He approached me first, but I wanted him to, and he knew it.

I’d only been in town for a week, but it was a small town full of small people, and he was the most beautiful person I’d seen. The first time I noticed him, he was throwing one leg over a dirt bike, the kind of man who doesn’t wear a helmet even when it’s illegal not to. The next time, he was unlocking the door to a tattoo shop. He saw me staring, and he winked.

Then the bells on the front door of the hardware store jingled, and he was in my place of work. We’d just gotten a shipment, and I was cutting open boxes, trying not to slip with my box cutter because I was so busy watching him shop. He was acting like he hadn’t noticed me, but I could tell he was tracking me like I was tracking him.

Finally he came up to the counter.

“What’s a cute little thing like you doing in a dump like this?” he asked, a toothpick in the corner of his grin.

He wasn’t like the other guys who’d tried to sweet-talk me since I moved in with my uncle. They were all country boys, from their sweat-stained ballcaps to their shit-covered boots. But him—he was different. Whip-thin, spare, tidy like the spring in a gun. I didn’t answer at first; I was too caught up inspecting the tattoos covering just about every inch of his skin. Roses on his hands, a snake on one forearm and a scorpion on the other as he leaned them on the counter, putting himself on display for me. The ink was all black and gray and traveled right up to his jawline. I’d grown up being told tattoos were sinful and the work of the devil, so it was exciting, to think about a man with more sin than skin.

“My Uncle Reggie is the manager,” I said quietly, putting the box cutter back in my back pocket. “He got me the job. Did you need help with anything?”

“Now that you mention it.” He picked up his basket off the ground and dropped it on the counter with a rattling thunk.

The hardware store wasn’t one of those big box places with scanner guns or anything. I had to enter every price individually, and it took an embarrassingly long time.

“You must be new here,” he said. I just nodded as I put his purchases in a paper bag.

Duct tape. Chains. Those clips that hold chains together. Some rope. Some pipes. Zip ties.

“Um, do I need to call the cops?” I asked nervously, only half joking.

He threw back his head and laughed, showing me the crow taking flight on his throat. “Christ, girl! I didn’t even think about how it would look!” His eyes were all lit up. “That’s hilarious. No, I’m not killing anybody. No tarp, see? No shovel.”

“Well everybody already has a shovel.”

He must’ve thought that was funny, as he winked and shot me with a finger gun. “I’m building a home gym. The chain is for my heavy bag, I’m making a kettlebell out of the pipes. Gym fees are for suckers.”

He pulled up his white tee-shirt to show a nice set of abs, every inch of his skin covered in ink.

“Wow, you’re really running out of room,” I said shyly.

He pulled his shirt up higher to show a blank space on his chest, about the size of one of those Hello, My Name Is stickers.

“I’m saving that for the girl who finally steals my heart,” he said with a grin. “Whoever finally makes me settle down. Gonna put her name right there, forever. Nobody’s come close so far.” He made it sound like a challenge.

I finished ringing him up and told him the total, and he gave me a credit card and didn’t looked too worried about if it would go through. Before he left, he reached into the candy box and pulled out a lollipop, unwrapping it and sucking on it while looking me right in the eyes.

“Those cost a dime.” I pointed at the faded sign taped on the front of the yellowed plastic.

He leaned in, smelling like sweat and metal and sweet wild cherry. “I don’t have a dime.”

“I can make change.”

Oh, that grin, that dimple. He was the prettiest thing in town. “Just let me have this one and I’ll make it up to you, promise.”

I glanced back to the office where my uncle napped most of the time before nodding.

“What’s your name, Beautiful?”

“Hailey.”

“Hi there, Hailey. I’m Dylan.” He picked up his bag and backed toward the door. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

As soon as he was gone, I fished a dime out of my pocket and paid for the sucker. Maybe nobody was gonna count up those dimes like they did the register, but it didn’t sit right with me, him taking candy like that.

Not that it mattered. I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

About Dylan.

“Stay away from that boy,” Uncle Reggie said from the office.

“He seems nice.”

“You should know better. If your daddy was around—”

“Well he’s not.”

He walked over to me then and put his big, dry, heavy hand on my shoulder. “As long as you’re under my roof, you stay away from that boy.”

But I didn’t duck my head and say yes, sir. I didn’t say no, either. I’ve always hated it when people tell me what to do.

