Tattoo Artist | o. diaz

sesenta: white tulips

Venus woke up the next morning to the bed empty and got confused because normally Oscar wouldn't wake up until like 9. However, it was only 7, so Venus was confused but thought nothing of it. Venus continued about her morning, getting her skin right before starting to cook breakfast. Around 8:30, Oscar came back and quietly closed the door before throwing his stuff on the couch and walking into the kitchen.

"Buenos días, mamas." Oscar greeted, coming around with a smile on his face and kissing Venus. "I got these for you." Oscar pulled out a bouquet of yellow and white Tulips, watching Venus' eyes light up as she saw the flowers.

"They're so pretty." Venus smiled, taking the flowers and leaning up to kiss Oscar's cheek. "Gracias, amor." Venus left the food on the stove, finding something to put the flowers in since Oscars didn't have any vases. "Where'd you go?"

Oscar shrugged, leaning against the counter while Venus went back to cooking "Cuban Style" breakfast, as Oscar called it. "I did some drops and got the flowers."

"Drops this early?"

Oscar hummed and nodded. "I'll go check on Luis."

Venus watched Oscar walk away, then turned back to the flowers. Yellow tulips meant cheerful thoughts and happiness, but she couldn't remember what white tulips meant. Shrugging, Venus turned back around to the eggs and continued cooking.

"Mamá." Oscar walked in with Luis in his arms and Luis rubbed his eyes, looking to Venus.

"Buenos días, papito." Venus greeted, kissing Luis' cheek when Oscar walked by with him. "Your hair's a mess." Venus said, running her fingers through the large afro on the 3-year-old's head.

Luis shook his head and waved when Oscar started walking to the table. While Oscar and Luis were talking at the table, Venus was putting the food on plates, and walking pass the white tulips that seemed to be taunting her.

× × ×

Venus walked into her tattoo shop, surprising Luciana since it's been a while since she's come more than one day in a row. "Sup, putos." Venus said loudly, making all her workers greet her.

"Hey stranger."

"Hey, mami." Venus greeted, throwing herself at Lu and hugging her. "You smell good."

Lu laughed and pulled away from Venus, leaving one arm wrapped around her. "Why you always smelling me?"

Venus shrugged and put her bag down. "Because you always smell good." Since Lu was in her chair, Venus leaned against the bench. "Are there any appointments today?"

Luciana shook her head and started playing with her hair. "Nope. You know we're only booked during breaks. All the high schoolers too busy for us."

As if God heard them, a group of teenagers walked in with 1 single adult. "Piercings or ink?"

"Both." The adult said. "These three want piercings and all of them want tattoos."

"We need to see some ID. We can't give anyone under 18 a tattoo." Luciana said. "We ain't trying to get arrested, I'm on probation."

"18? How do the Santos have tattoos?"

"They do those themselves." Venus answered. She witnessed first hand their personal tattoo artist giving one of the high schoolers a Santos Cross.

"Told you, stupid." One of the girls said.

In the end, only 3 of the 7 were able to get tattoos, not counting the 3 that decided to get piercings. "Woah, that looks cool." One of them commented, watching their friend have a needle sticking through their tongue. Venus smiled to herself and grabbed the barbell with one hand still holding the clamp on the girl's tongue. "That was so fast."

"It only takes time when the person freaks out over the needle." Venus said calmly. And that's exactly what the next person did.

"I feel like I'm going to be paralyzed and bleed to death."

"That's... not even possible. It just takes like 3 seconds." Venus said.

"Yeah, quit being a pussy." One of her friends said. Luciana looked up from the small finger tattoo she was doing to Venus who was having a hard time calming down. For 5 minutes, Venus worked and tried to get the girl to breathe before she had a panic attack.

"Okay, I'm good." The girl said. Venus nodded and pulled the clamp out, scaring the girl. "Wait, no."

The tongue piercing for the one difficult teenager took almost 45 minutes and Venus was so close to slapping her customer so she would pass out and not feel the needle. "I swear, teenagers give me the biggest headaches." Venus groaned.

"That one guy got the word 'Pussy' tattooed in his mouth. I swear they were all drunk or something." Luciana said, passing Venus her gatorade. Exhausted from the group, Venus and Lu sat on the couch with Venus' legs over Luciana's lap.

Venus shrugged, putting her head against the back of the couch as Luciana rubbed her legs.

"So white tulips, huh?" Venus nodded her head, kinda dozing off on the couch. "So what he do?"

Venus looked up to Luciana, her eyebrows furrowed. "What do you mean?"

Luciana closed the Gatorade bottle and gulped down the drink. "White tulips mean forgiveness. He cut your hair or something? Mess up your favorite shirt?"

YALL gonna hate me next chapter 😗 sorry not sorry