Skye is not only excited for her new tattoo, she’s also looking forward to hanging out with her old friend and her favorite ex-boyfriend Yuri. But fate decided to give her day a turn she was not at all expecting.

This story is featured in my collection of short stories entitled Short Songs, featuring characters from The Rise and Fall of Skye Wright series.

     “Seriously?”
     Skye rubbed her forearm as she sat on the bed. “Yeah.”
     “How’d you get an appointment with Gnarly?”
     “I worked it out with her some time ago, when I knew we’d be coming through Chicago.”
     Roach rifled through her band shirts as she talked. “You really wanna get The Dynamite Chicks logo tattooed on your forearm?”
     “Fuck yeah I do. I mean, I am in The Dynamite Chicks!”
     “Sure, but what if this whole gig falls apart?”
     Skye shrugged. “It still changed my life, even if it like, all blows up tomorrow. Y’know, when you an’ me get into an epic fistfight on stage.”
     Roach stuck her tongue. “You know I’ll kick your ass!”
     “In your dreams!” smiled Skye.
     Roach dropped her new band shirts into her suitcase. “You think it’s gonna fall apart soon?”
     “The only thing that’s really fuckin’ us up is Annie’s flaky bullshit. An’ maybe Molly coming apart at the seams someday.”
     “Yeah,” groaned Roach as she dropped her eyes and looked down into her suitcase. “I don’t think the band could really go on without those two.” Roach rolled her eyes around. “Maybe without Annie, but definitely not without Molly.” Roach shut her suitcase. “You want me to come with you to your tat appointment?”
     “Naw. Yuri’s gonna meet me there.”
     “Holy shit, your ex?”
     “My favorite ex.”
     “That’s gonna be a trip.”
     “Yeah, well, I wanna talk to him without his girlfriend around.”
     “He still with Chiima? That gal’s pretty cool.”
     “As far as I know,” said Skye as she narrowed her eyes. “I mean, he knocked her up.”
     “Whoa! Seriously? I didn’t know that.”
     “Yeah” groaned Skye.
     “What? You don’t like her?”
     Skye let out a long sigh. “She’s cute, she’s smart, she’s down with the street, she’s really nice, and she’s fun to be around. And I hate her guts.”
     “Oh dear. Totes jelly?”
     “It’s much easier to lust after taken men if they’re goin’ out with jerks.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

     Skye made her way up the three flights of stairs to the Assorted Fruits tattoo shop, where the underground artist and punk sensation Gnarly worked. Skye had to ring the doorbell and get buzzed in to get inside the shop.
     The slick and clean studio was covered in artwork, including long shelves with rows of small clay and ceramic sculptures of demons, punks, and witchy figures.
     There was only one person working in the shop, a dark haired woman in a baseball cap, carefully concentrating on tattooing the arm of a large and wide red-haired woman in frayed jeans and a tank top. Both of them were heavily tattooed, with work even on their necks and faces.
     Skye quickly spotted the intricate red, green, and bright blue braids of the tall and skinny Gnarly. She came walking up to Skye wearing a torn up Exploited shirt and tight black jeans, her Doc Marten boots clomping on the floor.
     “Miz Skye Wright,” smiled the jovial Gnarly. “It’s an honor to have you here!”
     Skye shook her hand. “That sounds kinda weird,” said Skye with an uncomfortable smile.
     “Hey, some of my girlfriends wanted to stop by and meet you, but I chased ‘em off. I know you don’t want a crowd around when you get tatted.”
     Gnarly took Skye to her tattooing chair and showed her the prepared artwork. It was from the cover of their first album, a woman riding a giant stick of dynamite like a horse while lighting its fuse.
     Skye thought it was perfect.
     “You got a friend comin’ in today, right?” asked Gnarly.
     “My ex Yuri. He lives nearby.”
     “Your ex? You’re friends with one of your exes?”
     “Yeah. Weird, ain’t it?” smiled Skye.
     “I suppose for some people it ain’t.”
     “Well, it is weird. But I still like him.”
     Gnarly held the artwork up to Skye’s forearm, working out how it would be positioned and angled before applying the stencil. Gnarly went off to make the stencil as Skye eyed the doorway, wondering when Yuri would show up.
     A tall, skinny, and heavily tattooed woman with long green and red hair walked in just as the door buzzed.
