Nico Read online

  Nico

  The Leaves [3]

  Hartnett, J.B.

  (2014)

  * * *

  When I was a boy, I met a girl.

  She didn’t know it then, but…

  She changed me.

  Now…..I am a man.

  A man who is broken by the stories of the women who come to me.

  They are my birds with broken wings.

  I help them heal, help them to make them strong, so they can fly free.

  Lark changed me. Loved Me. Made Me Strong.

  With her, I am free.

  I write…

  To the girl of the past.

  To the girl of my present.

  And, the girl of my future.

  Dear Dish…

  NICO

  By J.B. Hartnett

  Copyright © 2014 J.B. Hartnett

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  eBook Formatting by FormattingExperts.com

  Cover Design by FormattingExperts.com

  Copyedit and Proofreading by Karen Harper and Nancy Saling-Thompson

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  I could write another book just to thank all the people who continue to support me. I want to begin with my family; my three men, though two of you are too young to realize, you are all giving me the chance to live my dream… thank you, thank you, thank you. Hugs and kisses always.

  My sister who has listened to me as I work out the future of a character or story, read rough drafts, helped me with research and remained a true cheerleader… big love and thanks and furry kitty cuddles… because you can and would not sneeze.

  To my friends; Kimberly, Jen, Jenna, Tash, Jaye and Kellie… wow, you guys are sooooooo patient. Thank you!!!

  To the bloggers and women that have supported me since Inky… you have all shown me such tremendous support and helped to expose my stories to new readers. I absolutely could not do this without you; Sandy Roman-Borrerro, Jennifer Garrison Trevino, Becca Manuel, Melanie Lowery, Jenny Aspinal, Gitte Doherty, Bethany Farwell, Karen Louise Rohde Færgemann, Julie Richman, MK Harkins, Nancy Saling – Thompson, Karen Harper, Shayna Snyder, Lissette De La Hoz, Lisa Shilling Hintz, Milasy Mungulo and all you pretty panel gals at The Rock Stars of Romance.

  The Princesses: Joanne, Elizabeth and Kelly.

  To my betas: you are all amazing… Karen Harper, Karen Louise Rohde Færgemann, Christina Lefferts, Coleen Ritter-Garvey… wow! Just wow, thank you!!!!… and wow!

  To Lisa Schilling – Hintz: thank you for writing the beautiful blurb… poetry my friend, pure poetry.

  You know who you are, thanks for giving it to me straight and telling me the truth. You made Nico a better story and me a better writer because of it. Big fat sloppy St. Bernard kisses for you my friend… and beer.

  Karen Louise, you were amazing… can’t thank you enough!

  To B.J. Harvey, CEO of the Ladies of the International Order of Hand Holding… thank you! You have been a tremendous support, can’t thank you enough.

  MK Harkins, Nancy Saling Thompson, and Karen Harper… you three gals have been there for laughter and tears and I look forward to talking to the three of you each and every day. I can’t wait to share coffee, pie, Twin Peaks and Forks with you all.

  There are two people in this book that were inspired by the most awesome parents I have ever met; Kirk and Claudia Van Doren. I used the two of you as Nico’s parents. When I was writing this story, your faces kept popping into my head. Thank you for being my muses and being wonderful people full stop.

  Nicole Drager, tattoo artist and Jackalope enthusiant… thank you for taking the time to show me the ins and outs of tattooing and for bringing life to Coastal Ink and its employees.

  Nico and his birds: the research I put into this book was heartbreaking. In no way did I intend to glorify violence or diminish the profound effect of the circumstances I’ve described for Nico’s birds. Although this story is a work of fiction, as are all of the women and situations within, I’m sure they are close to someone’s reality. When I wrote Inky, I received several emails from women telling me that Inky’s story was incredibly close to their own. As humbling as it is that her story had touched them, it is none the less heartbreaking. So, to all the broken birds out there, I hope you find your Cole, your Nico, and your happily ever after.

  J.B. Hartnett 2014

  Chapter 1

  July 2006

  It was one of the worst days of my life. In fact, I could not think of any day worse.

  It began with coffee. Some mornings, I walked from my place to my favorite café downtown called The Whaler. This particular morning, the marine layer was thick, the damp, salty, air made everything look depressing. It was colder than usual, too, one of those odd summer mornings when the sky eventually becomes a hot haze, but leaves you with that gloom you just can’t shake – a bad omen if ever there was one. Even living in what most would consider to be damn near perfection did nothing to lift that haze causing my bad mood.

  My shop, Coastal Ink, had been doing its normal roaring summer trade thanks to the tourists. If you had the money, spending the summer in a million-dollar beach house was pretty nice. I could walk everywhere: the grocery store, the movie theatre, cafes, restaurants, nightclubs, and shops… and, of course, the Pacific Ocean was at my doorstep. Whether I was sitting on the porch of my house or in my shop just below it, I always knew I was only a five-minute walk from the ocean.

