Read June (Calendar Girl #6) for Free Online Page B

needle filtered through the low hum of the shop. A few stations had patrons sitting in black leather seats similar to mine. One guy was getting lightning bolts tattooed along the side of his head where he’d shaved off all his hair. Only a thin patch of fuzz ran straight down the middle of his dome. There were nickel-sized guages in his ears and more metal on his face than the crotch rocket he rode in on. The bike was sweet. Made me miss Suzi back home. Again, I looked at the fella who thought it a good idea to tat his head.
    While the needle bit into my flesh I wondered what the guy planned to do about those earlobes when he was seventy. They would certainly be hanging flesh by then, especially if he stretched them any further. I guess that wasn’t something a twenty-year-old skinhead type cared about. Probably didn’t even think he’d live to see seventy, and by the looks of him, twitching like he had somewhere to be right this very second, he was on the fast track to an early grave.
    Down the aisle, there was a Barbie-doll looking chick getting what was probably her man’s name inked into a decent tramp stamp. I snickered under my breath knowing that the moment a person got a tat with their man’s—or woman’s—name, it was the kiss of death. The person getting the tat didn’t think it applied to them and they could test fate with it. Not wise. The laughter caused my foot to jiggle, and I winced as the artist held on tighter to my left ankle. The black swirling text was almost finished, and then she’d start the dandelion.
    The skin of my foot was already numb; the pain for the first twenty minutes had been a piercing, gnawing sensation that irked as much as it pleasured. That saying about pain and pleasure being flipsides of the same coin is very true. At this point, I was used to both. Every time the artist picked up the gun for more ink then pressed that fiery tip into my skin once more, a little jolt of excitement lit up my nerve endings like sparklers on the Fourth of July.
    “So Mask is an unusual name, especially for a chick.” I said simply, attempting to strike up a conversation with the small Asian woman working on my tat.
    Her smile reached her eyes. It was like looking into a pitch dark galaxy with nothing but tiny specks of white lights where the starry gases burst into flames. She had bright red lipstick and a tiny silver hoop through the side of her bottom lip. Her Asian heritage was strong in the pretty shade of her smooth skin against the stark ebony of her hair that she had pulled back into a sleek bun at the nape of her neck. If she didn’t have the lip piercing and two tatted forearms, she’d fit perfectly in any of these downtown Washington DC offices.
    Mask tilted her head and focused on the letters of ink she pressed into my skin. “It’s short for Maskatun. Mask is easier for Americans.” Her voice didn’t have even a hint of an Asian dialect.
    “You’re not American?”
    “No, I am. My family and friends can say my full name easier than the tourists and locals that come in to get some ink.” She smiled softly.
    “Well, I think your full name is beautiful but Mask is badass so I’m going with that.”
    “My family comes from Brunei, in the middle of Southeast Asia, but I’m American.”
    “I think it’s cool.”
    “Thank you,” she said and then sat up and inspected her work, turning my foot this way and that under the bright light. Along the entire side of my foot, from about an inch above the heel to the toe was the text I’d settled on. It’s just above an inch from the sole where I walk. When Mask asked me what I wanted, I knew instantly. We chose a font that suited my tastes and now that part was done. “Check it out before I start on the dandelion.”
    I flexed my foot this way and that, grimacing when the skin pulled at the marred flesh. It was beautiful, exactly as I’d pictured it. “I love it.”
    “Okay so the dandelion goes here,” she ran a finger up