Chapter Twelve: Like Collecting Baseball Cards

Just like I had begun the evening, my back was currently pressed against my mattress. Unlike the parallel moment before dinner had transpired, my eyes were now closed, and I wasn’t the only being in my room with a working pulse. Now, another individual was also inhaling the circulated air of my beloved bedroom. My hands remained by my sides as I tried my hardest to regulate my breathing and try to calm myself from the internal turmoil I was facing.

      Abruptly, I felt the bed dip down marginally, a weight being applied. Something fleshy (most likely flesh) brushed across my arm, causing my eyes to jolt open. I quickly sat up, and stared incredulously at the boy who had decided to drop down next to me. Shaking my head, I noticed that he had taken his signature jacket of cowhide (it looked too expensive to be faux) off. He was now wearing nothing on his torso but a thin white tank top that was ribbed, exposing his shoulders, on which my eyes met an interesting sight I had never seen before.

      “You have tattoos,” I said, articulating my thoughts as I visually traced over his multicolored biceps. There were so many prints of ink that I couldn’t concentrate on one place in particular to look.

      “You have brown hair,” Luke stated in a dull tone.

      “Yeah, but my hair isn’t always covered,” I returned, noting that the permanent pigment stopped right above his elbows. “You seem like the type of guy who would have both of his entire arms done—why don’t you?”

      “Because I don’t like it when people judge me,” he rested his hands on his stomach, his body still trapping me between him and the wall. “If I were to have tattoos everywhere, then people would take one look at me and instantly judge me. By just having them on my shoulders and stuff, then I can still wear a T-shirt without getting pegged to be a drug dealer.”

      “Huh,” I muttered, his rationalization making more than enough sense. He didn’t want to get judged right away, so made a conscious life choice while being in the midst of scaring his body eternally. For doing such a stupid thing, his thinking was relatively reasonable. “So, when did you get them?”

      “I got my first one when I was sixteen, and then it became kind of like collecting baseball cards or something, I guess,” he shared. “The more I got, the more I wanted.”

      “Please don’t tell me that the majority of them are from drunken or high states,” I remarked.

      “Only two are from when I was drunk,” he told me, a specific print catching my eyes. It was a jumble of letters, but I couldn’t quite make out what it meant. English wasn’t the language, and though I knew that I had seen it in the past, I couldn’t quite think of where. It was in black ink, formed in a small rectangle with what looked like about four words. I liked the look of it, but didn’t understand it.

      “What’s that one?” I questioned, doing a very un-Olivia thing and touching the skin where the words were on his shoulder.

      Not sitting up, he merely twisted his head to look at where I was pointing. A smile took his face as he looked at. “Irony,” was how he answered.

      “It means ‘irony’?”

      “No, it is irony,” he laughed. “It says ‘hakol nereh yafeh b’ivrit,’ which roughly translates to ‘everything looks better in Hebrew.’”

      “I don’t get it,” I said stiffly, finding it nice to stare at, but not understanding the literary connection.

      “That’s the point,” he smirked. “I have spent a lot of time in tattoo parlors over the years, and I noticed that Hebrew and, like, Chinese are both popular languages for people to get tattooed onto their skin,” he paused, glancing at the words yet again. “Now, generally, the people getting the tattoos don’t speak the languages, but just get them anyways because they think that they’re ‘pretty’ or look cool.”

      “Do you speak either of those languages?” I asked, noting a red splotch that looked like something written in Chinese.

      “No,” he snorted, “which is why it was me being an impulsive smartass when I got the tattoo. I don’t know. It’s a random one, and I think it’s funny, because it says that everything looks better in Hebrew, in Hebrew. Also, like the all the other losers, I think it looks cool.”

      “It does,” I confirmed his thoughts on its appearance. Another splotch of color stood out, and seemed like a relatively idiotic thing to have perpetually engraved in one’s skin cells. It was a pink heart that said “PRINCESS,” but backwards, as if the words were materializing in a mirror. The odd word was also in a vibrant purple shade. “Uh, Luke, why do you have a backwards ‘PRINCESS’ tattoo?”

