Chapter Text
It is 8 p.m. on a Thursday night, Natalie Scatorccio has a very long day tomorrow, and she is just trying to sleep.
Her entire Friday had been booked, morning through evening filled with various sessions. It was the cost of being one of most reputable tattoo shops on the east coast, one she would gladly pay if it meant the lights stayed on and her artists stayed fed.
While she dreaded the ache she’d definitely feel later in her back and arms, she couldn’t help but always be excited to see the ideas she’s drafted with clients finally manifest in stark lines against their skin. It wasn’t too essential that she get a good night of rest – she could probably tattoo a clean line in her sleep and potentially had, if you counted her dreams that felt way too much like reality and had left her confused come morning – but she’d still like to nonetheless.
Burrowing into her pillow, Nat eventually kicks her feet in anger and sits up, launching it at her window where the lights from the next-door apartment are almost blindingly bright. It hits with a soft thud, a photograph of Nat’s old soccer team clattering to the ground as collateral.
The incessant banging of a hammer next door goes on uninterrupted. Nat’s got half a mind to go over there and give them a taste of New York hospitality. However, she’s not too keen on starting shit with someone she lives right next to. Not yet.
If they keep this up, though? She can’t be held accountable for her actions.
In an effort to avoid potentially committing a crime, Nat ends up dialing Van Palmer instead.
“What?” Van eventually answers, voice heavy with sleep.
Nat laughs, shrugging a leather jacket over a purposefully-tattered band tee she’d been gifted from an ex-boyfriend. “Good evening to you, too. Go out with me.”
She hears shuffling on the other end of the line and hopes it’s a good sign that Van sounds more awake than before when she says, “I don’t know if Tai would appreciate that.” Nat rolls her eyes, regardless of if Van can see it.
“Don’t be a smartass. Let’s go to a bar! How about Scott’s? Ben loves us. And it’s Karaoke Thursday. You know you love karaoke.”
There’s a pause – Van deliberating quietly. Finally, she hums and says, “Yeah, no. Nat, you and I are both fully booked tomorrow. I’ve got a whole group of college girls coming in for nose piercings at noon and I cannot deal with that if I’m running on no sleep. Or hungover, for that matter.”
Nat whines into the line, phone now sat on her bathroom sink as she expertly draws on the wings of her eyeliner. It may be a little presumptuous to have gotten ready before Van had even given her the affirmative, but she’d also known Van for longer than a decade and knew when she was bound to get her way. “Van, please. They’re still working on the building next door, and I’m going crazy. You’re gonna see me on the news for second-degree murder tomorrow if I don’t get out of here, and then the shop will close down and neither one of us will be fully booked.” She’s exaggerating, but not by much.
It works.
“Geez, okay. Let me see what Tai’s up to. I’ll meet you there at ten.”
-
Nat’s making idle conversation with Ben as he bustles around the bar, watching the ice cubes slowly melt in her Jack and Coke.
To be fair, she hadn’t really come to the bar in order to socialize or to get drunk. Now that she was here she wasn’t entirely positive what to do, with Van and Tai being too fidgety of a duo to sit with her like normal civilized human beings. As-is, Ben is her best choice for entertainment. He’s almost always wrapped up in some kind of drama with a boyfriend – or boyfriends, plural.
She’d known him since she’d moved to Queens and claimed Scott’s as her watering hole at twenty-four, needing to cope with the stress of bartering with her shop’s previous owner and dropping all of her life savings in one fell swoop to give birth to her passion project: a charmingly grunge tattoo shop named Queen of Hearts.
She was twenty-seven now, going through an appropriate level of existential dread as she stared down her rapidly-approaching thirties. Nat imagines, if she’d settled and stayed in her hometown of Wiskayok, New Jersey, she’d probably be unhappily trapped in a marriage and living out of a trailer park like her own parents.
That she’d marry a man like her father – sad and heavy handed. Fall for their passion and ambition, like her mother had, and stay through it all out of fear of both the unknown and being alone.
Avoiding a fate like that makes the time she’d spent surviving off of ramen noodles and saltine crackers in her first few years of independence worth it.
Ben raps his knuckles on the bar top in front of her, startling Nat out of her thoughts.
“Looks like everyone is about to get a show.” He says with amusement, and Nat turns her body towards the small stage centered along the back wall of the bar.
Van and Tai make their way onto the platform, small spotlights making them stand out in the dim and moody lighting of the bar. “This one goes out to a very special lady,” Van says into the microphone while pointing Nat out amongst the small crowd. “Natalie Scatorccio, I’m blaming my hangover tomorrow on you.”
Beside her Tai laughs, slinging an arm around Van’s shoulders as she throatily sings the introductory line to You Oughta Know – “I want you to know,” emphatically directed at her.
Nat loves her friends, but it doesn’t stop her from groaning and hiding her face in her hands from embarrassment at the amused patrons watching the exchange.
After a minute Van and Tai fully get into the song, having enough mercy on Nat to let up their teasing and sing at each other playfully instead. Nat finally drops her hands and feels a smile dimpling her cheek as she listens to them absolutely butcher the Alanis track.
