Sequel: Happily Ever After
Status: Complete

Even Lovers Drown

Chapter 60

“Yeah, on his side,” Christopher said. He examined his work, distracting himself from the conversation. Approving of the stencil placement himself, he slipped off his gloves and held out a hand mirror. “Go check it in the mirror.”

Obediently, possibly from stifled terror, Blake nodded, grabbed the hand mirror, and strolled to the large mirror across the store. Saylor watched her maneuver the smaller mirror for the sake of a decent view. She didn’t even know what Blake was getting, was too distracted by the idea of Davy having a tattoo to ask.

Not just a tattoo. Davy had a tattoo of her. From when she was four. On his side. And she was finding out from his tattoo artist.

“He really didn’t tell you?” Christopher asked, reviving their conversation.

She looked at him, away from Blake, who she was sure was taking longer than necessary to look at her tattoo stencil. Seated, he casually slipped on a new pair of gloves, a precaution against contamination.

At least Blake wouldn’t have to worry about infection in the meticulously sterilized shop.

“No, he didn’t.”

“I’m surprised. He’s had it for almost a year.”

And she had been home for a year. He got the tattoo after she left Katie, after she spilled the secrets of her abuse. His little sister was suffering through a mental and physical recovery while he was away and he got a tattoo of her. That wasn’t a coincidence.

“Did he say why he got it?”

“He was pretty distraught,” Blake said, returning from her procrastinating gaze in the mirror. “No one was going to push him to talk about it.” She nodded to Christopher. “Looks good.”

She’d ask Davy later. Her focus was better geared towards other things. Like acting as a sufficient comforter during Blake’s tattoo process.

Christopher patted the tattoo bench. “Come sit.”

Warily, Blake eyed the tattoo bench, then his tools, then him, then his tools again, no doubt focusing on the needle prepared to dig into her skin. He waited, patient Labrador brown eyes encouraging her to take the seat. With a defeated sigh, she swung her leg over the seat and sat, straddling it, her breasts pressing against the cushions, her chin resting on her crossed arms.

She looked like a child. Valiantly putting on a strong face in preparation of a shot, the expression lurking in her eyes a crack in the façade. This was not the cocky rock star Saylor met at the beginning of tour, not even the rock star most people met. This was Blake. A real person, who could be hurt and had been hurt, who managed to become Saylor’s emotional savior.

“I’ll hold your hand,” Saylor said, sitting on the spare rolling stool.

The least she could do.

Blake didn’t hesitate, her composure didn’t break, but the fear saturating her beautiful blue eyes lessened. She uncurled an arm from the crossed position under her chin and outstretched it towards Saylor, hand palm-up in demand to be filled by another. And Saylor met her unspoken demand, placed her hand in Blake’s and allowed her fingers to curl around it in tight embrace.

Just as any supportive girlfriend would do to keep her partner from emotional breakdown.

“Good thing you brought this one along. Sage would have let you cry,” Christopher stated.

“Sage would have collected my blood for a satanic ritual,” Blake grumbled.

“A noble cause,” he said, poised over her stencil. “You ready?”

Blake’s hand tightened around Saylor’s, but her blue eyes, glued to Saylor’s green ones, held no terror. “Let’s do this.”

And his needle touched skin.

She didn’t yelp, she didn’t jump in shock, she didn’t tighten her already tight grip. She didn’t do what Saylor expected her to do. Instead, she stayed still, each muscle immobile. Even her breath seemed to hide in her lungs.

Maybe she was in shock. Or frozen in fear.

“You okay?” Saylor asked.

Blake’s eyebrows drew together and she tilted her head to the side. As if she wasn’t sure what she was feeling. Her confusion was almost alarming but Saylor stifled her initial panic, convinced herself there were no life-threatening diseases forced into action at the touch of the needle.

“Ow,” Blake mumbled.

Christopher snorted. “No one said it wouldn’t hurt, thug muffin.”

“It’s not that bad. It just… Ow.”

“Feels like a hot scratch,” he supplemented.

“Yeah.”

“I could have told you that.”

Blake glanced over her shoulder at him, one eyebrow raised in exasperation. “And you didn’t because?”

He pulled the needle away from her skin long enough to shrug without causing damage and returned to his task. His eyes never left the stencil. “I like to see you squirm.”

The rest of Blake’s friends seemed to enjoy causing her the same discomfort.

“Jerk,” she grumbled and rested her chin against her curled arm, blue eyes meeting Saylor’s again. “He gets it from Sage.”

“Shouldn’t say that too loud,” Saylor said, “Sage might hear you.”

“And perform a satanic ritual on me.”

“I’ll help her,” Christopher said.

A scowl twisted Blake’s lips, petulant, childish. Saylor couldn’t stop her chuckle and, before she could think, raised Blake’s hand to her lips and placed an affectionate kiss on its back. She didn’t even realize she had carried out the oddly domestic action till she brought their hands back to their relaxed position above her lap.