      Luke let out a groan, shielding the area at which I was looking with his fingers so that I couldn’t see it anymore, and then began to explain. “That’s a drunken one. My friend and I were a little more than slightly, um, intoxicated, and we picked out tattoos for each other to get. I chose a cat for him, and his was this one. It’s not one of my favorites, obviously.”

      “Okay…” I trailed off. “Though that explains why you have it, it doesn’t explain why it’s backwards.”

      “Oh,” he let out a quick laugh, “the tattoo artist was an absolute moron and did it wrong.”

      “Huh.” I closed my eyes once again, allowing some darkness to consume me, though light still seeped in through my thin eyelids. Suddenly, a question came to mind, one that I genuinely wanted to know the answer to. Well, it was more like two questions, but there wasn’t really a difference. “Luke,” I began.

      “Olivia,” he countered back.

      “What’s your favorite one and which is the most meaningful?” I asked, biting the edge of my lip.

      “My favorite?”

      “Yeah.”

      The room then became silent as he started to think. My best guess was that he was raking his mind for which he liked most, but for all I knew he could be off pondering the Theory of Relativity. His arms weren’t the type that no pale skin could be seen due to the amount of ink, but there were a lot of tattoos. There were spaces, but few. It was so much color to take in that I only tried to fixate on one area at a time.

      Luke’s tattoos ranged from random words or phrases, like “Live to Love & Love to Live,” to the most obscure of objects like an orange maple leaf that was on the tip of one of his shoulders. He had “BOSTON” printed in bold capital letters in one spot, and the signature “B” that was most commonly associated with the Boston Red Sox, despite not seeming like a baseball type of person. One was a five-pointed star that was in black and not filled in the center. Another was of an arrow pointing to the right. There was an Italian flag and a green four-leafed clover. It was a peculiar ensemble, but I bizarrely liked it, though I wasn’t normally a fan of tattoos, myself.

      After taking more than enough time to think about the question I had asked him, Luke suddenly stretched from the bed, standing straight on his feet. The barrier between me and the action of me getting off my bed had been deducted, allowing me more than enough room to get off or spread out. Instead, I propped my back against the wall, so that I could stare directly at Luke, who seemed to be contemplating something.

      Another long moment passed, and then Luke did another outlandish thing, and began to lift his shirt. I immediately covered my eyes with my hands, not because I was a prude, but because I had no desire to witness an individual of the male gender stripping their clothes in my room, and, well, okay, so maybe I was a prude. Though I was fairly positive that Luke Daniels possessed a fit torso, there was no intention in my mind to ever see it bare.

      “Olivia, open your eyes,” Luke said tediously.

      “No,” I declined.

      “Olivia,” he reiterated, “The only thing that I took off was my shirt—I swear, and all I want to do is show you my favorite tattoo and the most meaningful one, even though they’re pretty much interchangeable.”

      “Nope,” I shook my head definitely, my hands not daring to move.

      “Seriously, Olivia, just look at the tattoos—you can ignore my abs for all I care,” he persisted.

      “No way,” I turned him down a third time.

      “I guess we’re going to have to do this the hard way, then,” he sighed as I heard movement. I didn’t dare to look at him, and kept my hands just where they were, anticipating the worst. What I then felt was worse than the worst. Something wet touched my arm, and my initial reaction was to wipe whatever it was off, so that was what I did—removing my hands. I rubbed the damp area, having a pretty accurate assumption as to what had transpired.

      “Did you just lick me?” I accused, looking Luke Daniels straight in those gray eyes of his, and forcing myself to not look away or anywhere else.

      “Yep,” he smirked, causing me to cringe as I tried to ignore the fact that germs from his mouth and wherever his mouth had come in contact with had touched a part of my body. It was absolutely disgusting.

