Tell Me It’s Right (Sweetspire #1)

Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

GRACIE

There’s a weight to the words and an intensity in his eyes that I don’t quite know what to do with. Probably trying to make me squirm for his own amusement. I roll my eyes and step back to put more distance between us. “I didn’t bring my laptop. Are you done with that?” I gesture to the computer. “So I can look around at what you have?”

“All yours.” He glances at his watch as he grabs whatever he just printed, then slides the papers onto the desk in front of me, pops his eyebrows, and wordlessly heads to the back of the shop.

“What’s this?” I call after him.

He doesn’t answer, naturally.

I flip through a few of the pages, freezing at something particularly eye-catching on page three. It’s paperwork for me—namely, my wages and places for me to sign for taxes.

“You’re paying me forty dollars an hour?” I blurt.

Liam’s head pops out of the door in the back, his eyebrows lowered. “Is that not enough?”

“Not en…” I swallow hard. I’d been mentally preparing for a crisp minimum wage. This looks legit. I can’t imagine getting a better offer for an entry-level position, well, anywhere. “Liam…” I shake my head. “It’s too much.”

“Think of it as motivation then.” He flicks his wrist before disappearing into the closet. “Blow me away. Earn it.” His head pops back out, and he points a finger at me, wincing. “Poor choice of words. That was not me coming onto you.”

I let out a strangled laugh, my cheeks flaming at the implication. “Noted.”

He nods once before ducking through the doorway yet again.

How much money is his shop bringing in? I suppose his dad could be funding things, but I’d be surprised. Both because of who Liam’s dad is, but also who Liam is. Despite his family, he’s never seemed content to coast along on a trust fund the way some of his siblings do.

He wouldn’t offer if he couldn’t afford it, right? But he hadn’t been looking for someone, that I know of. He’d only hired me out of pity. Maybe he feels like he can’t pull out now, like he’s obligated to help me since we grew up together, since I’m Leo’s sister, like he’d been joking when he’d offered but?—

“You done with those?”

I lurch back in my chair, my heart in my throat. Liam is standing directly in front of the desk, the raised eyebrow suggesting he’s been there for a while.

“I—yeah.” I quickly scribble the last of my signatures and slide the papers across the desk to him.

He tucks them into a folder, which he shoves in the filing cabinet, then heads to the first station and starts pulling supplies from the drawers.

I frown as he arranges everything on the counter. It’s barely past eight, and he said his first client isn’t coming in until ten. I know absolutely nothing about tattoos, but there’s no way it takes that long to set up.

I turn to the computer and type Brooks Tattoos in the search bar. The website is the first to pop up. It’s not bad. Clearly made from one of the easy templates provided by the host, but it could look worse.

We can definitely do better though.

Right now, there’s the home page, a contact form, an about page with the shop’s location, and a few pictures of his work…but not much else. There aren’t even clear shots of the inside of the shop. Not that I frequent tattoo studios, but if I were looking for somewhere to go, I wouldn’t show up sight unseen. What if it was a dump and looked unsanitary?

Take photos of the shop , I add to my mental list of to-dos.

Liam appears at my side and feeds a thin sheet of paper into the machine beside me. I can’t make out what the purple drawing is from this angle. It must be a stencil—at least I know that much.

He glances over my shoulder as he waits. “What do you think?”

“It’s not as bad as I’d been imagining.”

“Ah, so going off to college also turned you into a snob.”

“I’m not a snob.”

He grins, grabs the paper from the machine, and returns to the tattooing chair. He’s already got ink lined up on the counter in little plastic containers, the tattoo machine—gun, needle, whatever it’s called—set up beside it.

“Do you have someone else coming in this morning?” I ask.

“Nope.” With that, he props one leg on the chair, rolls up his pants, pulls on some gloves, and starts shaving a section on his calf.

“You’re going to do it on yourself ?”

He shrugs, finishes cleaning off his leg, and carefully places the stencil. It looks like a skull, but turned to the side, and with a landscape of mountains inside of it.

Did he just draw that?

“We’ve got some time to kill.”

I stand and drift a little closer as he positions the needle over his skin. Then, like it’s no big deal, the machine buzzes to life, and he gets started. I watch his face for a reaction, but he doesn’t even flinch. He just leans down, eyes focused, a small line creasing his forehead.

“I—doesn’t that hurt?”

His lips quirk. “Doesn’t feel great.”

From what I can see, there are at least a dozen other tattoos on his leg. Did he do all of those too? His eyes flicker up to me for a moment, and his smile grows.

“Pull up a chair. It’ll be more comfortable.”

“Oh—I was just?—”

He laughs. “Come on.”

I grab the one from the front desk and roll it over, eyes glued to the needle as it moves across his skin. It’s kind of mesmerizing. He pulls back, wipes the spot he just did with a cloth, and twists to start from a different angle.

“How’d you learn to do this?”

“Taught myself. First ones weren’t great. Good thing you can’t really see them.”

My eyebrows rise at that, but I don’t ask where they are, because I have a feeling that’s exactly what he wants. We sit in silence, save for the buzzing of the machine as he does a few lines, wipes away the excess ink, repositions himself, then continues. It seems like he’s doing the outline first.

