Free Bad to the Bone by Melody Mayer

she'd waited before making love with him. When they'd finally done it, it had been so perfect—like every dream she'd ever had about it, and then some.
    But—what did it say about your relationship with the One when you didn't even feel secure enough to write “Love” on your e-mail to him?
    Whatever it was, it couldn't possibly be good.

“Thank you, thank you. I just love it!”
    “My pleasure,” Esme told Luanna Venice, an entertainment lawyer who had just sat perfectly still for nearly two hours while Esme created one of her patented freehand tattoos just above Luanna's right ankle. Luanna had asked for a depiction of the scales of justice, but with that special Esme touch. Esme had done the scales in an outline of black and white, but then had added books to one of the scales, and, knowing Luanna had recently had a baby, a family holding hands to the other.
    “What do I owe you?” Luanna asked. “I know you had to change your schedule to fit me in.”
    Luanna had lustrous streaky gold hair, which she shook with a carefree, too-well-practiced gesture. If she wasn't a lawyer, Esme thought, Luanna could have been a model. It was just so Hollywood—to look like you were playing a lawyer on TV instead of actually being one.
    Entertainment lawyers made a mint, that much Esme knew. Unlike, say, her friend Jorge's father, Roberto, who had chosen to do public interest law, which meant he was never going to make anything close to a mint. Jorge was determined to follow in his father's footsteps.
    “It's a thousand,” Esme said matter-of-factly even though the idea of someone dropping a thousand bucks for a tattoo was still a bit shocking to her.
    Luanna was already reaching into her huge designer bag. “Great. Cash is okay?”
    “Cash is fine.”
    “So here you go.” Luanna counted out bills with a well-manicured right hand. “Ten hundreds, and two more for you. I can't wait for my friends to see this.”
    “You remember how to care for it, until it heals?” Esme asked nonchalantly, as if she received two-hundred-dollar tips every day.
    Luanna grinned and tapped her bag. “I've got your information sheet, it's also up on your Web site, and you made me repeat it two times. I'd say I'm covered.”
    “Infection is bad for business,” Esme pointed out. “I haven't had one yet.”
    Luanna laughed. “Well, I don't plan to be your first. Just give me a dozen of your business cards and get ready for your phone to ring.”
    Esme pointed Luanna to a small table in one of the two tattoo-application rooms she'd put into this office space. On that table was literature about her business and a stack of business cards. The whole thing still seemed unreal—that after years of doing tattoos either in her parents' house in theEcho or just taking her equipment with her, she had rented actual office space, signed an actual lease, and opened up an actual business that had a phone number of its own and a listing in the business directory downstairs. “Esme Ink” is what she called it; she and Jorge had dreamt the name up together, enjoying the play on words. If it wasn't for Jorge, Esme wouldn't have any of this. He had already turned eighteen, and could legally sign paperwork that Esme, who was still a couple of months shy of eighteen, could not.
    The office itself was fairly spartan. There was a tiny waiting area with two chairs, a coffee table, and some art books to inspire potential customers. There were two rooms for tattoos, since the office had formerly been a dentist's office, and two dentists had shared the space. Esme was using only one of the tattoo rooms at present, and had some vague thoughts about maybe subletting the space to another artist. But this whole project had come together so quickly that there'd been no time even to pursue that notion. Just getting up and running was complicated enough. There were licenses to apply for, inspections to secure, and then, there was the actual time of being at the shop.