Crossroads

Balance

Jai Brooks never felt like anything was missing from his life. Every morning he woke up in a comfortable, warm pool of sunlight--it never rained in Los Angeles. Every day he went to work and did what he loved: tattoos. Every night he came home and spent a quiet evening on his own with either his guitar or his sketchbook. His life was balanced.

He liked balance.

"Morning Jai," his co-worker, Dylan, greeted Jai as he walked into the tattoo shop that morning.

"Morning mate," he responded with a smile.

"Easy commute?" Dylan asked, hoping to prompt conversation.

"Easy enough."

He walked to work every morning. He felt bad he wasn't much of a talker, though, so he tried to help Dylan out. It's not that he didn't like talking to people--he just liked listening to them more. He didn't talk so he could listen. It was a good balance; he liked balance.

The day went by relatively fast, he worked on a handful of people throughout the afternoon and before he knew it, he was closing shop. Dylan had left mid-afternoon as he had finished all of his appointments, and it wasn't a particularly busy day for walk-ins. The few that came in without appointments asked for cliché tattoos like arrows, crosses, infinity signs, you name it. Jai didn't mind doing those, as stupid as some of them were.

He himself had loads of tattoos.

If you couldn't tell already, tattoos were a huge part of his life.

He thoroughly believed that even if it were just "I decided to get a tattoo randomly one drunken night," every tattoo had some sort of story or meaning behind it.

Besides, some of his tattoos were stupid, so it wouldn't be fair for him to judge someone else on what they wanted permanently inked on their bodies. His very first tattoo, in fact, was stupid. One day in his high school years he was reading a book for history when he came across a quote he liked. He didn't want to forget it, so he got it tattooed across his chest.

Silly, right?

As silly as it was, he soon discovered how much he loved tattoos and quickly got into sketching his own and getting more. As the collection spread across his arms, chest, back and hips, they became more and more meaningful.

A lot of them reflected his upbringing.

He had never met his mother, so he never knew how to miss or long for her presence. He grew up alone with his father in Perth, Australia. He lived there until the day his dad sent him to his first boarding school at the age of eight, all the way in London. He started his own life at eight years old, halfway across the world from his only family member.

That being said, so far in his twenty years of life he's had to compensate for the loss of both his mother and father, but somehow he had little trouble managing. While he would hear from his father every now and then, he'd figured out quite early on that his dad sent him away simply because he just didn't know how to be a father to Jai. His father wasn't enjoying the lonely, hard life of single-parenting.

At first it hurt, but after a while Jai was able to channel his emotions into art and schoolwork, making friends, and creating a new life for himself. He put everything he had into achieving a balanced life--as he had yet to experience one before that point.

He stopped longing for his father almost immediately and got to work.

Upon graduating high school, he had many chances to go to college--but he thought he'd rather turn them down and instead use the money to start a life in Los Angeles, which is exactly what he did.

And there you have it.

Jai quietly hummed some Elvis to himself (seeing as no one else was around) while he swept up the floors and locked the door to the shop. On top of drawing, tattoos, and other types of art, he loved music. He taught himself how to play the guitar as soon as he could afford to buy himself one in the 10th grade. It wasn't anything special, but four years and two guitars later, it's still his favorite to play around on at the end of the day.

He turned his hum into a whistle as he tucked the shop keys into his pockets and began his journey home.

He lived just four blocks away, only 15-minutes or so away from the shop. As he approached his front door he heard his next-door neighbor's open.

"Evening, Jai," he heard his neighbor, Ava, say. She was a year his senior and had quite the crush on him. He was flattered that she liked him, but he just wasn't interested in a significant other at the moment (whichever gender she or he would be).

"I swear I wasn't waiting for you to get home--I have to leave for work in a few," she chuckled as she stepped outside to talk to him.

"Long night ahead of you?" He asked as he looked down at his key, pushing it into the lock.

"Yeah, I guess so," she smiled, excited that he was asking her a question. "Bartending is so not my calling, but you gotta make ends meet somehow, right?"

Jai didn't know firsthand what she meant as he lived comfortably, but he certainly didn't want to belittle his neighbor.

"Right," he confirmed with a nod, opening his front door. He looked back at her with as much of an encouraging smile as he could give and said, "Goodnight, Ava."

"Night," she smiled back, returning the smile three-fold before he closed the door behind him.

He didn't understand why she liked him--he didn't talk to her much, just like he did with anyone else. He guessed it helped that they lived next to each other; their condos shared a living room wall, after all.

After making himself dinner, he took his shirt off and changed into sweatpants before making his way into the living room where his guitar was. He picked it up, sat down on the couch and kicked his feet up on the coffee table in front of him as he started to play. Because everyday was pretty much the same, he knew this was his favorite part of the day: when he was free to kick back and do what he pleased before heading off to bed.

He enjoyed the consistency of living he made for himself in Los Angeles. So maybe it didn't exactly have a smooth start, but as of now he finally felt his life was all complete: it was all balanced out.

He liked balance, he wanted nothing less in his life.

If only he'd known what and who he was in for that would make it something else.

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New story! Let me know what you think :)

xx

Sarah