But she didn’t question it, decided not to question anything that pushed her farther into the girlfriend role. And when Blake’s scowl broke in an excited smile, she was glad she hadn’t taken the time to think before acting.

“So,” Christopher said, likely intent on keeping his victim talking to keep her distracted from the needle plunging into her skin. “Why the anchor?”

She was getting an anchor? Of all the things that could have taken the important role of her first, and likely only, tattoo, an anchor wasn’t one Saylor expected. Something musical, maybe. A pinup girl, to show off for the sake of showing off. Not an anchor. Unless there was a pinup mermaid or sailor sitting on the anchor.

Curious, Saylor shifted forward in her seat and peered over Blake’s shoulder to gaze at the stencil. The simplistic, well-drawn outline of an anchor was stamped on her skin, void of the color or shading that would be added later. Aside from the rope twisting around it, there were no other decorations. It went against everything she expected Blake to get.

But the anchor seemed to fit.

“It’s a reminder,” Blake answered.

“What kind of reminder?”

Saylor shifted back into her original position on the stool, no longer leaning over Blake’s shoulder. She was curious about the meaning behind the tattoo she was so insistent on getting, even more curious as to whether or not she would get the full story. She wouldn’t be offended either way. Anything Blake wanted to keep to herself, she could keep to herself. She was ready to provide visual cues to coach her through the story or show her she was fine not knowing for now. Gentle hand squeezes, small smiles, mouthed words, anything to make a potentially painful situation easier for Blake.

“It’s a reminder that I have the best friends I could ever ask for to keep me grounded,” Blake said. Her serious, blue eyes met Saylor’s, and she knew she was going to get the story Davy hinted at. “I shouldn’t let things eat at me when I have people to turn to. I used to forget that.”

“You wouldn’t be the first. Sometimes, we forget that we can confide in the people who care for us and we end up doing stupid things,” Christopher said.

“You’re telling me.”

But she wasn’t referring to a vague, continual stream of events. Saylor could see it in her eyes. She was sure that glazed over appearance frequented her own eyes when her thoughts revolved around Katie.

“So, what happened?” Christopher asked.

Apparently, Christopher could feel it, too.

“It was high school, you know how that is.”

“High school’s rougher for some than it is for others.”

Saylor recalled her high school experience being easy enough. She was liked by most of her peers, she did well in school, her teachers loved her. She had nothing to complain about.

“Well, it was terrible for me. I was,” Blake hesitated, searching for the appropriate word. “An outcast. I got harassed daily. I never fit in, so I focused on school work. Most days, I was sure I would have given up if I didn’t have the two friends I did have.”

“I thought the band was formed while you were in high school,” Christopher said.

“Not till my senior year. I just had Sage and Davy, who were great, but I didn’t go to them when I needed them most.”

“When was that?”

She said nothing for a moment. Her eyes bore into Saylor’s. Searching. Deciding. This story, whatever it entailed, was important to her, Saylor understood. Telling her meant baring her soul. She had to make sure she was doing the right thing.

Blake finally spoke. “Our junior year. I had a huge crush on this girl. Sage and Davy hated her, but I didn’t listen to anything they said. I adored her, worshipped the ground she walked on. All those warnings they gave me were useless.”

“You should have listened. I haven’t known Davy long but I know he’s a pretty good judge of character. Sage,” Christopher paused, “well, she needs work.”

Sage was more critical, that was all, but Saylor wasn’t going to point that out. She wasn’t going to say anything to distract Blake from her story. She wanted to hear this. She wanted to know.

“I know I should have. They were right. She pretended she was interested, ended up getting me to buy her things and do her schoolwork for her, but she wasn’t.”

“You should be happy it didn’t work out. Imagine, you’d probably still be with her and she’d spending all of your money on plastic surgery and clothes. Besides, I bet Saylor’s prettier.”

Saylor flushed and almost ducked her head to avoid hearing or seeing the response to his comparison. She wouldn’t be able to stand hearing she didn’t match up to some high school girl. But Blake smiled, her serious expression brightening. Her response wouldn’t be negative.

“Yeah, she is. If I had known I was going to meet her later on, I wouldn’t have been so brokenhearted when that girl started dating a football player days after telling me she couldn’t be with me.”

Ouch.

“That bitch,” Christopher said, “She didn’t know who she was turning down.”

“And I thought the worst part would be seeing them suck face in the hallway. But she took it further.”

“What the hell did she do? Fuck him against a locker?”

“She told him I was lesbian and the whole school knew by the next morning. They used that as an excuse to terrorize me. You can imagine how difficult going to school was after that.”

Two sentences to encompass what her peers did to her. Nothing more. She wasn’t going to delve into the things they did. That wasn’t the point of the story. There was something else, something more important, something she wanted Saylor to know, and Saylor wouldn’t interrupt her to demand a full account of each crime against her.

