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In the heat of the moment, she’d almost forgotten it was there.
Andy can’t see the name unless she’s doing acrobatics in the bathroom — something she does, every now and then, just to see how it’s holding up. Time and the way her weight shifts haven’t been too kind on the ink. Still plenty legible. Still plenty for someone appreciating her ass to have plenty of questions about.
She’d almost forgotten it was there, right until Diane Frost laughs in surprise and says “way to confirm the rumors about you and CJ, huh? Are you kidding me, Andrea?”
Right. Claudia Jean, in handwritten script right below a rose drawn by someone who might never have seen one in the flesh by the looks of it. They’d laughed endlessly.
Andy turns around — her attempted treasure hunt through her nightstand abandoned.
“You got married and divorced with the name of the girlfriend you had before your husband still right there on your thigh?”
It’s too easy to conjure the shocked way CJ had laughed when she’d first seen the damn thing. Too easy to take those few seconds of remembrance before she snaps back to the current moment. Andy shrugs. “Who says I didn’t get it after my divorce? This can be brand-new.”
As if.
Diane scoffs. She leans back, eyeing up Andy just as gladly as she had before. “If that’s less than a decade old, you either tried to tattoo your own thigh in the mirror or you need to demand, and I do mean demand, Andrea, your money back.”
The rose doesn’t look like Lorenzo knew what roses were and while her body’s not done CJ’s name any favors, neither had his penmanship. That doesn’t stop Andy from pulling away from Diane defensively.
“It’s fine,” she says, colder than needed. “If it bothers you, we don’t need to—“
“Wow,” Diane holds her hands up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean— I wasn’t expecting the name.”
Entirely fair. Andy tries to remind herself of that.
“Yeah,” she says.
Diane’s not stupid. Diane can tell. “I’m sorry,” she repeats, clearly not sure what she did wrong. “What’s the deal with it? That’s gotta be a story.”
*
1988
The sun is coming up again over the bay and Andy is deliciously drunk, taking in the first rays of sunlight with her head in her girlfriend’s lap. Nothing but the waves and CJ and Lorenzo’s shrieking fits of laughter to distract her.
She doesn’t know if tattoos are meant to hurt this badly or if Lorenzo’s just bad at it — she refuses to entertain the possibility that her pain tolerance is anything but exceptional. Andy’s gritting her teeth in between attempts to turn around and look at what he’s actually putting on her skin.
“It’s a rose,” he says, more defensive than explanatory — not providing Andy with a shred of reassurance.
CJ, with a hand on Andy’s shoulder and her feet buried in the sand, is shaking with laughter. “There were roses at Alex’s cremation,” she brings out, tears in her eyes when Andy looks up. “We took some home! Why does it look like you don’t know what a rose is?”
Lorenzo’s laughing while he works and Andy dares to bend her spine enough to look back at what he’s doing. He’s got one hand around her thigh trying to keep her in place, one hand trembling as he’s working a needle down her skin. He winks at her.
“I don’t even like cabbage,” Andy informs him, turning back to rest her head against CJ again. She gets sand in her mouth from CJ’s skin.
“Good thing it’s a rose,” Lorenzo offers.
“Hardly.”
The roses at Alex’s cremation had been beautiful. Much more expensive than any of them could’ve afforded, but she had a brother willing to pay. To pay for the whole thing, but not to take her ashes home. Fear of contamination.
Alex is sitting next to CJ, propped up in a circle of towels with a beer bottle leaning against her urn. Andy hopes she’s laughing at the mess Lorenzo’s making of her leg.
“Want her beer?” CJ asks, catching Andy staring longingly at either the urn or the bottle.
Andy snorts. “She can have it. I’ll have your drink though?”
“You called it ridiculous when we left.”
“It still is,” Andy assures her. CJ’s tried making her own grasshopper-inspired cocktail at home; Andy’s convinced even the real thing isn’t supposed to be this green. “But I’m drunk enough to have your minty concoctions.”
CJ has a few generous sips herself before putting the plastic bottle she’s transporting it in between her legs, helping Andy to a straw.
“He’s watching us,” CJ whispers, glancing at Lorenzo suspiciously. She leans back with her hands in the sand.
“I just think the two of you make a nice couple.” He sounds like he’s barely looking at Andy’s leg anymore, even when she can still feel the needle prodding at her. It’s like she’s being carved open by a first-time surgeon.
She thinks he should’ve been done with the attempted rose by now, but Lorenzo’s still working and the amount of mint creme CJ put into her drink is making it easy not to worry about it too much. Andy’s much too busy scrunching up her face with every sip to consider what he’s doing between her legs.
