“I don’t think so.” She hands me an extra bag and her bracelets slide toward her elbow. I see a tattoo on her wrist I hadn’t noticed before. A thin black line looped into a knot. “Hazelnut?”

“Four,” I say.

“Caramel?”

“Three.”

She hands me one. “Ugh. The caramel smells so bad.”

“I know,” I say. “It doesn’t smell like caramel.”

“It smells like vomit,” she says.

It’s stupid, but I love that we’re agreeing. We might be headed toward a real conversation.

“Mocha?” she asks.

“One.”

She hands me the rest. I put them away and jump down from the counter. She yawns and stretches, watching people walk by outside like she hopes someone interesting will show up.

“I think I want to get a tattoo,” I say. And really it isn’t a thing I thought about, but as soon as I say it, I do want one. A mark to prove I’ve changed, that I’m not the same sad old April in the motorhome.

Carly perks up. “Nice. What are you going to get?”

“Not sure,” I say, feeling the wobble of nerves in my belly.

“There’s a place right on The Commons,” she says. “They’re pretty good.” And before I know it, she’s arranged for Bodie to cover for us, and for the Lettuce Murderer to come in early to cover for Bodie, so we can take our lunch break together and go to the tattoo shop. It’s this spiraling thing where my random thought becomes what I’m actually going to do and it’s so exhilarating I forget to be nervous.

Bodie spends the rest of the morning sitting in the kitchen with his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth, sketching on a napkin. We don’t know what he’s drawing. He won’t let us see, and it’s hell to get him to fill orders, but when he’s done, he gives the napkin to me. “Just an idea,” he says. “For your tattoo.” It’s a white flower with a yellow center and five pointy petals like a star, streams of every color shooting out behind like it’s zooming through space. It’s beautiful and I can’t believe Bodie drew it just for me.