The next time I saw Dylan was at Lindy’s Diner. Uncle Reggie sent me every day to get our lunch. It was only a few doors down from the hardware store, and I learned real quick that their salads weren’t worth eating but their soup was. Lindy was counting my change when the door opened, and there was Dylan with another guy from the tattoo parlor. Not that I really noticed the other guy. Dylan was like one of those big, colorful ocean fish, and everybody else was a muddy little minnow.

“Well hey there, Hailey,” Dylan said, looking me up and down. “You’re even cuter without that yellow vest.”

“It’s my uniform,” I said, which I guess was obvious, but I hated wearing it and Uncle Reggie made me.

“Since you’re out of uniform, want to join us for lunch?”

My pulse sped up at the thought, but I was stuck. “I got to get back,” I told him. “Uncle’s expecting me.”

“Aren’t you kinda old to be taking orders from your uncle? You look like a big girl to me.” He was grinning at my chest while he said it, but I didn’t mind.

“I need the job. And nobody likes cold soup.”

Dylan started laughing, and his friend laughed, too, and then Dylan elbowed him. “Go get us a booth.” When the other guy split, Dylan leaned in close and said, “You think your uncle might let you out to play sometime?”

I looked down. “He, um, he told me to stay away from you.”

Dylan’s eyebrows went up, his blue eyes sparking. “So are you the kind of girl who takes orders or are you the kind of girl who does what she wants?”

I looked up, tried to seem bold. “Maybe I might just run into you somewhere. That happens sometimes, right?”

“Run into me at the movies tonight, then. Eight-thirty. They’re playing The Lost Boys. You like old scary movies?”

“I guess…”

Dylan reached out, smoothed my hair around my ear. “Don’t worry, baby. I’ll keep you safe. Meet me there, okay?”

“Okay.” I smiled like a fool. I couldn’t help it. When he looked at me, I felt like a sunny day. I nodded my goodbye and hurried back to the hardware store. Uncle Reggie said I took too long, but I told him Lindy was a little backed up, and that was fine. My soup was kinda cold, but I didn’t care.

I had a date.

That night, once Uncle Reggie was asleep, I put on an old sundress with spaghetti straps and flowers and my nicest sandals. I didn’t have a pocketbook so I just tucked a twenty and my phone in my bra. I waited so long outside the theater I wondered if Dylan was going to stand me up, but then his motorcycle roared up and he parked in the alley. He bought my ticket and offered to buy me some popcorn, but I didn’t want any. The chairs inside were old and scratchy, and I kept fidgeting because my dress was kinda short.

Dylan put a hand on my bare knee and said, “Girl, you’re wiggling like a worm.”

I stilled at his touch, but he didn’t move his hand. I moved my leg, but his hand stayed right there, the black rose firmly over my thigh, almost holding it down. I guess he really didn’t like my squirming. The movie started, and it had that grainy look movies get when they’re older than you, but it was interesting, with these surfer kids that were also vampires. At one point, something made me jump, and Dylan laughed and grabbed my hand and dragged it into his lap. He wasn’t making me do anything, but it still felt wrong, and I tried to take it back, but he wouldn’t let me. We stayed that way a long time, his hand pinning mine down, and then the movie was over.

On the way out, he asked me if I wanted a ride back home, and I told him, “No, thank you, I’ve got the truck.”

“Then I’d better walk you to it. Girl like you, dressed like that, out on the street this time of night could get in a lot of trouble.”

He was the most dangerous looking thing for miles, but maybe that’s why I liked him. Still, I let him walk me to Uncle Reggie’s truck, and I thanked him for a nice night and went to open my door, but he pushed it closed and pressed me up against it.

“What, no goodnight kiss?”

“I just met you,” I said.

“Then get to know me better. Kiss me.”

I didn’t dare, but then he kissed me instead. I didn’t tell him it was the first time I’d kissed a boy. At first, I just kinda stood there, but it felt nice, so I tried kissing him back a little, but not too much. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who wanted a girl to do too much. His hands trailed from my face to my shoulders and down my arms to my hips, but when his front parts pressed up against me, I pushed him away.

“Anyone could see,” I said, breathless. “We’re in the middle of town.”

“All the prudes are asleep, baby,” he said, real close. “I don’t care if they watch.”

“Somebody might tell my uncle.”

He pulled back a little, eyed me with disdain. “You’re real worried about that, aren’t you? Your uncle, what people think…”

“If he kicks me out, I got nowhere to go. And no job.”

