Making It (On Hold Indefinitely)

1.2

1.2

The tattoo parlor is freezing, which is nothing new. Pat is a new artist in town. While his work is really good, like over the moon, he's struggling to get customers. So heat isn't a top priority this morning. But then again Taylor seems perfectly fine, and so does the artist himself.

Which leaves me to believe that I may actually be anemic.

Rubbing my arms I watch as Pat gets everything set up. He sprays down the chair which Taylor will be sitting in for the next 15 plus hrs and wipes it does with paper towel. He then sterilizes the top of the stand his equipment would be resting on while Taylor sits down in the chair.

I pull up a plastic chair against the wall and come up to his side. Taking ahold of his hand and kissing his knuckles. At the feel of my lips on his skin he turns his attention away from Pat and looks at me with a soft smile.

"You don't have to stay. We'll be here all day. I'll call you when I'm done. Go and write your book." He leans over to kiss me on the lips and I rear back shaking my head.

"I have nothing better to do today." I brush my fingers over the skin on the back of his hand and smiles. "Plus who's gonna go out and make food runs if I leave?"

Besides Pat, Taylor and I the shop is empty. He closed down the store because we'd be here way passed business hours. Taylor is his only customer for the day.

"So what are we doing first? The Golden Gate Bridge or what? I'm game for anything." He shifts through the stencils with his freshly gloved hands. These ones a different color from the blue ones he had on to clean everything.

"Well they're all going on my arm. You pick." He turns to me and I fill a little shocked he even thought to ask. I feel my cheeks heat up as I push my hair behind my ear and lean over Taylor to get a better look.

Pat had did a wonderful job bringing my ideas to life. We had called him two days ago to see if he had time for a consultation, which he did, and then thirty minutes later he had a list of designs he was going to work on and he promised to have them ready by today. It made me kind of jealous that he drew them instead of me. They were beautiful in every way possible. So detailed. My sketches were going to look amateurish next to his.

"Well didn't you want to do a kind of road map type of thing?" I look up at Taylor, feeling my face heat up a lot more under his stare. I want to tell him go stop looking at me like I was his everything, but how could I when I knew I was his everything.

"Yeah but that idea kind of flopped when I told my previous artist to just put whatever wherever." Taylor shrugs looking over at the stencils. "Cant we just place them all first and go from there?"

Pat nods. "We could do that yeah. Just give me a general area." He grabs The Golden Gate Bridge and starts pulling the pieces apart.

I study Taylor's arm a little bit closer and then reach out towards Pat.

"Wait, wait, look." I point to the upper part of his arm. "Look at New York and Michigan." I point to the two.  The apple and the frozen over mitten. "They're relatively close but far, right?"

I look up at Pat and he nods his head.

"Okay and then there's Chicago, and Ohio." The bean and the poorly drawn roller coaster. Per my doing. It was drawn over night and Taylor got the rough sketch done instead of my final draft.

One more glance at Pat and he seems to understand where I'm getting at. Whoever did his first couple of tattoos didn't just place them random, and the ones who followed noticed the same thing I did. His arm was a map. A map of all the states and each state was put into relative location of where they'd be on an actual map.