     Skye’s heart skipped a beat as red and green hair opened the door.
     Chiima, Yuri’s short girlfriend with her bobbed black hair and pixie face, walked in.
     She looked just about the same as the first time she met her, only she was not wearing a band shirt. She was wearing a large dark green shirt that was stretched out.
     She was quite pregnant.
     “Hey,” said Skye, trying her best to hide her disbelief.
     “Hiya. Yuri couldn’t make it, so he asked me to come by in his place.”
     “Oh,” said Skye flatly as her brain whirled, trying to process the sudden turn of events.
     Skye could feel her blood rushing into her temple as her shoulders and arms tensed up. She took in a breath and held it, exhaling a moment later as she tried to let herself go, trying to get herself to relax. She was not interested in being tense and agitated as she was getting tattooed.
     Chiima lowered herself onto the bench next to the tattooing table. Skye felt her shoulders become light, as she was finding it difficult to resent someone who was so pregnant.
     “So, tattoo time?” asked Chiima with an impish smile.
     “When are you due?”
     Chiima held up a finger. “One more month!”
     “Nervous?”
     “Naw. Second one. The first one was a breeze.”
     “You already got a kid? Yuri never told me that!”
     Chiima gently put her hands on her stomach. “I had my first when I was fifteen. He lives with his grandma.”
     “That sounds like a story.”
     Chiima kept her head down and bit her lip.
     “I know some girls who had kids around that age,” said Skye.
     “Yeah,” said Chiima as she nodded.“I want to raise this kid with Yuri. I want to do it right this time.”
     “Damn. Yuri bein’ a dad. That’s a trip.”
     Chiima lifted her head. “It’s always a trip when your friends become parents. When some skater scrub who used to score dope and booze for you is suddenly responsible for an actual tiny human.”
     “See, that was Yuri!”
     Gnarly came back out with the stencil. Chiima sat back, watching and sitting quietly as Gnarly applied the stencil to Skye’s forearm.
     Gnarly peeled back the paper. “Whattaya think?”
     Skye looked down at the blue lines on her forearm. Her heart skipped a beat.
     She held her arm out to Chiima. “How’s it look?”
     “That’s totally sick!” smiled Chiima.
     “We good?” asked Gnarly.
     Skye nodded. Gnarly picked up her machine and wheeled a small table with her bottles of ink and various other instruments next to the chair.
     Gnarly stretched out Skye’s skin with one hand while she brought up her machine and started the outline. Skin felt the pinch of the needle once she started, but she quickly settled in with the familiar buzzing sting as her skin became numb.
     Skye did not have as many tattoos as most of her friends, but she had gotten enough that she knew what to expect.
     Chiima looked at her phone. “Yuri just let me know that there’s a Writing Heretics show at The Kammy Club tonight.”
     “Writing Heretics? That’s a band?”
     “Yeah. Weird shit. Y’know, like noise improv.”
     “Sounds like a gas.”
     Skye glanced down at her arm, watching Gnarly make the outline.
     “So, you think you might wanna go to that show?” asked Chiima. “I know Yuri would love to see you.”
     Skye felt a charge go through her, warming her temples as her neck got tight. She did her best not to flinch as she started to really feel the bite of the tattoo machine.
     “I know I don’t stand out as much as Miranda or Molly,” said Skye, “but if someone recognizes me they might start schmoozing me.”
     “Schmoozing?”
     “She owns Butt Fork now,” said Gnarly as she kept concentrating on her work.
     “No shit?” said Chiima. “I thought you were just on their label.”
     “It’s my label now.”
     “Wow.” Chiima looked across the room as if she were trying to digest the situation. “I don’t think Yuri knows that.”
     “I’d love to see the look on his face when you tell him.”
     “Yeah, he’d…”
     Chiima trailed off, suddenly looking embarrassed.
     “What?”
     Chiima hunched her shoulders and clasped her hands, making herself look like a shy schoolgirl. “I heard a lot about you in your Hell Nose House days.”
     Gnarly stopped her machine and lifted her head. “Hell Nose House?”
     “That was my place, years ago in San Francisco,” said Skye. “Back before when I was in the original version of The Dynamite Chicks.”
     “Psh!” said Gnarly. “That’s an incredibly silly name for a house.”
     “Yeah it was.”
     Gnarly put her head back down and started up her machine again.