Dylan grinned. He was missing a tooth, in back. I hadn’t noticed it before.

“I’ll take care of you, baby.” When he went in for another kiss, I let him. When he pushed his front against mine, I softened against his body. If he was going to take care of me, then I guess I didn’t have to worry so much after all.

A few days later, Dylan came into the hardware store while I was stocking nails. It was tricky, because there are more nails than you ever thought possible and they all look about the same.

“Can I help you?” I asked him, like he was any other customer, but I gave him a special smile to let him know I didn’t mean it.

He pulled me up to standing and went in for a kiss. I stumbled back, but he had my wrist, and he pulled me in while I was off balance and put his mouth over mine and I didn’t know what to do because I still had a box of nails in each hand. His kiss was hard this time, not nice at all, his tongue forcing its way past my lips.

“What’s this?” my Uncle Reggie shouted, trundling up the aisle. “Boy, you get your hands off that girl!”

Dylan broke away from the kiss and stepped in front of me. “Or what?” he said, squaring off. “Or what, old man?”

“Hailey, I told you to stay away from him,” Uncle Reggie started.

I was stunned, my mouth wet with Dylan’s spit, a box of nails clenched in each fist. “I—I know, I tried to, but—”

“You knew the rules, honey. I’ll put your things on the porch.” Uncle Reggie looked so sad just then, so disappointed in me. “I tried with you, I did, but now I wash my hands of it.” He lumbered back into the office and called back, “Leave your vest on the counter.”

My jaw dropped and my eyes looking everywhere but at the closed office door, I turned to Dylan. “Why? Why’d you do that?”

He grinned like a little boy at Christmas. “So you could be free. Now nobody can tell you what to do. You can bring your stuff to my place tonight.”

“How? I was using his truck—”

“I’ll borrow Jimmy’s van. I’ll come get you when I’m done at work.”

“Well what do I do until then?”

Dimples out, he unbuttoned my yellow cotton vest, pulled it off my shoulders, and tossed it at the closed office door. “Come to the tattoo shop. We got a couch. Just watch out for Snake. He’s the boss, but he’ll cop a feel if he can.”

Taking my hand, he led me past the counter, grabbing two lollipops as we passed. He stopped at the door, unwrapped both lollipops, threw the trash on the ground, and slid the sweet wild cherry pop between my lips.

“I’m gonna treat you real good, baby,” he said. “I promise.”

It was a long day, sitting on that sagging fake leather couch with nothing to do but listen to the buzzing of tattoo needles. Dylan seemed proud to have me there, called me his new girlfriend. None of the other guys who worked there really talked to me, though—Dylan told ‘em not to, and Snake just called me jailbait and ignored me. Dylan didn’t talk to me, either. He was working on a big back piece for a guy—Jesus on the cross.

At one point, the phone was just ringing off the hook, and Snake yelled, “Dylan, tell your girl to answer that!”

“Baby, get the phone, just this once,” Dylan said, not even looking up from his work.

I didn’t want to, but I’d spent a few hours listening to them take turns answering the phone, so I walked over and said, “Pit Viper Tattoo, can I help you?” It was a lady who wanted to know if anybody was available that night to do an angel tattoo on her back, so I opened up the appointment book and told her Jimmy was open from seven to ten and that was that.

“Stay behind the counter until Dylan leaves and I’ll give you twenty bucks,” Snake said, and I guess that’s how I got a job answering phones at the tattoo parlor.

That night, Snake gave me twenty dollars, all crumpled and sweaty, and Dylan borrowed Jimmy’s minivan and drove me to my uncle’s house. I hadn’t unpacked much, so all I had sitting on his porch with the lights off were two big suitcases and a cardboard box. I got one suitcase and Dylan got the other, and then he waited while I got the box. Jimmy’s van stank like armpits and skunk, and Dylan played rap music as we drove out to a tiny house on a quiet country road near the landfill. I could smell it a little, but I didn’t say anything. 

I got out and followed Dylan to the front door, and he put the bags and box inside, and I waited a minute to go in, but instead he closed the door.

“We got to return Jimmy’s van,” he said.

We drove back to the tattoo shop, which was the only thing open downtown at that hour, besides McMurray’s bar. Dylan took the keys to Jimmy and walked over to his bike.

“Come on, sexy,” he said. “Wrap your legs around this.”

“I don’t know,” I said, hugging myself in the cool air. I was only wearing a tee-shirt and jeans and sandals.