“Well, somebody’s popular.”
Nat startles, slightly, at the low and warm voice that comes from beside her. She’d been so caught up in watching her friends make fools of themselves she hadn’t even noticed someone approaching.
She moves to respond, pivoting in her seat to face the bar again, but when her eyes fall on the stranger her brain buffers.
Normally, she’s way more collected than this. She’s reasonably confident, has never been one to shy away from a little flirting, and has had her fair share of conquests. As it is, she finds herself gaping at tall, dark and handsome like a fish.
Tall isn’t an exaggeration. Even given the elevation of the stool, Nat has to look up at her a bit. She finds it unfairly attractive.
The girl looks charming (if not slightly out of place) in her pair of lived-in and paint-splashed overalls, fastened over a white tee. She’s giving a kind of ‘artsy hipster’ vibe, one Nat would normally view as a red flag but is currently finding to not be such a bad thing.
Out of all there is to admire, though, Nat gets stuck on her eyes.
Deep pools of chocolate brown, wide and round and looking at her appreciatively. She suddenly becomes very conscious of herself. Namely, her posture, back straightening – she doesn’t miss the way the girl’s eyes snag on her fishnet-clad legs as she crosses them. She’s almost positive the girl doesn’t miss the way she fumbles in the movement under such scrutiny.
The brunette (Nat wonders if her bangs effortlessly fall like that, or if it’s a painstaking process like styling her own) cuts through her blatant staring, not unkindly, eyes twinkling when she says, “Those are your friends up there, right? They’re great.”
Nat cringes momentarily, before tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as she grins. “Oh, those freaks up on stage? Never met them a day in my life.”
“Shoot. So you’re not the famed Natalie Scatorccio?” She jokes.
Her name sounds like heaven falling from the girl’s pink, plush lips. Nat has the abrupt and irrational thought that she could probably hear her say it a thousand more times and still feel goosebumps erupt on her skin like it was the first. Generally, she’s not this easy. There’s just something about her that makes Nat feel out of her depth.
From the stage comes a high whistle, and Nat turns her head to see Van giving her an aggressive thumbs up, waggling her thick eyebrows.
Next to her, she sees the mysterious woman chuckle into the palm of her hand at Van’s unsubtle wingwoman-ing. Nat groans to make a show of just how much it pains her, though she finds she’s not really upset about any of it. Especially since the Van Palmer charm seems to be doing her a few favors at the moment.
(She makes a mental note to see if somewhere within her budget there’s room to buy the Nintendo Switch Van had been raving about for months.)
Nat quickly knocks the rest of her drink back, sliding the empty glass across the counter and waving Ben over for a refill.
She feels her cheeks heat up under the woman’s gaze, a quick sideways glance revealing an expression that looks a lot like poorly subdued fascination. Nat can’t possibly fathom what’s so interesting about herself that she has managed to capture the attention of someone that looks like that.
“So,” The stranger finally begins, smiling cordially at Ben as he approaches. She slips onto a stool adjacent to Nat. “Were you planning on drinking alone tonight, or did you mind if I joined you?”
Nat pointedly ignores the look Ben gives her.
-
This is how Nat ends up nursing a water, plans of getting drunk sidebarred in lieu of talking to tall, dark and handsome who does in fact have a name: Lottie. Short for Charlotte, which almost seems like too pretentious a name for the taller girl who, over the course of their conversation, has revealed herself to be somewhat of a hippie.
Lottie doesn’t share too much in the way of who she is – just tells Nat she’s twenty-eight, a cancer sun with a Libra moon (something Nat has absolutely no opinion on, to Lottie’s surprise), that she owned a pony when she was twelve named Susie, and that she has a fear of planes stemming from the movie Final Destination. Mostly meaningless trivia, and Natalie soaks all of it up.
In return Nat tells her about her childhood pet – an old beagle named Willie with big droopy eyes, about the time she had scored the winning goal in nationals, about locking Van and Tai in a closet for seven minutes in heaven during their junior year, and the two being inseparable ever since. Lottie engages with her genuinely through all of it.
It almost feels like they’re the only people in the bar.
Their stools have drifted closer over the course of their conversation, inexplicably drawn into each other's orbit not unlike the way the ocean defies gravity in its desire to get as close as possible to the moon. Nat’s pinky twitches restlessly against the condensating glass in her hand and for a brief moment she imagines there’s a red string tied around it. She hopes that the softness in Lottie’s eyes means she can see the string too.
Lottie is gently skating the tips of her fingers along the inside of Nat’s wrist, tracing the swirls of Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ that had been masterfully etched into the skin.
It was a somewhat old tattoo, one Nat had gotten when she was in her early 20s. There wasn’t too much symbology behind it beyond what laid in the piece itself — it had just looked particularly dreamy to a less jaded, more doe-eyed Nat.
