“I’m really not,” Jack says, glancing down at her T-shirt. “You know, I don’t know many twenty-four-year-olds who are literally paralyzed by a fear of failure.”

“I’m not paralyzed by anything,” I say. Except nipples, apparently. Jack peels off her white T-shirt. From delicate wristbone to wide shoulder blade, she’s covered in tattoos, maybe hundreds of them, grayscale ink against light brown skin. I register Mount Hood, a stingray, a line of evergreens, a compass, a desert scene with cacti in bloom.

Jack is living art. The story of an entire life stamped across her skin.

I have a sudden, irrational impulse to have my art on Jack’s body; I want to claim a small patch of her skin for a drawing.

You’ve known this woman for six hours, I remind myself. Get a fucking grip.

“I could never do that,” I mumble, dropping my head again. “Get a tattoo, I mean.”

“You could,” she says, taking a step closer to me, one hand holding her T-shirt out closer to the air dryer. “We could if you wanted. I mean, I’m sure most places have closed from the snow, but I know a few people, and—”

“Jack.” She turns her head to look at me. “I’m not getting a tattoo today.”

She’s close enough that I can smell the damp on her, the sweat and the cold, but beneath all that, even now, is the scent of freshly baked bread. Jack smells like something I want to eat. “Not even right here?” She presses two cold fingertips to the exposed skin south of my collarbone. “Not even where no one would see it? Your little cardigan would hide it.”

My stomach clenches again at those two fingers, at her closeness and the smell of her skin. At the thought of her picking out art that would live on my body forever.

“What’s the story behind your tattoos?”

Jack takes a step back and surveys her own arms. “What, all of them?”

“Your favorite ones.”

She points to her forearm, where there are three parallel waves. “This was actually the first one I ever got. I was seventeen, but a buddy of mine had a brother who did it for me. I was on the swim team in high school. It was pretty much the only reason I went to school, so I could be allowed to compete. Oh, and this….” She twists around to point to the Mount Hood tattoo on her bicep. “This was my first legal tattoo. I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest my whole life, and there’s literally nothing better than a sunny day in Portland, when the mountain is out. And this one.”