      “And why in the world would you do something so idiotic?” I questioned with a nervous gulp.

      “Because otherwise you wouldn’t look at me,” he said, pouting slightly. “Liv, just look at three letters on my chest, and five on my back and then this will all be over.”

      “Fine,” I reluctantly agreed, our eyes still connected.

      “You’re going to have to look away so that I can show you,” he said, deliberately blinking so that our eye contact was broken. Unwillingly, I had to avert my gaze to some place else, and elected a blank spot on the wall to the side of Luke’s head as just the space to veer them. “Okay, so, Oliva, just look at my chest really quickly, and then it’ll all be over.”

      I closed my eyes for a moment, and then reopened them to stare at Luke’s bare chest, but more specifically, the black tattoo that was in all lowercase letters with periods between them to which he happened to be pointing. “b.a.d.” It was in a small print and on the upper left side of his front, right above where his heart was. It made absolutely no sense to me, but the simplicity of it was refreshing. Sure, he had other colorful designs on his chest too, but I was trying to overlook them, and overlook the lower hemisphere of his torso that practically had a neon sign on it that said, “LOOK! ABS!”

      Now, I didn’t quite have an issue with the abs themselves—it was more who had the abs. Toned abdominal muscles were wonderful and a way to express to the world how insanely in shape a person was. I had seen them in the past both on models in magazines and in real life. Preston Kent, one of my very best friends, had abs. I had gone to multiple events involving water over the years with Preston, so was fully aware of the greatness that his stomach possessed. Preston was my brother, so I had no problem with his abs. Luke, on the other hand, was not my un-biological brother, so I felt extremely uncomfortable and obtrusive ogling at his, well, abs.

      “Why ‘b.a.d.’?” I inquired, finding the small word that couldn’t have been bigger than half my pinkie completely irrelevant to life.

      Because he was Luke Daniels and I was beginning to think that he didn’t like giving straight answers, he didn’t say anything, but merely turned around, exposing his surprising almost bare back to me. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but noticed that only a thin stretch of fabric deriving from his boxers was visible, instead of his entire butt, like so many teen boys found “fashionable.” “Swag” wasn’t attractive. It was dumb.

      In contrast to some of his chest and his upper arms, his back didn’t have much ink on it. There were a couple minimal designs here and there, and a single word in italics at the bottom of his right shoulder. “Never.” I wasn’t sure as to what I was exactly looking for, but had high hopes that he would tell me. And, sure enough, that was exactly what he did.

      “Never,” Luke said. “That’s the other one.”

      “And what does it mean?” He remained silent, yet again not responding. “Okay, fine. So then which one is your favorite and which one is most meaningful? Oh, and can you please put your shirt back on now that I’ve seen what you wanted to show me?”

      “I told you already,” he laughed, “they’re interchangeable. Both my favorite. Both meaningful.”

      His back was still to me, when I noticed something that he had chosen to blemish his body with which I didn’t agree. It was a small cross covered in colorful flowers that was right in the center of his shoulder blades, almost like a lowercase “T,” but not. “Are you Christian?” I questioned as he turned around abruptly without giving me notice so that my eyes flew right to his abs. Yeah. They were definitely, well, um, abs—that was for sure.

      “Indifferent, actually,” he said, leaning down to the floor to retrieve his tank top that he had dropped.

      “But you have a cross on your back,” I pointed out in confusion.

      “I have a lot of tattoos that I don’t fully agree with,” he contradicted.

      “Yes, but why have a symbol of a religion that you don’t care about?”

      “Truth?”

      “Truth.”

      “I thought it looked cool when I was getting it,” he admitted sheepishly.

      The edge of my lip found its way under my teeth so that I was biting on it marginally, contemplating whether or not asking the large question that happened to be on the tip of my tongue was worth it or not. “Are,” I began with a deep breath, “are you an atheist?”

      “I’m apathetic,” he said, giving ultimately the same response as he had before, only with a synonym.

      “So, agnostic?”