“You can get on or you can sleep on the shop couch.” He sat on his bike and chucked his chin at me, and I didn’t really have any options and he knew it, so I walked over and put my leg over the back.

“Closer,” he said. “Arms tight around my chest.”

I did what he said, thinking about that spot over his heart and what my name would look like there, what it might feel like to be part of a couple, to know that a man’s heart was mine. It was an odd feeling, going from my uncle’s tidy but boring ranch to this life with Dylan, to I guess working at the tattoo shop and now riding a motorcycle around town, but what else was there for me? At least it was exciting.

We took off, and the wind was so harsh that I tucked my face against Dylan’s back, learning the smell of him. My hair tangled in the wind, my thighs squeezing tight against his legs so I wouldn’t fall off. He was warm under my hands, and I took a chance and looked up at the scenery flying past. We went over a bridge, and I could smell the creek underneath, feel the air go cool and wet. I looked up at the stars speeding past, and it was so beautiful, so big and wide and wild, like I’d been caged up my whole life and was just stepping out into the world for the first time.

When he pulled to a stop outside his house, I had to concentrate on letting go and standing up again. I felt like a different person—like a woman, not a girl. He led me inside and turned on the light.

“I would’ve cleaned if I knew you’d be coming over,” Dylan said.

Not that it would’ve helped. His house looked like an animal den, with paths from room to room, couch to bed to bathroom, the carpet worn down amid mounds of clothes and black bags of, I guess, trash.

“Maybe you could tidy up a little,” he said. “Since you can’t help too much with bills, the way Snake pays under the table. Maybe you can help in other ways.”

He looked smaller in his own house. Out in town, where everything was old and boring, he seemed bigger and more alive somehow, more bright and beautiful than anything else. But here, set against the peeling flowered wallpaper stained by years of smoke, he was somehow…less.

It didn’t matter. Without him, I had nothing.

He didn’t have a drawer or closet where I could put my things, but he did clear out a corner of the bedroom, lugging trash bags outside and tossing them into a ditch to make room. The bed was a tangled mess, looked like the sheets had never even been washed. 

“Can I change in the bathroom?” I asked.

He looked me up and down; he did that a lot. “You can change right here. If you’re gonna live with me, we can’t be too shy now, can we?”

I opened my suitcase and moved things around till I found what I needed and pulled out a pair of old flannel pajama pants and a loose tee. Turning my back to him, I changed quick, like I’d learned to in the locker room, barely showing a flash of bare back. 

“Aw, that’s cheatin’,” Dylan complained.

“I’ve never—I mean—I’ve never changed in front of a boy before.”

“Man,” he corrected. “I’m all man, honey.”

Looking right at me, bold as anything, he shucked off his baggy jeans and tee-shirt, standing proud in a pair of gray boxer briefs. I couldn’t stop looking at all his tattoos. They really did cover pretty much every inch except for that little patch over his heart. There were monsters and gross rats in trucks and skulls and flames and barbed wire in between the bigger pieces, portraits of the Joker and Elvis and some kind of weird clown man. A few of the tattoos were good, but some of them looked a little off.

“Like what you see?” he asked.

“So many tattoos…”

“Look all you want.”

He threw himself into the double bed and shoved some dirty clothes on the ground before putting his arm across the other pillow, leaving a place for me. When I didn’t immediately climb in, he patted the space and told me, “Come on.”

There wasn’t much else I could do. He could throw me right back out, and I’d be in the middle of nowhere, alone in my pajamas, no money but twenty dollars, nobody to call. The sheets were gritty with cigarette ash as I crawled carefully into bed.

Dylan turned on his side and stroked his fingers up and down my arm. “You want a tattoo? I can give you one. I got a gun here and some ink. Whatever you want. I’m really good.”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t it hurt?”

He pushed my shirt down to bare my shoulder, leaned in to kiss it and briefly caught it in his teeth. “Hurts in the good way. You know, when something hurts good?”

I felt a blush creep up and pulled my shirt back over my shoulder. “That’s—I mean—I haven’t felt that sort of thing, I guess.”

He scooted closer, brushed my hair away from my neck and kissed it. “Sounds like you need some experience.” As he kissed down my neck to my shoulder, moving my shirt down again, I was just all clenched up, stiff as a board. “We got to get you to relax, honey. I got some tequila. You want a shot? Loosen you up?”

