Chapter 43
“If I hear you asked him to buy you anything,” Gavin warns, standing to tuck the money into his own pocket, “I’m going to be very disappointed in you, young lady.”
“I won’t,” Evie promises, but even to Brody, it sounds half-hearted.
Apparently Gavin thinks the same. “I’m serious. If I hear you begged for anything, I’m not going to take you back down to the water again, got that?”
“I know, I know.” Evie waves both hands in a come on, let’s GO gesture. “Broh-dee. I’m waiting.”
Gavin gives him a grin. “Have fun. Remember, this was your idea.”
“We’ll be back soon,” Brody promises. 33
Evie slips her little hand into Brody’s as they walk down the boardwalk. “You don’t haveto buy me the painting,” she says.
For a moment, Brody isn’t sure what she’s talking about, then he realizes she’s picking up the conversation where she left off back at his booth. “The princess one?”
“With a unicorn,” Evie explains. “It’s a horse with one horn coming out of its forehead. They’re magical.”
“I have a Chinese unicorn tattooed on my back,” Brody tells her.
She stops so abruptly, the people behind them have to swerve to avoid running her over. She looks up at him with wide eyes and asks, “Can I see?”
Brody’s only wearing a black T-shirt today—it’s too warm for long sleeves, and besides, now that Gavin knows all about his inked skin, there’s no reason to keep the art on his body hidden from view. Walking Evie to the edge of the boardwalk, out of the flow of traffic, he turns and tugs up the back of his shirt. “Do you see it?”
He feels a cold, sticky finger in the small of his back, where a rainbow of chakras trace the curve of his spine. “Above the colors, see?” he asks, trying to point without looking while holding his shirt up.
“I see a dragon,” Evie says, doubtful. “It has a horn, but it’s not a unicorn. It’s supposed to be a horse.”
Brody drops his shirt and smooths it back into place. “It’s a Chinese dragon. They call it a qilin.”
“Ky-lin?” Evie asks, taking his hand again as they head back towards the vendor booths.
With a laugh, Brody says, “Something like that.”
The art show has drawn a wide variety of artists—every possible medium is on display, from oil paintings to watercolors, portraits to landscapes, pastels to acrylics. There are large, towering canvases selling for hundreds of dollars alongside artistic trading cards that could fit easily into a wallet or purse. One booth has a caricature artist hard at work, quickly sketching a couple of girls giggling at each other. Another booth is painting henna designs onto customers’ hands and feet. A third has colorful temporary tattoos in a wide variety of images, and the vendor has a wet rag to help customers place the tattoos on their arms and legs.
The temporary tattoo booth draws Evie in, pulling Brody along as she parts through the crowd to get a closer look. “I want a tattoo!” she cries, tugging on his fingers with both hands. “Can I get one, please, Brody? Can I?”
“Your daddy said no,” Brody reminds her.
Evie’s smile instantly disappears. “But you have so many already! I just want one.”
Brody feels himself giving in, and even though he doesn’t say anything, Evie must realize he’s close to caving because she cranes her neck to look over all the flash art displayed in the booth. “I want something pretty,” she says, deliberating over the tattoos as if choosing a design to be permanently inked onto her skin. “Something girly, but punk, too. I want to look Goth. Do you have anything like that?”
The vendor, a young woman in her twenties with a pierced lip and pink pixie haircut, looks at Brody to see if she should bother helping Evie pick out something. His hand drifts to his back pocket, where he still has a few dollars tucked away. “Go ahead, pick something out,” he says. “But only one.”
Evie settles for a pink heart heavily rimmed with black lines that shoot out in swishes and swashes. It’s very grungy, something Brody could see gracing the bicep or calf of a skater or surfer, maybe the lead singer of an alternative band. When the vendor pulls out the tattoo design, though, it looks bigger than it does on the display. “I don’t think that’s going to fit on your arm,” he says, uncertain.
But Evie has no such qualms. She pulls up the short sleeve of her sundress and holds out her arm to the vendor. “It’ll wrap around, like yours do,” she says. The tattoo is pressed onto her skin, and when the rag is pressed over it, Evie giggles. “That’s cold!”
Two minutes later, she has a wicked-looking design taking up most of her forearm. She displays it proudly, turning her arm this way and that to watch the way the sunlight catches the still-damp image. “What do you think?”
Brody laughs as he pays the vendor. “I think if you’re not careful, you’re going to end up like me.”
Evie’s grin suggests she doesn’t think ending up like him is such a bad thing. “I won’t get as many as you,” she assures him, taking his hand again. As they continue down the boardwalk, she leads with her tattooed arm, showing it off and savoring the way it looks. After a little while, she says, “Maybe I’ll get one or two, but that’s it. Maybe I’ll get this one done for real. Do tattoos hurt?”
“Did that one?” Brody jokes.