Howdy Honey (Rolivia)

Stuck on You

I have a feeling—call it Just an Inkling—
That under your skin you've got a twinkling
For a permanent contract, cannot be breached
You're lucky I love you, my sweet Georgia peach
There's a first time for everything for this girl from the city
Even voluntary disfigurement for her little pretty

Okay, so that had been stretching it a bit, but you try rhyming forty-one clues while simultaneously planning an elaborate treasure hunt, raising three small children, commanding a squad of three adult-size children, and trying to keep up with a sexy, sassy blonde spitfire.

In the end, Olivia had realized that forty-one— though a prime and highly attractive age for a woman (especially her woman)—was an ambitious number for a treasure hunt. She'd whittled it down to five envelopes, each one to be awarded after Amanda figured out the previous riddle, with some standbys in the glove box, should plans go awry.

Five ought to be enough to keep them good and occupied for most of the day, and if not, she knew how to improvise. She hadn't cooked up this scheme by being an unimaginative bore.

"Fringe benefits." Amanda snorted out a little laugh that somehow had a twang to it, and flapped her arms, looking like a crow about to take flight with all that dangling black fringe. "I just got that one."

Luckily, she had solved the second clue faster, or at least part of it. Her fists raised triumphantly overhead, she'd shouted the name of the tattoo parlor ("Just an Inkling! Woo!") when she recited the lines out loud, and turned to Olivia with the same wide-eyed astonishment as their middle child at the candy store. Any kind? Really?

But Jesse's mama had a craving of another sort, a much more expensive and painful one. Three weeks earlier, as they lay tangled up in sweaty sheets and each other, Olivia trailing her fingertip over the name inscribed on the blonde's arm—slender and pale as birch—Amanda had announced, "I'm in the mood to get another one."

Olivia made some joke or another about multiple orgasms, but she'd known Amanda was referring to a tattoo. She had no strong feelings about body art herself (talk to her again when Noah wanted his first tattoo or piercing), it just wasn't something she felt the need for, beyond the pierced ears she'd snuck out of the apartment to get at age fourteen. By then, she was already years behind her peers, and her mother had been apoplectic when she saw the tiny studs: "You don't do things to your body unless I say so, young lady."

She supposed she could relate to going under the needle as an act of rebellion—those pinpoint amethyst studs were chosen because they were her birthstone (someone might as well celebrate the occasion, and she'd read that the ancient Greeks once believed amethyst protected against drunkenness)—but it had been years since she felt the need to rebel. Practically since the time of the ancient Greeks.

"It doesn't have to be about that," Amanda had countered, twining a lock of brown hair around one spindly finger, the others skating languidly across Olivia's skin. "It's a form of self-expression. Should mean somethin' special to you. And it doesn't have to be where people can see it. Personally, I think it'd be kinda sexy if you had one here . . . or here . . . "

The detective had spent the next half hour mapping Olivia's body with invisible ink. If her designs were met, there would hardly be a single patch of natural skin tone left under Olivia's dress blues. And while it hadn't changed Olivia's mind completely, it had given her something to contemplate. A week later, she'd booked an appointment at the parlor: April 21st, 2 o'clock in the afternoon, back-to-back sessions. If she was going to participate in this ancient scarification ritual, Amanda damn well better be there to hold her hand through it.

She hadn't expected to be so nervous. Deep down, she could guess why her stomach felt untethered, like a kite wheeling in midair after the string snapped, careening towards parts unknown—and it wasn't about the pain. She didn't like needles; didn't like them, but didn't fear them, either. And her threshold for pain was "exceptionally high," according to a doctor who beamed like he was paying her a compliment when she didn't flinch during treatment for . . . one of her injuries. (Childbirth would be a snap for you, he'd confided. Are you offering? she'd almost snapped right back.)