“I don’t drink.”

“Well we might have to change that.”

His hand found the hem of my shirt and skittered up to my belly, making impatient circles as it crept upwards. I hadn’t taken off my bra, and his fingertip slipped past the underwire like a coyote under a fence. I wasn’t quite resisting, but I guess it was obvious I wasn’t that into it. He huffed an annoyed sigh and went in for a kiss, his hand snaking around back to fiddle with the hooks on my bra. 

And I’ll admit—a little part of me was disappointed. This wasn’t how I wanted things to go, like he was trying to gain ground but I had to lose it first. I wanted the sort of kiss a girl could give in to, the kind of kiss that makes your tummy flutter, makes you melt, like they have in movies. I wanted to feel special and loved, cared for. I wanted a man with all his teeth, a man who drove a car and had a house with marble floors and a sparkling blue pool and a bed that wasn’t full of Dorito corners.

Dylan stopped and took my hand and placed it on his heart, on that bare patch of skin.

“If you want your name here, baby,” he said, all solemn, “then I got to know you love me. Do you want that? To be my girl?”

I looked at my hand, small and white, pressed against the canvas of his chest.

“I’ve never been anybody’s girl before.”

“Then show me how much you love me,” he whispered in my ear, dragging my hand down his belly. “Show me.”

So I showed him. I whipped out my box cutter and jabbed it in the side of his neck, slashing it around so it couldn’t be undone.

He couldn’t scream, but he did make a gurgling sound, lurching up and falling over on the floor. I snatched his phone from where he’d left it on the bed and dropped it in a glass of water on the bedside table. He managed to get his hand on the box cutter and yank it out, but that wasn’t smart. Blood just poured out everywhere and I wouldn’t have thought his house could get any more disgusting, but it did.

I let him flop around for a while, clutching at his neck and gasping, and then I picked up my box cutter and kicked him over onto his back and straddled his waist.

“I didn’t lie,” I told him, running a finger over the tattoos on his chest. “I really do want your heart. Just not the way you think. See, you never asked me where I came from, why I had nothing and nobody. You were glad to take advantage of the situation, though, weren’t you?”

In response, he tried to roll away and failed. I slapped his cheek gently to get his attention. “But since you didn’t ask, I’ll tell you. I got sent to prison for killing my daddy. Not because he was a bad man, but because he just always had to tell me what to do, and I don’t like that. I made it look like an accident, and they finally had to let me out. But that was their mistake. See, I’m really, really good at pretending to be good.” 

He was running out of blood and air, but he was still alive and watching as I used the box cutter to slice out that empty patch of skin. So, so carefully I traced around his ink, leaving it just so as I ripped off a perfect rounded rectangle of flesh. It even had a couple of scraggly little hairs on it.

“See? It’s mine now. I’ll be your girl forever.”

Once he stopped breathing, I found a Sharpie by his tattoo rig and used my best cursive to write my name on that little scrap of skin. Hailey, with a heart over the i, perfectly filling up that square of blank space. I folded it up in some paper from his sketch book and put it in his wallet, which is now my wallet. It’s in my back-left pocket. The box cutter is in my right.

The next thing I had to do was take a shower and wash off all the blood, and I sure did hate using that curved sliver of old yellow soap and a towel so dirty it kept its shape like a ghost. I got dressed and hunted around until I found seven hundred and fifty dollars squirreled away under the yellowed mattress and took it all, but there wasn’t anything else there worth taking. I thought about maybe carrying him out to the landfill in his own garbage bags or burying him with his shovel—because, as I told him, everybody has one. But he sure liked to smoke things, and it seemed only natural to use one of his cigarettes to light the filthy curtains on fire. As the flames zipped upward and licked at the wallpaper, I took a long drag and lit the sheets, too. Best thing for ‘em really. Best thing for the whole damn place.

There was nothing left for me in town, but I sure would miss Lindy’s soup. Leaving Dylan’s dirt bike behind, I dragged my suitcases two miles out to the highway and stood there at dawn in my jeans and skimpiest tank top, thumb out, waiting for something better to come by. A trucker pulled over, right off, the first one that saw me.

“Climb on up and put on your seatbelt, honey,” he said, first thing.

But see, thing is, I don’t like it when they tell me what to do.

 

(Editors’ Note: Delilah S. Dawson is interviewed by Caroline M. Yoachim in this issue.)

© 2023 Delilah S. Dawson