     Skye looked to Chiima with a raised eyebrow. “So what did Yuri tell you about me?”
     Chiima hunched her shoulders. “Y’know, just like, how you guys played music all th’ time, and how wasted you both got.”
     “Wasted Skye,” said Gnarly. “That’s what I wanna see!”
     “Dream on,” scoffed Skye. “Those days are over.”
     Chiima leaned back on the bench. “I was the same as Yuri, back in my fucked up clubbing days.”
“On the horse?”
     Chiima nodded.
     “Too many people are,” said Gnarly, still concentrating on Skye’s arm. “Or used to be.”
     “I was the opposite,” said Skye. “I went up instead of down.”
     “I know,” said Chiima. “I was surprised to hear that, considering you were going out with Yuri at the time.”
     “Sounds like a demented Hallmark romance,” said Gnarly as she lifted her head. “He was a junky. She was a speed freak! Can two people going in opposite directions find true love?”
     “Maybe I should write a song about that,” said Skye.
     “Do it!”
     Gnarly concentrated as she finished up the outline. Chiima stood up and craned her neck to get a look at the work.
     Skye looked at Chiima as she tried to ignore her sore forearm “How did you guys meet? Yuri never filled me in on that.”
     “Just…” Chiima waved her hand in the air. “Just around the scene. We’d see each other at shows all the time. One night I decided to go to a Meatbangers show by myself. I couldn’t find anyone else to go with and he happened to be there. We hung out and after the show I asked him if he could walk me home.”
     “Really?” asked Skye as she screwed up her face. “You asked someone to walk you to your house?”
     Chiima looked down at the floor. “Well, I’m tiny. An’ I don’t get into fights like you and your buds do all the time.”
     Skye sat back, feeling somewhat embarrassed. “Yuri told you about that then?”
     “He told me a couple of stories about some of your epic club battles. He told me about how you beat up some guy named… Sam? And how everyone heard about it.”
     “Yeah. Sam the Flake. That’s one of the beatdowns I don’t regret.”
     “He told me how everyone was happy you kicked that guy’s ass, that no one could stand him.” Chiima looked right at Skye with a guarded look. “He also said everyone realized what an ass kicker you were, after that beat down. A lot of people got scared of you.”
     “Pssh! I don’t know about that.”
     “Yuri does. He’s sure of it.”
     Skye’s thoughts drifted back to those days. She was proud that she knocked down and injured the smarmy and dismissive scenester who had completely shattered his girlfriend with his callous behavior, causing him to be one of the most disdained figures in the scene. She knew it made her popular, that she had knocked him down and beat him up, but it was still strange for her to hear that it made her intimidating, that the one-sided fight had given her the reputation of a tough club brawler.
     Skye became quiet as she watched Gnarly start to work on the shading. Gnarly and Chiima started to talk, mentioning local bands and clubs with their insider knowledge of the Chicago scene. Skye believed she knew enough about Chicago’s music and club scenes, but she was happy enough to get in on the finer details as she took in their conversation.
     After what seemed like long, sore moments, Gnarly wiped off the finished tattoo.
     “Done!” declared Gnarly as she moved away from the chair.
     Skye stood up and looked at her new tattoo in the mirror.
     She felt a warm wave of satisfaction, seeing the logo from her band on her forearm.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

     Skye could not tell herself why she accepted Chiima’s invitation to grab a coffee at a nearby cafe. She could not remember the last time she had ever felt more out of place or uncomfortable as she sat across from Yuri’s girlfriend.
     She casually sipped her coffee as she stared across the cafe.
     “So how d’ya like it?” asked Chiima.
     “What?”
     “Your tat. You good with how it came out?”
     “Right!” Skye held up her arm, her fresh tattoo wrapped in surgical film. “It’s awesome. But I already knew Gnarly was going to do a killer job.”
     “I should get some new ink,” said Chiima as she looked down at her forearm which had a few small tattoos. “I should really link up these random ones with some kinda… I dunno, some sort of background.”
     Skye looked down at Chiima’s forearm. She had small, seemingly random tattoos: a skull, a bee, and a musical note.
     “Are you a musician?” asked Skye as she pointed at the musical note.
     “Naw. I mean, not really. I was in a few bands, but they fell apart so fast I never really got into the groove of playin’.”
     “You never finished your story,” said Skye flatly.
     “What?”
     “About you an’ Yuri, how you guys got together.”