  I didn’t look like your normal SoCal surfer guy; I had the tousled blond hair, which hung just above my shoulders, and a dark tan, but that was my Native American heritage. Brown eyes and a six-foot-two-inch build got me laid on a regular basis, and I knew I could work the tattooed, bad-boy image to my advantage. In reality, I preferred to wear jeans and Docs in the winter with some kind of long sleeve thermal and a hoodie. In the summer, I wore long cargo shorts or jeans and sandals. I couldn’t be bothered with trying to fit a certain image. I was the guy that owned the tattoo shop up the road. I didn’t have to say much, and that worked for me, too. As far as anyone knew, I was just a broody, artistic type that no one wanted to piss off. I’d never had a physical altercation in my life. I could usually just cock my head to the side, and some asshole who thought they wanted to fuck with me would think twice.

  One flip of a switch and the flashing word “Open” gave the place an eerie red glow while I turned on all the lights. My business partner, Zack, had bought half of the shop a few years back. He and I had similar skills and had met through the artist I apprenticed with. A year ago, his sister, Becca finished her apprenticeship and handled all the piercings and genital tattoos, something I guessed went well together, not
to mention something I could not and would not do.

  By noon each day, we opened the shop and closed whenever we were done. I had some clients that kept me on a kind of retainer, some that would make their way through town each year to add to a work in progress. Unlike Zack and Becca, my specialty was something that I just fell into, didn’t plan on, and had been trying to reconcile myself with since the day I took it on.

  It all started with a fifteen-year-old girl named Anika.

  I had been giving beach goers tattoos of dolphins and Chinese symbols for a good five years. Aside from that, my reputation was built on having a good eye, an artist, and being able to transform a client’s vision into body art. I loved that challenge, but the touristy shit paid the bills. One evening, Anika walked in with her friend, Amelia. I knew she was a minor, but one look at her face, I could see the pain that seeped out of her. The back of the shop had a somewhat private space used for intimate piercings or tattoos that exposed the client. Becca used it more than Zack or I did. Anika hopped up on the long padded table, while her friend crossed her legs and leaned against the wall.

  “I know you’re not eighteen. And you know the law about tattoos and minors. You wanna tell me what you had in mind?” I asked, keeping everything professional, but knowing in my gut I wasn’t going to like what she had to say. It was the one and only time I would ever give a tattoo to a minor.

  I learned she was about to be emancipated from her abusive mother, and I didn’t get the sense she was lying about it either. I needed to know I was making the right choice by giving her a tattoo, not just for me, but for her. She was young, and the piece she wanted wasn’t just some small representation of her ordeal; it would cover her entire back. I had given plenty of tattoos to cover up shit people regretted, but once she did this, there was no way to undo it.

  The next two hours were spent listening to her story. I often gave a tattoo that was meant to mark a tragedy, death of a loved one, that sort of thing, but rarely did I get the story that went with it. She had been abused by her mom; that much I had already figured out, but the abuse ranged from a daily mind-fuck to the mom’s boyfriend having his way with her. I was affected by her strength and, being an artist, as well, her ability to express her vision.

  Halfway through her story, I was already convinced she needed it. This wasn’t going to be some one-off tattoo. This would be years of trying to purge all that fucked-up shit from her soul, and I was signing on to help her do just that. It went against our policy, our unwritten moral code, and it was against the law. But, as I listened, I remembered something else.

  I’m not sure how my pop ended up doing social work, but he was good at it. He lost his own dad young, so maybe that had some sort of bearing on his decision. When Grandpa passed, they’d been living out in Hemet. My grandma brought Pop here so he could go to a good college, and that’s where he’d met my mom. Dad had a good life and good opportunities to do more than what would have been offered in the desert. When he met my mom, Rachel, he said it was love at first sight. His last year in college, my grandma passed, and Pop said if it had not been for my mom, it would have left a hole so big, he wasn’t sure he would have found his way out. Mom moved in with Pop, and the beach house I live in was their first home. Having lost her own parents in a car accident as a kid, Mom wanted nothing more than to have a family. She said she would have followed my pop to the North Pole or the Gobi Desert; as long as they were together, she didn’t care where they went. They had the best marriage of anyone I’d ever known, and as much as I wanted the same thing, I had yet to find a woman that made me feel that way.

  When an opening came up in the same desert town where Pop was born, he took it. He said he went there to give something back. Mom found a job at a battered women’s shelter, and they made the move to the desert. Six months later, I was born. While Pop was trying to help disadvantaged women and children, my mom was giving them a safe place to go.

  When I was seven years old, my folks couldn’t find a sitter and I had to go to work with mom.

  That was the day I met her…

  Mom set me up in the shelter’s living room with some toys and turned on the television. I was watching some cop show when I heard my pop’s voice shouting for help. Mom told me to stay in that room and try to get some sleep, but there was no way in hell I was going to do that. Peeking into the long hallway, I could see Mom, Pop, and one of the other shelter employees crouched around someone. I moved along the hallway, my curiosity leading me until I saw the woman. Her face wasn’t a face; it looked like meat. Her head lolled back and forth while Pop tried to calm her. The employee, a large, black woman, said the ambulance was on its way, but something was happening. The woman reached out with both arms, and, suddenly, a little girl appeared, grabbed the woman’s hand, and sat down beside her.

