The Culture of Hooking Up

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The flowers in the one drawing, covered in a clear cover sheet and pinned up against the white wall, are expected as they sit neatly in a pot, dangling off the sides, or by themselves with swaying black stems. I was also expecting the array of skulls, some plain, some bloody, and some floral. I was even expecting the suns, moons, eyes, hearts, bows and arrows, yin and yangs, and peace signs. But I wasn't expecting there to be a drawing of a snake's open mouth with bloody fangs clamped around a rat.

    "What do you think?" Jack's asks when he returns to my side.

    I throw my head back up to assess myself in the ceiling mirror once more. "I think you're crazy."

I watch as Jack shakes his head with his chuckles before he looks up, too. His high tops and my short boots blend in with the black and white checkered floor. It doesn't help that I'm wearing a cropped, black t-shirt sweater and grey jeans, while Jack, on the other hand, matches the queen of hearts aesthetic with his thin red sweater and black jeans.

"We're ready for you." The tattoo artist smiles and gestures for us to follow her back. Part of me would rather continue staring at the bloody tattoo sample drawings than watch a needle drill into Jack's skin, but instead I silently shuffle behind him.

"I want to show you something." Jack's lips brushed up against my ear earlier while I was in the middle of talking to a group of girls. I was consoling one who was recently ghosted by a guy she really liked, complaining about the trials and tribulations of boob sweat with another one, and talking about the best recipe for edible cookie dough with the last one.

I could feel Jack's eyes on me the whole time, burning into my already flushed cheeks because of the crowded Saturday night club atmosphere instead of any drop of alcohol. I tried to ignore him. I really did. I ditched the bar to accompany one of the girls to the bathroom. I put my back to him when a few guys waltzed up and offered to buy our little group some drinks. I was knee-deep in the anthropology that's sometimes necessary and even inevitable with ethnography.

And yet there he was, just standing around, occasionally chatting with the bartenders, and eventually, after finishing his beer, wiggling his eyebrows every time he caught me glancing back.

It was only when I bid the girls goodbye, the broken-hearted one stumbling along between the other two, that I turned, eyebrows raised, to face what some may assume to be Jack's brooding presence, but I know better. I know brooding is the farthest synonym, even the most absurd possible antonym, for his personality. But it doesn't help that as soon as I turned my head, his lips curved upward into a skinny crescent moon.

Even though I'm still craving a warm chocolate chip cookie, I was fine with leaving the heavy pulse of the night club music behind, but I wasn't expecting it to be replaced by low, jazzy music in a red neon light buzzing tattoo parlor.

"You owe me," I grumble.

Jack's shoulders only shake in silent laughter, while my eyes continue to be lulled like magnets up at the ceiling.

"Hey!" I whine not only because I've metaphorically been seeing red since we stepped off the bus, but also because I'm now literally seeing the red of Jack's sweater that he tossed at my head like a coat rack.

I rip it off and send him my award winning resting b*tch face, that I like to believe is on reserve for situations like this, but that's a lie. It's always there. And Jack only gives me a quick chin tip and a smile, so I'm left running my hands through my now frizzy hair. I do appreciate the fact that his sweater carries warmth as I fold it in between my arms as I fold my arms across my chest. But, once again, I'm caught off guard when he even lifts up the thin white t-shirt he has on underneath and keeps it under his head as he lays belly down on the black leather table. I'm reminded of the thousand little brown freckles he has scattered across his chest that disperse on his back as well as the little patch of dark hair that isn't visible to the tattoo artist hovering over his back, but I know leads a little path down into the hem of the black boxer briefs poking out of his jeans.