Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 79147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
I spend a little while prepping my station and getting shit ready for the day. My first appointment is a Marilyn Monroe piercing for a girl who just turned eighteen. She shows up five minutes early, a few friends with her. The other girls are laughing and talking, but I can see the nerves on her face. I glance down at her paperwork to remind myself of her name and then say, “You’ll be okay, Michelle. I’m good at this. It’ll be over quick, and you’ll look fucking hot. All the boys will want up in your yard.”
Michelle giggles.
I lead her around the glass case filled with piercings and toward my chair. She still looks a little skittish, so I keep talking. “My nipples were my first piercing. I was nervous too, but I never regretted it. I went out with this guy once who was covered in ink, but he was scared shitless to get pierced. It was crazy as fuck. Like you’re going to let people—me included—tattoo your skin for hours, but you won’t get a piercing? You’d be surprised how many people are that way. You’re ahead of the game.”
“He seriously got tattoos but wouldn’t get piercings?” she asks.
Bingo. I finish prepping everything while I continue to talk to her. “Yeah. Crazy, right? And the thing was, he wanted piercings too. It wasn’t that he didn’t. He finally let me do him, and it was over in no time. He hardly felt it because I have like, magic hands and shit. You’re lucky you called me.”
I earn myself another giggle from her.
It’s a few minutes later that she’s sitting in my chair with her brand-new piercing and a big-ass smile on her face.
“Oh my God! I fucking love it! You look so hot!” one of her friends tells her but I wait for Michelle’s response.
She looks in the mirror and her eyes fill with tears. “My mom…she passed away from cancer a few months ago. She said what she wanted most is for me to go for whatever I wanted, no matter how scary it was. I know she wasn’t talking about piercings…but I think she would be proud.”
I smile at her and say, “I know she would, baby girl. You did good.”
“Thank you so much.” She stands and hugs me. I give her a discount because I’m a stellar fucking guy like that and then she’s on her way. The day goes fast from there. I’m booked pretty solid with appointments through six. Leila heads in right as I finish cleaning up my station and locking my shit away.
“I might be back in later tonight. See if I get any walk-ins or something. Depends on what I have going on,” I tell her. Leila ties up her long brown hair. Her arms are covered in ink, her chest too. Her newest piece, a spider over her left breast I did for her a few weeks back.
“Okay. Thanks, Cody. Have a good night,” she tells me.
“You too.”
It doesn’t take me long to get back to Metropolis. I grab myself a beer out of the fridge right as there’s a knock on the front door. I walk over, open the door. “Hey. I’m…” The second my eyes meet Hayden’s, shit gets real awkward real quick.
“Oh fuck,” he whispers as red crawls up his neck and face. “Fuck,” he says again and then, “I thought your name was Dean. Not that it matters what your name is but…God, I must have the shittiest luck in the world.”
It takes me a minute to snap out of my stupor. It’s not every day that a guy shows up to rent a room from you and you realize it’s a hookup you met at the bar a few months before. A dude who invited you to be the third with him and his boyfriend and then once shit got started, said boyfriend had a major meltdown and kicked your ass out.
“It’s my middle name,” I say lamely.
He drops his hands, having covered his face with them. “Huh?”
“Dean. It’s my middle name. I use it sometimes when I fuck around with a guy I don’t know.”
“Oh, God.” It’s as though I reminded him of the night we met. The red in his face gets brighter and being the dick that I am, I laugh. Hayden’s features go hard, his jaw clenched.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “But you have to admit, it’s sort of funny.”
“Funny isn’t the word that comes to mind.”
3
Hayden
What the hell is happening?
Seeing Dean…or Cody…or whoever-the-fuck-this-guy-is reminds me of that night several months ago when I came up with what I thought was a brilliant plan. Lance and I hadn’t had sex in so fucking long, and like I was telling the guys last night, I’d tried everything to make it work—everything except bringing another guy into the bedroom. I figured if Lance wasn’t turned on by me anymore, we could find someone who could spark that interest again. Get him back into his groove. I was nervous at first because we had to find the right guy. Someone hot. Someone who wouldn’t give two shits about hooking up with a couple. And most importantly, a guy who was more interested in Lance than me. I could handle a guy shunning me during a threesome. Lance couldn’t.