It almost seems like the taller girl has a greater appreciation for it than Natalie herself does, and having someone else value something ingrained into her is a jarring feeling. Apart from her coworkers and clients, she’s used to her tattoos being stigmatized by those around her. It’s a refreshing change of pace.
The clock hanging behind the bar reveals that it’s nearing midnight, and Tai and Van have all but disappeared - probably making a futile effort to get some sleep and quell the inevitable headache of tomorrow.
Nat is watching Lottie watch her, the silence not uncomfortable. Like somehow they’ve known each other for longer than two hours. Like they’d met in another time, another place, and stumbling across each other’s paths here and now wasn’t random at all but something that was always bound to happen.
It’s a cheesy thought that Nat only feels a little embarrassed for having.
As if she can tell Nat is lost in her own head, Lottie merely grins at her, chin perched on her palm while her whole body faces toward the blonde. She’d abandoned her Cosmopolitan thirty minutes ago.
Lottie’s eyes are twinkling, again – maybe they always look like that, but Nat likes to think it has something to do with her. She dreamily says, “‘I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.’” in the softest voice Nat has heard all night.
The touch on Nat’s arm suddenly feels electric, current rolling through her body in thick waves and causing something warm and pleasant to stir in her abdomen.
She catches Ben’s eye at the end of the bar. He’s drying a glass with a rag, clearly getting ready to close for the night. The sharp tilt of his head and raise of his eyebrow expresses: What are you waiting for?
Nat pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and relishes in the way Lottie’s eyes fall to her mouth, seeming to unfocus ever-so-slightly.
What is she waiting for?
Nat thinks about how long it has been since she has wanted to go home with someone this badly. Realizes it has been since forever, that it’s very possible she has never wanted somebody like this. Didn’t even know it was possible to want someone this viscerally.
She thinks about her long day tomorrow, how a decision like this probably goes against her primary philosophy of buckling down and doing what’s best for the parlor. Then, she wonders how much this can really hurt as long as she’s back early enough in the morning.
There’s no real question of if Lottie is on board or not. The sweet glide of her fingers has shifted into a more deliberate stroke, the gentle warmth of her eyes bleeding into a kind of patient hunger, slightly narrowed as they watch the gears in Nat’s head turn – as they watch her muster up the courage. It almost feels like she’s successfully being seduced, though it all feels too natural to have been planned on Lottie’s part. Nat wonders why she has to be the one to make the first move, but finds herself endeared by it nonetheless.
Work will be fine, her head is clear, and she wants, like she has been stranded in a desert for twenty-seven years and Lottie is an oasis on the horizon.
She hits the ‘fuck it’ button.
“Are you staying nearby?”
-
“You’re really good at that,” Nat says, flushed from the tips of her ears to her chest as she lays bare and vulnerable before Lottie. Her hands are fisting the sheets, pupils dilated as she looks down at the brunette.
She means it, too. While most of her one-off sexual encounters had been with men, which often leaves much to be desired, Lottie is outdoing even the women.
It’s not like she’s some sort of God in bed, but she hadn’t needed any help finding Nat’s clit and had clearly had some practice. The fact Nat had already been abundantly horny prior to shedding her clothes was definitely a factor working in her favor.
It also helped that Lottie was extremely into it, behaving like nothing existed outside of these four walls and tunneling her vision on Nat like her pleasure and how much she was enjoying this was the only thing that mattered. It made the usual jitters Nat got from hooking up with someone she’d just met disperse.
The way Lottie grins up at her from her position between Nat’s legs is downright lascivious, the sight of her glistening lips and chin sending a sharp pulse that shoots right to her center and causes Nat’s head to fall back into the pillows.
Lottie playfully nips at the inside of her thigh, punctuated by a sweet kiss pressing against the bite. The brunette whispers, “I think I could do this forever.”
Nat should roll her eyes, tell her she doesn’t have to worry about sweet talking her because Natalie is already more than down, but the earnest way she says it almost makes Nat think it’s true.
As it is, she’s at a loss for words, wiggling her hips restlessly instead in hopes that gets the point across.
It does – Lottie’s warm breath ghosting over her before her tongue is parting her again, gentle, reverent, perfect.
Nat’s breath hitches on an exhale as her back bows, the embers in her stomach a roaring fire under the continued attention.
Lottie prods at her entrance with two fingers, tentative enough that Nat quickly verbalizes her consent with a high and whiny “Mhmm.” She’s unable to restrain the hoarse moan that leaves her mouth as the taller girl finally sinks her fingers in.
They’re long, curling expertly, and it feels like slotting two puzzle pieces together. Like coming home.
Lottie moans at the same time as her, shuffling forward as if propelled by an invisible force and pressing a passionate kiss against Nat’s lips.
Nat realizes it’s how Lottie does everything. Thoroughly, completely, giving all of herself and asking nothing in return. She releases her grasp on the sheets to seek out Lottie’s free hand beside her head, feeling the way the taller girl smiles into the kiss as their fingers intertwine against the plush bedding.
She doesn’t last long at all, shattering embarrassingly fast under the attention and slinging an arm over to simultaneously hide her face and muffle her voice.