She laughs at her own unspoken innuendo. She kisses CJ’s leg and tries to wipe the sand off her lips.
It’s not until he’s done and puts the needle down that Andy makes another attempt at lifting herself up enough to look back at her own thigh. The sound she makes alerts a couple walking down by the water.
Claudia Jean. Right below the rose that’s barely a rose. Claudia fucking Jean.
She sits up on her knees in a hurry, knocking the remaining bit of CJ’s bright green cocktail into the sand with her foot as she turns to Lorenzo. CJ gasps, then laughs a shocked laugh when she sees the full thing.
“Oh my god,” Andy brings out, mouth wide open, then doubling over laughing.
CJ grabs her thigh, holding her up, and Andy’s about to ask if seeing her name on her skin turns her on when CJ says “it’s basically an open wound, idiot, don’t get sand in it immediately.”
Andy kisses her anyway, a quick peck on the lips to shut CJ up.
“I can change it,” Lorenzo assures her, quickly, like he already knows she’d never take him up on that. “People exaggerate when they say these things are forever.”
She shakes her head. She already loves it. “You’re insane,” Andy says anyway. “Insane!”
“Thought you two make a nice couple,” he shrugs as he pulls some gauze from his bag. He wraps it around her leg, hiding the cabbage-like rose and CJ’s own fucking name from view so she can sit down without thinking.
“Oh my god,” Andy repeats, staring at Lorenzo until she can’t stand it anymore and shoves him, only with enough force to wobble him a bit. “I can’t believe you!”
“You love it?”
She loves his grin, his cocky smile that shows he’s all too pleased with himself. The KS framing it on his face hasn’t toned down his damn grin at all.
“It’s trash,” Andy informs him, her heart soaring. “The rose. And her name, are you out of your mind?”
Lorenzo points a finger at CJ, who looks innocent as a peach right until Andy raises her eyebrows and shoves her too. “She saw the whole thing,” he tattles. “Did she warn you? No she did not. I think you should break up with her.”
“I don’t I can anymore.”
“Probably not.”
“It’s so bad,” Andy tells him again, softer now. She doesn’t think she could love him more if she tried. “You know the worst thing?”
“What’s that?”
Lorenzo’s still smiling at her, sitting down on the towel as she moves closer.
“You’re gonna die,” she starts. “And I’m not gonna be able to get rid of it, or cover it, ever. Because you did it.”
He laughs. When Andy’s own smile falters, he pulls her into a tight hug she hadn’t realised yet she needed from him. “You bet your ass,” he tells her, more gently. “Consider yourself haunted.”
She closes her eyes. When she sits back down, it’s right against CJ, who kisses her shoulder like it’s instinct. Andy swears the tattoo’s turning her on, but not out loud.
“I hate you,” she tells Lorenzo, who’s lost weight again, whose hands are still shaking without anything to hold.
He shakes his head. “Nah.”
She’s never been a convincing liar.
*
“A friend did it.”
“No kidding,” Diane comments, tugging at the seam of Andy’s underwear to get her closer again. Andy laughs. “They died?”
Diane never beats around the bush.
Andy nods. “He did it in ‘88, beach in San Francisco. You do the math on that.”
They’ve never really talked about that — she knows Diane’s from New York, has sat through many conversations gone right over her ahead between Diane and her ex husband about all the ways that city beats DC. She knows Diane needs no more explanation.
“I’m sorry,” Diane says, and more’s not really necessary. Andy thanks her, even when Diane adds “but Claudia Jean? Really? Does she even know?”
Andy laughs, a bit stiff when she’s sitting down in Diane’s lap now. “She was right there, didn’t warn me, nothing. Traitor that she is. And now I’m stuck explaining it every time I want to fuck someone in this town.”
“What did Toby say?”
The words to describe Toby Ziegler’s vocal expressions when he’d seen CJ’s name on the back of his new girlfriend’s thigh just don’t exist. Andy settles for “he needed a moment.”
“I bet he did.” Diane kisses her. “Can’t get rid of it?”
She knows Andy could never. Andy doesn’t need to say it. She kisses Diane harder.
Diane’s hands fumble with her underwear, taking just a moment to pause at the site of the tattoo. “Don’t let that bastard ruin the mood now,” Andy warns her. Somewhere in the air she swears she hears Lorenzo laugh when Diane gives CJ’s name a firm squeeze
“Wouldn’t dare,” she’s promised.