She could figure out well enough on her own.

“She outed you to the whole school?”

Blake nodded. “I eventually just stopped going to school because I couldn’t handle it. I would lie in bed and cry. I wouldn’t shower, I wouldn’t eat, I wouldn’t sleep, I wouldn’t talk to anyone. And the whole time, all I could think of was her and what she did.”

“She didn’t deserve to get to you like that. She deserved to be hit by truck or have a house land her.”

“Davy said the same thing while I was in the emergency room.”

Saylor’s breath caught, her heart fell into her stomach. The emergency room? Did someone hurt her, come to her home and beat her till she needed to be rushed away in ambulance? Or did she hurt herself?

Christopher halted his work and stared at the back of her head. “Blake,” he started but she didn’t let him finish.

“I just wanted to sleep,” Blake said, “I was so tired and I wanted to go where I could forget for a little while. I took one of my mom’s sleeping pills. It didn’t work fast enough so I took another. And another. And another. And another. And I kept taking them till I was curled on the floor, in pain and vomiting. I don’t know when I blacked out but I woke up in the ER.”

“It was an accident.”

“I wasn’t stupid. I knew what I was doing.”

But she didn’t glance at him when she said it. She stared directly into Saylor’s eyes, spoke those damning words to her, and was waiting for her to do something. So Saylor did the only thing she could think to do.

She leaned forward and pressed a kiss on the corner of Blake’s lip. “You don’t know how glad I am you’re alive,” she mumbled, “I can’t imagine what I would have done if I hadn’t met you.”

Because meeting Blake made her face the things she refused to while stuck in her room. Because Blake was helping her move on better than anyone could. Because she adored Blake and she didn’t want to imagine what living without her would mean.

Blake smiled, broad, heart-warming, and Saylor couldn’t help smiling back. Blake was alive, Blake was okay, Blake was hers.
♠ ♠ ♠
Thank you to tru-love5, I am Cheese! :3, Tori the Elf, If.You.Be.My.Star., A Bittersweet Spell, ThatKidNamedCarson, paramore_fan07, Reba, appley92, Laur-Farrah, MRGF123, choliecole, and Deathsmistres for the story comments.
And thank you to any new subscribers.
Some people psyche themselves out when they get a tattoo and it makes it hurt worse than normal. Sometimes, that'll make them pass out or move a lot, making it even worse.
Some people describe it as being a "hot scratch" or something similar.
Depends on your pain tolerance, too.
I imagine Blake would have a pretty high pain tolerance.
I picture her as a kind of kinky person, that's why.
And with Saylor there to help her, she's not quite as spazzy.
And she can't see the needle. That helps when you're a needle phobe getting a tattoo.

If you haven't noticed, Mibba changed again.
I'm not okay with the sharing option.
At all.
I'm hoping they get rid of that soon.
It's not that I care if people read my stories.
I care if people share the story and try to pass it off as their own.
'Cause, you know, if someone reads it and decides not to check out the author profile, they may actually believe the person trying to claim its theirs.
I've already had one dance with plagiarism; that's not happening again.
Also, I do want to get published and all those story ideas I bounced off you guys last update are ones I want to attempt to get out there.
I can't do that if the story (whichever one it ends being) is all over the fucking internet, where I can't control whether or not it gets taken down.
I know, I know "You're posting it on the internet, get over it."
No.
I know people can still copy and paste, but at least I'll be able to find it and contact the site officials. (Google search is lovely)
That's not as easy with sharing on social media sites.
That being said, if the share option doesn't go away, I may end up on another site.
Which sucks because I like Mibba. Everything else is very nice.
I won't be posting another story anytime soon so they may end up getting rid of the share option before my next story is ready to go up, because I know there are other authors not okay with it. For different reasons.
If they don't, I'll give you guys a link to wherever I end up posting. I'll put it somewhere you guys can read it without forcing you to make an account.
(Interesting fact: There are actually some publishing companies okay with a portion of your rough draft being online. For marketing purposes.)

So let's look at how the voting's going
1. A lesbian romance based loosely on The Little Mermaid: 4
2. A lesbian werewolf romance based very, very loosely on Little Red Riding Hood: 3
3. A lesbian romance based in Regency England: 2
I'm actually kind of surprised The Little Mermaid is winning.
But I hope you all are okay with any of the options in the long run.
Anyone else who wants a say, vote on your pick. Comment on the story, my profile, message me, whatever.
You don't have very long to vote. Once the epilogue is finished being written, I'm starting on the next story.
(Yeah, I'm writing the epilogue/sequel/thing right now)
There are still a good number of chapters left to post.
This isn't the end.
Don't worry, guys, I just like to keep ahead so I can tweak things as I go.
I hope you all enjoyed.
Comment/Subscribe?
Peace from Cali,
Dakota Ray