The taller girl eases her through the comedown, fingers eventually halting their ministrations but still buried inside of her as if Lottie is reluctant to part just yet.
Lottie’s nose nudges against the side of Nat’s neck and in an almost exasperated voice she says, “You’re so freakin’ cute, Nat. What am I gonna do with you?” It's definitely rhetorical – what is Nat even meant to say to that? She doesn’t know if her cheeks could get any more red. Her heart is beating quickly, not nerves (she’s never felt more comfortable) or adrenaline but something else, an emotion she can’t quite place racking her system.
As if she can sense it, Lottie slips her fingers out, wiping them on the sheets, and Nat withdraws her arm to complain. She’s interrupted by a hand pressing against her sternum, gentle eyes meeting her own.
“Hey. Breathe with me, you’re okay.”
Nat feels ridiculous – having a miniature panic attack at this very moment is cruel and unusual, even for her own brain – but she swallows hard and takes a deep inhale with Lottie, eventually feeling herself begin to settle under the taller girl’s instructions. How’d she get so good at that?
“Where’d you go?” Lottie finally asks, tone not upset or judgmental but coming across as genuinely curious.
Underneath her, Nat shrugs shyly. “Everywhere. Nowhere. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt more in my body before, to be honest.”
Lottie has the nerve to look bashful, and Nat’s heart constricts in her chest. “Okay, sheesh, you’ve already got me, you don’t have to flatter me.” It evokes a feeling of adoration in Nat, and pulls a small laugh out of her.
“Look at you, acting all shy. Now who’s the cute one?” She sounds more sure of herself than she feels, having felt like the world had turned upside down on her the minute Lottie walked into her life earlier that night. Like she hadn’t been living up until this point, just surviving. Waiting.
Lottie pulls her out of her head, voice dropping in pitch teasingly as she says, “Well? What’re you gonna do about it?”
Nat grins and lifts her head up to kiss her, taking advantage of the way Lottie loses herself in it to flip their positions. Where normally she’d be embarrassed – put on display in the way she straddles her, fluorescent lights of the hotel room showing everything: the scar that never fully healed on her hip, the shitty stick and poke of Nirvana’s logo Tai had given her in high school acting as a bit of an eyesore above her right knee – Lottie looks at Nat like she’s something to be worshiped, and in this moment she doesn’t doubt it.
“I love your tattoos.” Lottie says breathlessly, spreading a hand out over her stomach. It’s warm against the cool metal of her belly button piercing. Nat takes it for what it is: a touch, a need for closeness, seeking out warmth. She trembles at the idea of someone wanting her that badly, in any capacity. “They’re sexy,” Lottie adds, effectively lightening the mood. Her other hand runs up Nat’s left thigh, where the front and outside are almost fully covered in blooming roses, vines, and petals, black ink stark against the creamy white of her skin. “It’s actually unfair how hot you are.”
“Pot calling the kettle black.” Nat quickly says, toying with the thin gold chain around Lottie’s neck. “Now shut up, I have a favor to return.”
Lottie’s in the middle of a smart comment when Nat starts trailing kisses down her sternum – she promptly closes her mouth.
-
Nat stares at the white popcorn walls of Lottie’s hotel room. It’s pushing 3 a.m., and she sincerely does not want to leave yet. If the way Lottie is snuggled against her back is any indication, she’s not feeling very inclined to leave either.
The taller girl’s fingers are tracing a nonsensical pattern into Nat’s arm under the blankets, a little sluggish in her exhaustion.
Still, Nat’s mind is far from quiet. She turns onto her back to look at Lottie quizzically. “I don’t know if sex has ever felt like that before.” She’s almost hesitant to just call it sex, but the only other alternative is… well, Nat won’t let herself venture as far as to say it was that, either. Not this soon.
Lottie hums and opens her eyes slowly, a lazy smile on her face. “I feel like you’re giving me too much credit.” She curls a hand around Nat’s waist, dropping her head to kiss the top of her shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I feel the same way.”
Nat wonders just to what extent she feels the same. To what extent she has felt any of this, any of the epiphanies Nat has been having. If she believes in soulmates. Mostly, she hopes she’s not coming off clingy, or scaring her away – though Lottie doesn’t strike her as the type to shy away from that.
Things are silent for a moment, the sounds of the city outside filling the room. Nat isn’t positive where to go from here, not presumptuous enough to simply let herself fall asleep (no matter how badly she wants to).
“Do you want me to leave?” She asks, and she’s only a little scared of the answer.
Lottie nuzzles her face into the crook of Nat’s neck. “Not if you don’t have to.” She pauses and Nat is quiet. She can tell Lottie’s weighing the idea of saying something further. After a beat: “I’d like it if you stayed. You’re like my personal heater.”
“It’s summer, Lot.”
A small shrug. “I don't care, and 's basically fall. Are you gonna stay? Pretty please?”
Nat kisses the top of her head and faux-rolls her eyes. “Yeah.”