     Chiima turned her coffee cup around. “You sure you wanna hear it?” she asked as she kept her eyes down on her coffee.
     “Yeah,” said Skye, even though she knew she just needed to hear about it, rather than wanting to hear about it.
     Chiima shifted around while clutching her coffee cup.“I don’t remember exactly how, but he ended up coming up to my place that night, when I asked him to walk me home. We were sittin’ around and chatting.”
v “He hit on ya’?” asked Skye as she could feel her skin standing on edge.
     “Hell no. I kept waiting for him to make a move, but he never did anything. I just couldn’t take it anymore an’ I leaped on him.”
     Skye felt a seethe. She did her best to push it down.
     She wondered if her face was flush, if Chiima could tell she was getting worked up.
     “Sometimes that freaks them out,” said Skye. “I traumatized a couple a guys by doin’ that.”
     Chiima scrunched up her face, trying to force down a laugh. “Yuri might still be traumatized. Who knows? Maybe our relationship is just Stockholm syndrome.”
     “Always a proven method of bagging a boyfriend!”
     Chiima looked down at the table. “You miss him, don’t you?”
     Skye snapped a look at Chiima. “Did Yuri say something?”
     Chiima scrunched her shoulders. “I can… It’ just…” Chiima’s eyes fluttered and she gripped her coffee cup. “I can just tell. I mean, I know I met you before, but I never really hung out with you until today.”
     Chiima became still. She narrowed her eyes and looked right at Skye.
     Her expression unnerved Skye a bit.
     “He’s the one who got away, isn’t he?” asked Chiima matter-of-factly.
     Skye sat back with an expression that put Chiima on guard.
     “Maybe he is,” said Skye. “Maybe he’s just one of the few boyfriends I’ve had who wasn’t a complete fuck up or a psycho, or just a jerk. That sounds weird, because he did have a sketchy temper back when I knew him. And, yeah, he was all bombed out on drugs most of th’ time.”
     “I kinda have a hard time picturing him like that.”
     Skye slowly shook her head. “You and I have gone out with different Yuris. He was someone else, back in those days.”
     “So was I,” said Chiima quietly. “I have a lot of friends that I made after I cleaned up, after I stopped getting fucked up all of the time. It’s hard to imagine some of them… being like that. The wild whatever-the-fuck party animals.”
     “Too true.”
     “Some of them. There are others who are too easy to imagine being like that.”
     Skye nodded. “Also true.”
     Chiima tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at Skye. “So what brought you back to Earth? How did you get around to gettin’ off the stuff? I mean…”
     “Yeah. I guess… I had gotten out of the mainstream speed scene. I mean, at least I stopped dealing it. I kinda… I dipped back into it now and then. I was still drinking. Hell, I was drinking even more to compensate for the lack of drugs. And I guess, I just wanted to live. I looked back on where the drugs and drinkin had taken me. Hell, when I was in my teens an’ twenties I did all kinds of reckless shit. The way I partied, the way I drove, the fights I got into… It’s like I didn’t care if I got maimed or killed or ended up spendin’ a decade in state prison.”
     Skye saw Chiima’s face go cold.
     “Or it could also be that I cheated on my twenty-something boyfriend with jailbait after a drug binge.”
     Chiima looked up with wide eyes. “What?”
     “Y’know, the kind of things that make you realize you’re fuckin’ up too much.”
     Chiima narrowed her eyes again. “Okay, now you’re just makin’ that shit up.”
     “True story.” Skye Leaned on the table. “Don’t tell Yuri.”
     “No. But he might find out anyway.”
     “True enough.” Skye leaned back. “How about you? How did you get around to quitting?”
     Chiima pushed away her coffee cup. “That’s a long story. Maybe for another time.” Chiima glanced at her phone. “I should get goin’.”
     Chiima pushed back her chair and put a hand on the table to steady herself as she got to her feet. Skye took her by the hand and helped her stand up.
     “Thanks,” said Chiima as she stood straight. “It’s hard to maneuver with this beer belly.”
     “Are you going home?”
     “Yeah. Gonna get ready for that show with Yuri.” Chiima looked up at Skye. “You wanna come with us?”
     “Well…”
     “It would make Yuri really happy if you came with us.”
     Skye felt flush.
     “Sure. Lemme go back to my hotel an’ grab Roach. We’ll be there.”