheet at the moment. "This is Vincent's station right next to me," he pointed out; it was decorated with a lot of black and white flash sheets, which will definitely be great to start with. "This is Nicholas's station," he points to a much more traditionally colorful area, clad with flash sheets that were a little bit of everything and then different posters of different movies. "And then this is Tyler's station, who you'll be primarily working with," and points to a station that has so many flashes of American traditional and Neo-traditional.

"Everything looks pretty diverse," I pointed out.

"Elaborate," he prompts as he leads me to the office area to show me other things, I guess.

"There's a little bit of every art style here," I continued.

"Oh, yeah, for sure!" he mused as he grabbed some papers. He examined my arms. "I see you like American traditional," he points out. 

"Yeah," I responded simply. 

"Okay, so, unfortunately as an apprentice, you end up being a runner by default, so when people come in, these are the forms that they fill out," he says as he hands me a generous stack. "You just have to make sure the information with the ID matches with what they fill out and that there are no potential complications before sending them onward. Honestly, we haven't had a lot of time to accept walk-ins since they've all been so booked up, so when you're more trained up, that will fall in your lap. But that will honestly be a while."

"Got it," I said simply as we went out to the counter and put the slips down. 

The back door opened and a tall guy with short hair that's covered in American traditional tattoos walks in, a tray of iced coffees in tow. He stops a little when he realizes that I'm there and looks to Davis. My gut twists, thinking that he already hates me. "You didn't tell me she started today, I could have gotten her coffee!" he scolds Davis, making me relax immediately. 

"Well, I didn't know you were getting coffee, but I appreciate it," Davis muses as the guy comes closer. "Tyler, this is Cassidy. Cassidy, Tyler," he introduces quickly.