She can’t really imagine anywhere she’d rather be at the moment, to be honest.
-
Nat’s phone goes off at 8 a.m., rousing her from her brief slumber. For a moment she’s disoriented, taking in the different environment and the warmth and weight against her. At her side there’s a groan, and as Nat looks at the girl now sprawled on her back and illuminated by the sun just beginning to peek over the horizon, she can’t help but feel a little starstruck.
Her tan skin almost glows in the light, standing out against the white sheets. Her dark hair is fanned messily out around her, bangs curling haphazardly against her forehead. There’s the slightest furrow of her brow, a little pout to her lips, and she reminds Nat of a puppy.
The previous night wasn't a blur – she hadn’t drank much at all. She can’t remember the last time she’d hooked up with someone from a bar without having to be nearly blackout drunk.
Unsurprisingly, and in that regard she finds it extremely surprising, Nat doesn’t regret it either.
Even though she’s not left with much time to spare she props her head up to study the brunette, the relaxed rise and fall of her chest, the dark splotches on her neck Nat is sure her own probably mirrors serving as evidence of the previous night’s events.
Nat spots a little semicolon on the side of her wrist and makes a mental note to ask her about it sometime. Right now, she’d rather not rouse her from her sleep. Cutting through the soft, sleepy haze with a classic ‘morning after’ conversation does not sound ideal in the slightest.
Slipping out of the covers, she treks through the spacious room gathering up her clothes (how’d they end up everywhere?). When she has finished getting dressed she rummages through the bedside table for a notepad, smiling at the low sound Lottie lets out as she shifts in her sleep.
Nat scribbles her number on a piece of paper, tearing it and setting it prominently on the table. Feeling that it’s not nearly enough, she quickly retrieves the notepad, and followed by her name writes: I’m busy for most of today, but I’d really like to see you again. I mean, if you also wanted to. I could make us dinner or something. I feel like I’m rambling, sorry.
ps. You drool in your sleep :p
She tears this piece off and sets it beside her number, hoping her tone doesn’t verge on desperation too much.
Nat tries not to feel silly for wearing her heart on her sleeve like this. Convince herself that maybe a little vulnerability with someone that definitely seems like the right person will do her some good after guarding her heart for so long. Besides, she has a hard time imagining Lottie as someone that could ever be purposefully harmful. She’s basically a gentle giant.
Maybe in the grand scheme of things she has literally just met her, but Nat’s intuition seldom steers her wrong.
-
The day passes slowly. Every time Nat’s phone vibrates she quickly swivels to peer at it, even her clients noticing she’s been particularly jumpy.
It’s nearly 4 p.m.. Nat has finished three sessions (a mindless geometric piece, a quick and fun raccoon in a trash can, and her own rendition of the classic dagger-through-heart tough guy tattoo) and has heard nothing from Lottie. For her own sanity, she tells herself that Lottie is probably busy, or sleeping in, or, God forbid, an emergency came up. Anything but the alternative.
Van and Tai, looking worse for wear, keep giving her worried looks that are starting to get under her skin.
None of how she is feeling makes sense because it was just a hookup. It was just a hookup. Maybe if she keeps repeating it she’ll begin to believe it. Why is she letting this get under her skin? She’s been ghosted before. It happens. It’s not like they were dating, or had even officially made plans of seeing each other again. She’d just made assumptions, and let her heart get carried away, and now she was dealing with the consequences.
This realization doesn’t make her chest hurt any less.
She loses hope more and more as the hours pass, closing time finally coming and going.
After waving off Tai, Van, and Jackie, Nat locks up the shop and settles at the desk adjacent to her tattooing table. She’s too restless to even think about going to sleep.
Instead, she works on designing ideas for her newest set of clients – a couple wanting to get matching tattoos. The irony of it all is not lost on her. Ultimately, everything she drafts ends up pissing her off. She crumples up her latest sketch and throws it into the bin, slamming her pencil against the desk in frustration.
Effectively put out, she clicks the work light off and miserably makes her way upstairs.
-
Three more weeks pass like this. No calls, no texts, no Lottie.
She still sleeps fitfully, increased sounds of construction drowning out her newly installed white noise machine. She tries not to think about how the last time she slept well was back at the Marriott.
Van and Tai invite her out a handful of times and she politely declines. Nat just doesn’t feel in the mood to party. Even Jackie’s signature puppy-dog eyes aren’t enough to get her to do anything other than work, draw up new ideas for tattoo flashes, and hole up in her apartment. Her attitude isn’t great, but she doesn’t have to worry much about that – she doesn’t work in the hospitality industry for a reason. Her tattoos still come out great, with a number of her Instagram posts racking up likes and comments as well as potential clients.
All of her employees are getting paid, the parlor isn’t in the red, and she still has electricity in her upstairs flat. She can’t really complain about her current state of affairs. It doesn’t make her feel any better.
She had only been with Lottie for somewhere around ten hours and she profoundly, unequivocally, missed her. Their connection had felt once-in-a-lifetime. This results in Nat feeling absolutely pathetic. Worse yet, she’s starting to really get pissed off. What did she do that made her deserve to get ghosted? Was there ever even a good reason?
