She’s still trying to get the older guy to react to her tit display, but he doesn’t seem impressed. I bet he sees girls like her all the time, especially this week.

Spring break on Wicked is typically crazy, full to the brim with young, rich trust fund babies in the prime of their first week of freedom. Bars and clubs are more relaxed on their carding policy. Cops let the rules go because more people are spending money, and it’s known for being a playground for the rich kids. Not quite as sleazy as Cancún, but just as wild.

While we wait, I glance around the shop. It’s decorated like a mechanic’s garage with big red toolboxes and short black stools on wheels, which is clever and somehow sexy. The front desk is a glass case full of photos and piercing jewelry. It’s actually a pretty tasteful place and not what I expected. I’ve only ever seen it from the outside, and I was picturing something seedier. My parents would freak if they knew I was in here, but just like every spring break on Wicked, they disappear and leave me alone for the entire week.

I’m an adult now, so it’s not like I need a chaperone anymore. But if they knew where I was, I bet they would disagree. I smile to myself thinking about their reaction.

The thought of shocking them makes me strangely happy.

“Natalie?” Another man appears from behind the wall that divides the front waiting area and the back where the tattoos are taking place. I glance up when I hear his voice, smooth and deep like chocolate, and my jaw nearly hits the floor. I can’t take my eyes off of him. He’s covered from his hands to his neck in tattoos, but they’re not all black like the older guy’s. They’re beautiful, vibrant, and full of color like a mural on his skin. In fact, I don’t think there is any black in them at all—like a watercolor.

But it’s not his tattoos that keep my attention. It’s his familiarity.

I know him.

Every summer I come to the island, I seek him out, in the least creepy way possible, of course. Once or twice, I would gawk at him through the window as I passed on the boardwalk. More than once, I watched him eating at the diner down the street.

Why I’ve been so drawn to him, and act like a stalker suitable for a true crime documentary, I don’t know.

It’s not just his looks, and I mean, he is gorgeous, with his rich brown hair that always falls in perfect waves over his forehead and his sharp cheekbones. Maybe that’s what caught my eye the first time I saw him back when I was just fourteen, but the fascination became something more than that.

I could see the trouble in his eyes, like he held secrets I wanted to know and wisdom I could never understand. He can’t be more than twenty-five, but I can just tell his twenty-five years have seen a lot more than my nineteen.