  The girl quietly cried while the woman brushed her hair away, leaving smeared blood on her face. Pop looked at me and nodded very slowly. I had no idea at the time what he was trying to communicate, but then he looked at my mom and nodded again. The hand on the little girl’s cheek fell as her head turned away. My mom put her hands on the shoulders of the girl and said, “Say goodbye to your momma now, honey. She has to go on up to Heaven.”

  I knew about Heaven and angels. I also knew that when people went to Heaven; they never came back.

  The girl moved her mom’s arm so she could nuzzle into her side. She squeezed her, and I heard her say she loved her and to tell Gramma and Grampy, “Hi.” My mom and pop didn’t move, didn’t try to stop her at all when she sat up and kissed her mom on the cheek. I wasn’t sure why I did it. I hadn’t been prompted by my parents to do it, but I walked over to her and held out my hand. She didn’t hesitate at all. She stood up, took one final look at her mom, and let me lead her back into the living room.

  Eventually, my mom came in with a wash cloth and cleaned the girl up. She also brought two slices of yellow cake with chocolate frosting and a glass of milk for each of us. Mom told me that when people are sad, dessert is one of the easiest foods to get them to eat. She also told me that being sad takes a lot of energy, and I had never forgotten that bit of wisdom she shared with me at the tender age of seven.

  We played with my G.I. Joes and just talked. I couldn’t tell you what we spoke about, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Mom had arranged all the cushions from the couch on the floor like a bed so we could lean against them and watch T.V. I was probably too old to have a stuffed animal, but I used to get nightmares as a kid. Apparently, I would wake up screaming in the middle of the night. But Pop came home from work one day and told me he’d found someone to help. This “someone” had to travel a great distance, and a week later, I was introduced to Georgie, a small, brown bear with a cloud on the bottom of his right paw. Pop told me that Georgie took all my bad dreams and put them in that cloud. When they came out of the cloud again, they were good dreams. The bear did not stop the nightmares, but he did become a comfort for me.

  The girl didn’t have a stuffed animal. She didn’t have anything. I had my mom and my pop, so I gave her Georgie. She thanked me and asked if I would hold her hand while she fell asleep. I never thought girls had “cooties”. I didn’t mind girls at all, and my track record to this day showed that. But I’d never held hands with a girl outside of school fieldtrips. After Mom tucked us in and gave the girl a kiss, too, I gave her my bear and held her hand all night. That was the first time in two years I didn’t have nightmares, and after that day, I never did again.

  The next morning, a couple came and took the girl with them. We didn’t say much, but I told her to keep Georgie; she needed him more than I did. Little did I know, I should have held onto that fucking bear. Seeing that beaten and bloodied woman led me to my destiny of helping women, but also brought new nightmares to my life. For whatever reason, abuse in all its forms, grief from what was or what wasn’t… I gave those women tattoos to help them heal. So when Anika Redding walked in, my future had already been determined from
that day when I was a kid.

  Today, though, was worse than that day. It was worse than listening to Anika tell me her story, not leaving a single detail out. Today, I learned that one of the women I had given a tattoo had committed suicide.

  Zack was shading dragon scales on a client’s leg. The tattoo started at the man’s back, a huge head and flaring nostrils with swirling red and orange flames that covered his back and snaked around to his ribs. What had started over a year ago was almost finished, and as Zack wiped the leg, dipped his needle, and began again, the bell above the door rang out.

  There was a certain energy in the studio that happened when you were about to finish such a huge piece like that. Zack was going to be featured with that tattoo in a magazine and its website in a few months, which was great for both of us. But when he saw the older woman standing in the doorway, he immediately stopped what he was doing and excused himself from the client.

  Zack approached the woman carefully, his normal confident and cocky nature gone. “Mrs. Lehnertz.” She shook his hand and gave him an envelope from her bag.

  When Zack handed the envelope to me, I was surprised to see my name written on it. I had never seen this woman before in my life, but it was obvious Zack knew her, probably from his parents’ synagogue. He and his sister, Becca, didn’t go to temple anymore, but they had a great respect for their parents and their elders. It was ingrained in them from birth. The two exchanged a quiet word, and Zack’s shoulders set back with a jolt. I had no idea what was going on, and I would have been happier not knowing. Ignorance was not only bliss, for me, it made my job a whole hell of a lot easier.

  After she left, Zack sat on the two-seater, olive green leather couch that served as a waiting area. Between Zack, Becca, and myself, that couch had seen a lot of bodily fluids, nerves, and tears. Now it would have a new memory. I opened the envelope to an obituary for a woman whose name I never even knew. Sometimes, they didn’t tell me. They didn’t tell me anything. I went through the same ritual with each woman that I did that very first day with Anika; I told them they were in a safe place, and they could speak freely without worry of their secrets ever being exposed. My job was not to judge. My job was to give them what they needed to heal or to cope with whatever fucked-up scenario they found themselves in. I would kiss them on the cheek, hold them, and when they were ready to begin, I would sketch out whatever they had in mind, make a stencil, and get to work. If we had to stop because they were too upset, they just needed a minute to feel whatever they were going through, I let them guide me.