Her elusive neighbor faces the brunt of that ire when she finally hits her limit and writes them a wildly passive aggressive note, taping it to the door of their shop. ‘The Wilderness.’ She hates that she thinks the name is kind of cool.
Later that day she’s tattooing a return client, Akilah, meticulously etching the scales of a serpent on her forearm. The girl had gotten it because she, in her own words, wanted to look “tough”, something Nat was all for. Her talent in the realm of linework had led her to be the top pick, Tai specializing more in the tribal realm and Jackie preferring to do cutesy, colorful pieces. Van, hands as steady as they were, seldom found herself tattooing. She much preferred giving piercings, often remarking there was less room for error.
Nat wasn’t scared of needles – she wielded one almost every day – but she definitely preferred tattooing. There was a difference between scratching the surface of someone’s skin and going clean through it – a huge difference. The thought of the latter made her a bit queasy regardless of the studs in her stomach and nose or her array of ear piercings.
She’s hunched over, carefully going over the stencil of the snake’s forked tongue when Jackie sighs in boredom for the hundredth time that afternoon.
She works the front counter when she’s not tattooing clients of her own or piercing kids’ ears, functioning as a sort of receptionist. Her tattoos are small and scattered modest pieces, patchwork, and she has a sort of all-American girl charm that makes potential customers and parents alike feel at ease. Unfortunately, Jackie also has a very short attention span and a proclivity to become bored if she’s gone more than five minutes without entertainment.
Nat hears the pen she has been spinning clatter against the countertop, and sighs to herself because Jackie is no doubt about to break the peaceful quiet of buzzing tattoo guns.
“Looks like someone had a late night.”
Nat can tell it’s directed at her – partially because she looks and feels like shit (no thanks to her neighbor or the Lottie situation), and partially because Jackie’s walking over to her station to peer nosily at her work.
Jackie places a hand on Akilah’s shoulder, who has clearly gone to her happy place with her eyes closed. “It looks really good. You’re doing great. I’ve seen guys cry over like, twenty minute tattoo sessions. Look at you, not even breaking a sweat!”
It would sound disingenuous coming from anyone else, but coming from Jackie it’s an extremely earnest compliment. Akilah must recognize this because she smiles, looking proud of herself. Nat can’t help but grin at the pair of them.
Then, Jackie interrupts the moment. “Any update on the mystery girl?”
Nat blanks, pulling the gun away before she messes up any lines. The buzzing cuts off. Tai looks up abruptly from the thick tribal piece she was drawing for a client, Van winces from behind her phone.
“...What are you talking about?” She spots Van waving her arms to signal for Jackie to stop from her peripherals. Jackie suddenly looks extremely confused.
“The girl? From Scott’s? I mean, I wasn’t there, but Van told me about it. Said you two hit it off, which is like, unheard of for you. I was just wondering if she’d texted.”
The question is fair. Tai and Van had been tiptoeing around it, clearly afraid of the possibility that asking Nat might upset her in some way. They’re obviously interested in the answer, now trying to disguise their curiosity as Jackie questions her.
Even Akilah has an eyebrow quirked in interest. “I don’t think I’ve ever even heard you talk about dating, Natalie. I guess I thought you were too badass to have a heart.”
“She’s a big ‘ol softie.” Jackie reassures her, pinching Nat’s cheek playfully. Nat swats her away in irritation.
She is a softie. It fucking sucks. Not for the first time, she wishes she was the version of herself Akilah has conjured up in her head. Wishes she was the badass Natalie Scatorccio that partied hard, lived wildly, and seldom had regrets. Instead she’s the naïve Natalie Scatorccio that tries to maintain a decent bedtime, loves fast and hard when she lets herself, and has a habit of striking out terribly in that regard.
Jackie presses further, ignoring all signs to drop it. “So?”
“No, Jax, there’s no update. It was just a hookup. Nothing serious.” Nat doesn’t even believe the words coming out of her own mouth. She sounds too bitter.
It’s just – the aforementioned hookup had felt more like the intertwining of two souls than it had a quick fuck. It felt ridiculous to say it wasn’t anything substantial. Then again, she’d never been a very convincing liar in the first place.
Jackie pouts at her, ultimately shrugging and deciding that wheeling a stool over to chat with Akilah about her gruesome experiences in med school was a more interesting, less volatile topic.
Nat’s eyes shift to Taissa as she readies her gun to get back to work. Tai is already looking at her, nonchalance betrayed by the disbelieving look in her eyes. Nat simply levels her with a playful glare, sticking her tongue out.
She really doesn’t feel like talking about any of this.
-
A week later, the flower shop wraps up construction. Nat thanks whatever higher power exists as she finally gets a full night of sleep.
(To the store owner's credit, the noises at night had ceased after Nat had left the note. It now only carried on throughout the day. It had been a noble effort for sure, however abrupt banging during business hours wasn’t suitable for people meant to work in focused, calm environments, and had almost bred a handful of incidents.)