      “What’s that?” he asked, blinking as I realized that I could no longer see the skin on his chest—of which I was very glad.

      “Seriously?” He nodded, signifying that he actually didn’t know. “It’s when you neither believe fully in G-d, nor disbelieve.”

      “Oh, then, I guess,” he mumbled. “And what are you?”

      “An atheist,” I expressed with a shrug, though knowing that I wasn’t quite qualified to identify myself as one.

      I had been in a secular class on religions at my school a few years back, and we were all sharing our backgrounds in religion. I made the proclamation that I wasn’t anything and was an atheist. Yeah, my teacher didn’t exactly agree with me on the second half of my declaration and straight up told me that I was wrong. Now, it wasn’t because she was an intolerant theist, or someone who happened to believe in divinity, but rather because she said that I didn’t know enough about religions in general to completely reject the concept of “G-d.” I agreed with her, but still discarded the idea, anyway. Basically, anyone who was truly an atheist was pretty much a genius because of how much studying they had done, and still been able to say, “No, I don’t believe this stuff.”

      Thinking about it, I was probably more on the agnostic side of things than atheistic, but I really didn’t care. I was a maybe. Maybe there was a g-d, and maybe there wasn’t. Regardless, if asked to classify how I thought of the creation of the world, I was siding with science, and not opting for the adoption of a theory involving a supreme power referred to as “G-d.” It was just who I was. Olivia the Maybe Atheist.

      “Want to see one of my funnier tattoos?” Luke questioned on a lighter note, draining all the heaviness from the conversation.

      “Sure,” I said.

      He let a small smirk edge its way to his lips as he pointed to a particular area on his arm. I couldn’t see what it was, so heaved myself off of my bed, begrudgingly standing from the comfort of the mattress so that I could see what he wanted to show me. I was about a yard away from Luke and could see perfectly fine, but apparently that wasn’t good enough for him, for he then took two larger-than-necessary steps toward me, so that we were less than a foot apart.

      “It’s a pink chicken head,” I said, describing exactly what I saw. Personally, I didn’t find any humor whatsoever in the picture, but I wasn’t the one who had decided to damage my body with it until the day I died—no, that was all Luke Daniel’s doings.

      “Yeah,” he smiled as I looked closer at it. It was a cartoon picture of a chicken’s head that happened to be pink, and was probably one of the most random tattoos I had ever come across.

      “Why is that funny?” I verbally voiced my confusion.

      “Because it’s a pink chicken head and the first time I saw the design for it, I told my brother that I’d never get it, and now I have it,” he shared with a laugh.

      “Were you drunk?” I inquired.

      “No, completely sober,” he shook his head. “It’s a long story, but it was pretty much a dare.”

      “I still don’t think that’s funny.”

      “How about a tattoo that says ‘TATTOO,’ or the most epic pinecone that you’ve ever seen?” he questioned, pointing to the depictions as he said them.

      “Your tattoos make you out to be a more interesting person than just some loser with a motorcycle and leather jacket who goes to a private school,” I said suddenly, meaning it sincerely. Though I wasn’t really a fan of marring my own body, on Luke, the tattoos worked. They fit him, and made for good stories.

      “Why thank you, Olivia Ross,” he said, distractedly obtaining his phone from his back pocket after a buzz sounded, “that means a lot, coming from you.” Luke’s eyes glazed over the screen of his mobile device, and frowned. “As fun as it has been crashing dinner at your place, I have to go. I hope you won’t get terribly punished for my presence.”

      “I won’t,” I assured him. “At worse I’ll get the phone that I don’t use taken away for a week.”

      “Well, then I guess that’s better than whatever the alternative may be,” he smiled. Picking up his leather jacket from a chair, he marched off to the entrance of my room, and waved to my standing being. “Goodbye, Ms. Olivia Ross.”

      Before I could watch him close the door in a silent hush, I uttered a slight variation of the parting phrase right back to him: “Bye, Luke.”