Lisa, the lavender-haired piercer, comes out of the office and squeals her surprise. “Randy! Does Hayden know you’re here?”

I smile and lift a hand in greeting. “We’re a little early.”

She looks over to Lily, who’s stopped her perusal to check out the female voice associated with the enthusiastic greeting. Her expression is a mixture of mild shock, awe, and if I’m not mistaken, a hint of jealousy. I like Lily in green. A lot.

“Lisa, this is my girlfriend, Lily. She wanted to come along today and maybe see about Hayden designing a piece for her, too.”

“Oh? Awesome!” Lisa clomps across the hardwood floor, her heavy boots a serious contrast to her lavender dress, and extends a hand to Lily, whose lips turn up in a tentative smile. “It’s really nice to meet you, Lily.”

“You, too.”

“Hayden doesn’t have appointments scheduled until later this afternoon, so it shouldn’t be a problem to discuss a design for you.”

“He didn’t do that because of me, did he?” I ask.

“You know what he’s like. He doesn’t want any kind of divided focus. Oh, and Chris is here, too, so you can talk about the team designs, if you want.”

“That would be awesome. Hayden mentioned he had some preliminary sketches worked up.” My excitement over the new sleeve becomes more real now that I’m here, in the shop.

Hayden comes out of the private room where I had my sleeve done. He’s tall and kind of lanky, with full sleeves. His typically serious face breaks into a smile.

“Hey, man! You’re early.” He holds out his hand, and we shake while bumping shoulders.

“Is that okay? You know how it is when the excitement kinda takes over.”

Hayden pats me on the back. “I got you. I’m getting the itch again, but I’m running out of skin to put it on.”

“I’ve got a long way to go before that happens.” I glance over at Lily, who’s migrated to the jewelry counter with Lisa.

She’s not looking at the contents of the glass case. Her gaze is fixed on us, and it’s bouncing from me to Hayden. I motion her over and throw an arm around her shoulder. “This is my girlfriend, Lily. She wanted to come along and maybe talk to you about a design.”

Hayden turns his grin on her and extends a hand. “It’s great to meet you. We can definitely talk ink designs once we go through Randy’s, sound good?”

“That sounds great. Awesome. Thanks. Nice to meet you.” Lily shakes his hand a little longer than necessary, her cheeks flushing as she looks over his arms and the lick of vine crawling up his neck.

Hayden takes us to the private room so we won’t have any interruptions. He’s always super organized—Lisa calls him anal—and he seems to get razzed for it a lot.

He goes into professional artist mode as soon as he flips open the folder. Bright bursts of color decorate the page, and the designs look almost three-dimensional. Hayden’s been working with watercolor images lately, and these are fantastic.

“So I know when we first started talking about this, we thought we’d start shoulder down, but I think that really depends on where you plan to get the team tattoo.” Hayden flips over another page.

“Oh my God! That’s incredible.” Lily grabs my arm with one hand and reaches out with the other, but stops abruptly and looks to Hayden. “Can I touch that? It looks so real.”

A half-grin quirks up the side of his mouth. “Yeah, go right ahead.”

Lily brushes over the design and glances at the naked arm she’s stroking. “That’s going to look amazing.”

“I think so, too.” The hockey puck looks as if it’s being shot toward the net, a spray of ice framing it. It appears as if it could come flying off the page and hit me in the face. The rest of the tattoos have a similar three-dimensional feel.

Hayden and I quickly get into the fine details, talking about shading, placement, and which designs I like the best.

After half an hour of Lily hanging off my arm, offering her opinions, and bouncing in her seat, I’m about ready to take her home and bang the excitement right out of her. But we still need to talk about her tattoo.

Hayden marks the designs in order of preference and makes notes on the changes we’ve discussed before neatly writing Lily’s name on the top of a new folder.

“Let’s talk about you,” he says.

Lily does this blinking thing and looks up at me before she turns back to Hayden. “Um, okay?”

Hayden laughs and taps his pencil on the desk. “Do you have any ink already?”

“Oh! No. This will be my first.”

“Ah. Very cool. So we’re popping your ink cherry, then, yeah?”

Lily’s cheeks turn pink, and she nods. “Uh, yeah, I guess.”

“Do you have any ideas for designs?” he prompts.

“Oh! Yes! I found a few yesterday online.” Lily pulls her phone out of her purse and scrolls through her pictures, showing Hayden a watercolor-looking heart. “I don’t really want just a heart, but, like, I figured maybe we could take a pair of skates and set them inside the heart, you know, ’cause I’m a skater.”

“Gotcha.” Hayden flips through the images for a minute and starts drawing right away, which is typically how it goes when we talk designs.

“Oh! But can we have one skate black and one white?” She tucks her hair behind her ears, exposing her earrings. “Like these?”

Hayden glances up and then leans in so he can check out the earrings. “Those are cool.”

“Randy got them for me for Valentine’s Day.” And she’s back to blushing.

Hayden spends a little more time asking questions, getting a feel for Lily’s favorite colors and the designs she seems to like.

Once they’re finished, he looks to me. “If you want, we can review the preliminary sketches for the team tattoos. Chris came in this morning to work on them a bit, and Jamie’s probably here by now, too, so we can look them over, and you can tell us what you think and if we’re on the right track.”

“Definitely.”

Hayden steps out, giving us a few minutes of privacy while he gets the other artists and the first-round sketches.

“So, what do you think, luscious?”

“You’re right about him being intense, but he’s nice.”