It clearly wasn’t all for naught; a peek into the windows revealed it to be a charming store with plants absolutely everywhere. She sees why they named it the way they had, and wonders how people are even meant to navigate the store nonetheless pick a plant out from the crowded shelves showcasing dozens of plant species, if not hundreds of varieties hidden amongst those.
The outside of the florist is equally charming, with vines climbing the length of the building and potted plants perched along the balcony. Nat can see what looks to be a garden on the rooftop, and wonders how they even had the time to install that without her noticing. Unashamedly, she’d been unsuccessfully trying to catch a glimpse of the person that had been keeping her up at night.
Truthfully, she’s not interested at all in perusing the store. Plants had never been her thing. She’s the opposite of a green thumb, whatever that is. She could probably kill a cactus if left to her own devices.
The monstera in the Queen of Heart’s lobby was not at all indicative of her personal values. It was mostly Jackie’s idea, meant to help brighten the place up.
Still, she likes how the flower shop compliments her own. Green and calm and bright, while hers is emphasized by stark whites, reds and blacks. It’s like opposite sides of a coin — urban and naturalistic. It brings a certain level of added charm to the block.
-
Noon finds her calculating expenses, totaling the electricity bill and water bill and comparing them to the month prior. Excruciatingly boring managerial tasks that have unfortunately come with the territory. Tai and Van are busy with clients, Jackie once again manning the front desk.
The bell above their door jingles as it opens, and Nat gives a distracted glance, eyes flicking up and then back down to her paperwork.
Her brain buffers. Processes, reboots, then processes again. Her eyes snap back up and low and behold: tall, dark and handsome is standing in her lobby, looking equally as taken aback as she looks at Nat. She’s holding a pot full of strikingly colored flowers.
Lottie is dressed casually, overalls abandoned for a green sweater, denim jeans, and a baseball cap that says plant daddy. She looks every bit the type that would own a flower shop, and through Nat’s bewilderment at this turn of events, she feels a little bit of fondness for it.
Tai and Van seem to quickly go through the same thing as her, distractedly whipping their heads between the two girls briefly frozen in time.
Lottie looks conflicted, or upset – Nat can’t tell. She briefly has to admit she doesn’t even know her that well, definitely not enough to be worked up like this, but in the next breath considers that Lottie had never been unreadable during their short time together, not to her. That this was new. Some kind of wall she was putting up. And that? That was alarming on its own.
Breaking the spell, Lottie diverts her eyes. She focuses them on Jackie, who has perked up at the entrance of a potential client and excitedly set her phone down. She must clock the flowers because she eagerly says, “Hi! Those are gorgeous. You must be from next door?”
Nat wants to wave, say hello, do something, but Lottie’s dismissive attitude has her confidence falling. It really must have meant nothing to her. Nat somehow feels even more pathetic.
Again, her heart constricts. The string pulls tight, strained.
Lottie’s smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes when she says, “Yes, I’m the owner. Uh, Lottie. It’s nice to meet you…?”
Her voice is still warm, if not a bit forced and uncomfortable in its friendliness. Nat thinks about how it had sounded sweet in her ear at the bar, hushed in the bedroom, breathy as they brought each other to previously unknown peaks, and fond as they basked in the afterglow.
Nat has felt pain all throughout her life, but it has been a long while since she has felt emotional hurt manifest in a very real, physical way as it’s doing now. She hugs her stomach with an arm and returns her gaze to her paperwork. Jackie carries on.
“Oh, of course, sorry! My name is Jackie! Over there is Van,” She points the redhead out, “best piercer on this side of the coast.” Van snorts at the compliment but offers an awkward wave nonetheless. “Doing the really cool tribal piece is her girlfriend, Tai.” Tai gives a nod, but quickly resumes working. “And the one over there sulking is our manager, Nat. I couldn’t tell you how, but she runs this whole place. Nat, be social!”
Nat pointedly does not do more than grunt in acknowledgment, embarrassed at Lottie’s earlier dismissal. All of this is making her want to crawl into a hole never to be seen again, Queen of Hearts be damned.
Lottie merely hums. “Cool. I had just wanted to stop by and apologize for all the noise. Um, I found a note on the door about a week ago. Sorry.”
“Whatever.” It sounds bitter, even to her. She does glance up, needing to survey the damage it has caused, and Lottie’s nonchalant expression from earlier has fallen to reveal what looks like genuine hurt. Jackie is looking at her curiously, and with a bit of exasperation.
Her eyes scream, Nat! Be nice!, which Nat has every intention of ignoring.
Lottie sets the plant down on the counter, leveling Jackie with kind eyes – Nat kind of doubts she could look any other sort of way even if she tried. “Well. I hope I see you guys around sometime. I should get going.”
Nat is practically burning holes into the budget sheets with the way she avoids Lottie’s gaze on her way out.
It’s quiet after she leaves, even the customers seemingly picking up on the tension in the air.