“I’ll be honest,” he says suddenly, “I was surprised to see you come home. Thought once you got a taste of outside of Edgewater, none of us would ever see you again.”

I pull my legs up on the chair and rest my chin on my knees. “I kind of thought the same. I didn’t…” I sigh. “I didn’t expect it to be this hard to get my foot in the door anywhere.”

His eyes flick to my face for a fraction of a second before returning to his leg. “What do you want to do? Dream scenario, where do you end up?”

I let out a breathy laugh. “That’s a good question. And I guess that’s the problem. I don’t really have an answer.”

“You’ll figure it out. Graphic design is a huge field, isn’t it? You could do pretty much anything.”

“That was the hope,” I say quietly, eyes flickering from the tattoo to his face. His features are somehow…softer when he’s concentrating like this. “How did you know? That this was what you wanted to do.”

“I didn’t. Just took a leap of faith, I guess.”

“Seems like it worked out pretty well for you.”

He hesitates, his lips pressing together like he’s considering something, but then all he says is “Didn’t happen overnight, I promise.” He sits back and wipes the ink from his leg again. “Anyway. Don’t let Keava get to you. She can be…” He tilts his head back and forth like he’s searching for the right word. “Insensitive. I don’t think it’s intentional. She’s not great at reading the room.” His eyes flick to mine. “ Don’t tell Leo I said that.”

“I didn’t know someone could be nice and unwelcoming at the same time.”

He pops his eyebrows and starts on the opposite side of the tattoo. “That would be the perfect way to describe it.” Once he’s finished with the outline, he reaches for a different piece of equipment waiting on the counter. “Shading one is different,” he explains as he readies the ink. “So hit me with it. How bad is the site? What are you thinking?”

“It’s just really basic. You could add pictures of the shop, some more of your portfolio. Testimonials, that kind of thing. Link your social feeds, once you have those. We can tweak some things on the back end to help with SEO. Oh! Do you sell merch? Or like aftercare products or whatever? We could set up an online shop. I could bring my camera in tomorrow to get some shots…” I trail off at the grin on Liam’s face and realize I haven’t taken a breath. I look away and flick my wrist, adding a nonchalant “If you want.”

He shakes his head. “Can’t believe you just called me basic.”

That’s what he got from all of that? “I—I didn’t?—”

“Gracie.” He looks up at me, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “You’ve gotta stop making it so easy to mess with you.”

I roll my eyes and push my chair over to the desk.

Filling the next few hours as Liam finishes his tattoo and we wait for his client proves to be pretty easy. Liam’s records are a mess—some digital, some on paper, and his filing cabinet could use a serious reorganization. I don’t know how he manages to keep track of his calendar every day. Half of his appointments are written on sticky notes on the desk, some are added to the calendar in his computer, and some are jotted in a notebook.

If he has a system to anything he does, it’s lost on me.

Maybe it’s an artist-brain thing.

And, like he said, he doesn’t have a single social media account set up. Starting one from scratch would be a lot, let alone them all , so I make a pros and cons lists for which ones we should focus on first while also weighing how likely he would be willing to participate.

“Quite the little chart you’ve got going on over there.” Liam braces his hands on the desk beside me and leans over my shoulder to take in my various lists and notes. “Once a teacher’s pet, always a teacher’s pet, I suppose.”

I scowl. “You’ll be thanking me once I’m done.”

He laughs and pushes back from the desk. “I’m sure I will.”

“Who do you have coming in at ten?” I ask, glancing at the clock. His client should be showing up any minute now.

He tosses his gloves in the trash. “A friend of my brother’s.”

The bells above the door chime a moment later, and a man walks in.

He’s nothing like I would’ve guessed. He’s pretty much Liam’s opposite. All shiny gold hair and bright white smile. He looks like he spends more time in a gym than a tattoo shop, and I’d be willing to put money on him being voted prom or homecoming king at some point.

“Brooks.” He pounds fists with Liam as he steps into the shop, then turns his dimpled smile on me. “Who’s this?”

“This is Gracie. Gracie, this is Miles. She’s gonna be helping me out around the shop.”

Miles looks me up and down. “No offense. But you tattoo?”

“Oh, no.”

“She’s basically doing everything else for me.”

Miles does a slow nod. Honestly, not sure who he is to judge. He doesn’t seem to have any tattoos either, at least none that are visible. “Gotcha.”

“I’ve got a few different versions of the design if you want to check them out,” says Liam.

“For sure.” Miles nods at me. “Nice to meet you, Gracie.”

I wave awkwardly as he heads to the back with Liam.

It occurs to me that Liam and I haven’t gone over any details of me working here. Like how many hours I’m supposed to work, or what I’m supposed to be doing. Make me look good isn’t exactly a job description.

I’ll need his passwords to get into the website and start making any changes, but I really don’t want to have to go ask him right now.

I glance over my shoulder to find Miles already looking at me with more than curiosity in his gaze. He shows no embarrassment or remorse that I’ve caught him staring. No, he just smiles when he catches my eye, and I quickly turn around, my face hot.

Menial work it is. I guess today is as good a day as any to tackle the filing cabinet. When I pry it open, a haphazard pile greets me—loose papers, folders, and random office supplies. I shoot a glare at Liam over my shoulder. His head is bent over as he lines up the stencil on Miles’s back.

He better be paying me enough for this.