From the station across from her, Van murmurs, “What was that about? She acted like she didn’t even know you.” Hearing it from someone else somehow manages to make everything sting even more. Nat is trying and failing to calm herself down; she feels like crying, feels like hitting something, feels exhausted and wants to just go to sleep.
Instead of voicing any of this, she says, “Whatever. How many bottles of ink do you think I should order for our next shipment?” and Van allows her the dismissal, genuinely answering.
Towards the front of the store she hears Jackie whisper-yell, “They know each other?” at Tai.
Taissa nods and distractedly whisper-yells back, “Mhm. Mystery girl.” Nat would laugh at the journey Jackie’s face takes from surprised to confused to frowning if she wasn’t feeling so awful about everything.
As it is, she snaps. “Am I paying you guys to talk, or to work?”
Jackie rolls her eyes with an, “Okay, Bossman.” and returns to mindlessly scrolling on her phone. The sympathetic look Tai gives Nat makes her feel like crying all over again.
-
The next morning finds Nat forcing herself to go about her normal morning routine like she’s not on the cusp of isolating herself in her room for a month. She showers, brushes her teeth, and gets dressed for the day. Eats a yogurt cup for breakfast, and even laughs for a second at a joke in ‘Adventure Time’.
She’s wrangling on her shoes to go downstairs and unlock the shop when she sees her new neighbor out the window: Lottie, looking sleepy and soft, scrolling on her phone and lifting a spoonful of cereal to her mouth.
The green university hoodie she’s wearing reaches mid-thigh, the cut of her shorts just barely peeking out and revealing long, toned tan legs. Her bangs fall effortlessly and based on her state of undress, Nat has to assume that they do naturally look amazing.
She’s perfect. Nat hates her for it.
Lottie must sense her looking because she mindlessly seeks out whatever has triggered her, spoonful of cereal pausing on its journey to her mouth as their eyes meet across the gap.
The slight furrow of her brow is the only indication that she feels anything, before she schools her expression into a blank look.
This Lottie is so different from the one she had met before. She looks the same – like a big harmless teddy bear, but most of the warmth is long gone.
Nat still has no idea what she did wrong. Was she too forward? Too clingy? Should she not have stayed the night? Should she have woken her up the next morning? Thinking about it all makes her feel worse. She just doesn’t understand. Didn’t Lottie feel it too? The pull between them?
Nat’s eyes fell to the pot of flowers Lottie had dropped off at the store. Thoughtlessly, and in order to get them out of her sight as she’d worked that day, she had brought them upstairs and sat them on her windowsill. Lottie’s eyes fall to it at the same time.
Nat approaches the window, slowly, cataloging the way Lottie gulps and lowers her spoon back down to the bowl.
She looks a little less standoffish, more guilty than anything. Nat is too blinded by the white-hot feeling of rage to care.
She murmurs, “I’m sorry, little guy.” before tipping the plant over the sill and out of the window. She almost basks in the look of horror that colors Lottie’s face at the intentionally malicious action.
Nat only flinches a little bit at the loud shatter that cuts through the sounds of New York traffic in their shared alleyway.
She feels minorly bad for the plant. A casualty in all of this. Then again, she was never a plant person. Lottie might have known this by now, if she hadn’t ghosted her. Really, in a way, this was all Lottie’s fault.
The taller girl rises from the seat at her breakfast nook, angrily throwing her window open. “Okay, what the actual fuck is your problem?”
Seeing her upset is definitely an interesting experience, in that she somehow manages to look everything but mad. She looks confused, sad (Nat supposes the plant’s tumble likely had a greater effect on Lottie than it had on herself), and conflicted. Worse yet, she looks hurt. It pisses Nat off even more, because she has no right to try and play the victim here.
“You. You’re my problem.” Nat is proud of how deadpan she manages to say it, and hopes none of the emotions currently flooding her system are showing on her face.
Lottie makes a strangled sound in her throat, some noise of exasperation. Nat tells herself it’s not cute. That seeing Lottie get a little red in the face in her show of emotion is not cute. Lottie throws her arms up and says, “I didn’t even do anything to you! You’re the one being an asshole here!”
Nat gawks at the audacity. “You? Didn’t do anything? Fuck you, Lottie. Seriously. Fuck you.”
The brunette looks like she has 101 things to say. Instead, she just stares at Nat, masking the hurt previously splashed across her face with an impassive look. She shuts her window and Nat watches her storm out of sight.
Fifteen feet of space spans the alleyway keeping them apart, punctuated by a closed window. The string snaps.
-
Nat’s loudly blasting some obnoxious song she doesn’t even like later that evening when she hears clattering from the alleyway. The next morning, she finds a patched up pot on Lottie’s windowsill sporting the flowers she must have salvaged from the wreckage.
When they make eye contact later that afternoon, both girls collecting their mail at the same time, Lottie promptly gives her the middle finger. Nat returns the gesture, and only feels a little satisfied doing so. No words are exchanged between them.
The day the plant falls, lines are drawn in the sand.