The Rock
20 Novia
“I KNOW YOU NOW,” Miss Polly said as we walked to the post production meeting in the conference room. “It’s been a couple of years—three years or more. You were the girl on the horse who first claimed Brian as your boyfriend on-air. I didn’t recognize you at first.”
“I got f…” I squeezed Hannah’s hand and she caught her breath before she could say ‘fat.’ “… a little more mature, I guess.” She looked at me and grinned.
“I’m sure there’s a story, but I know Harvey has business he wants to take care of.” We went into the conference room and Harvey, Miss Darlene, Jess, and a couple more people who I had worked with during my two years with the station were there. There was a cake and Carol Klein, the local barista, was fixing espresso drinks. When we walked into the room everyone applauded. A big banner at the end said ‘Good luck in college, Brian!’ Nobody had ever surprised me with a party quite like this. It was very moving.
In addition to the party atmosphere and listening to my current plans, Harvey pulled me aside. Hannah came with me since I had yet to let go of her hand.
“Brian, you have a successful show. It’s a shame to see it end just because you are going to college,” Harvey started.
“I really don’t think I can commute to record up here. We’d have to do five or six shows at a time,” I said. Oh, I’d thought about it. The $250 per episode I was getting plus royalties was nice. I could buy a lot of books, food, and rent for that.
“I know. We’ve talked about that. And believe me, we’d never get a crew to work that long and that hard at one time. But we’ve syndicated your segment in addition to the syndication of the whole show. You are actually getting larger distribution this summer than you’ve ever had before. I think you’ll be pleased with your residuals. The thing is that you need to figure out a way to keep producing the show down in Bloomington while you work on your degree. It’s a gold mine right now but stopping and trying to restart in four years would be a nightmare.”
“Harvey, I have no idea how I’d get a show up and running down there,” I said.
“What you would need is a producer.”
“You?”
“No. I’m happy here at WBBT with Polly. And I’d be too expensive. But colleges are full of talent. Find a producer and let them worry about how it gets done. He’ll get sponsors, find a studio, set up the recording schedule, and staff appropriately. Your job is to plan a show and perform. His job is to do everything else,” Harvey said.
As we’d been talking, Hannah’s grip on my hand was getting tighter and tighter. Now she was pulling on me.
“I’ll think about it, Harvey. Thanks for giving me the idea. I’ll see what I discover in Bloomington.” Hannah was practically dragging me out the door of the conference room. Once we were in the hall I turned to her.
“Hannah, honey. Are you all right? What’s the problem?”
“I could do this, Brian!” she said. She was practically hyperventilating and her pupils were dilated. The first thing I thought was that she was having a reaction to her meds.
“Do what?”
“I could produce your show.” What? “I know what you do. I’d have to learn a bunch of things, but I’d learn them. I’d find a place to record—a kitchen. I’d find out how to get a crew and cameras. I’d get sponsors. Brian, I could do this.” I thought she might have a breakdown right there in the hall. “I could move to Bloomington with you. I wouldn’t be a worthless tagalong.”
Holy shit! I’d intended to take Hannah with me one way or another anyway. I had her back and I wasn’t going to let anything short of a nuclear strike separate us again. I had no idea, though, that she felt she’d be a worthless tagalong. My mind raced a hundred miles an hour. If this was what it took to give her a sense of self-worth and meaning—to finally pull her out of the depths of her depression—I’d do this show until hell froze over. Hell, yes!
“You are brilliant, honey. That’s perfect. Let’s go tell Harvey right now.” Hannah slammed her body against mine and kissed me with a ferocity that I’d seldom felt from her.
We decided not to tell anyone yet until we could start making real plans. Harvey said that he’d mentor Hannah and invited her to shadow him on the job for a few days. It would have to wait until graduation, but we were definitely going to take him up. I’d learned a lot about the administrative side of the show when I worked as Polly’s assistant. On the set of ‘Young Cooking’ I was the talent and had learned how to plan and prepare a show. Shadowing Harvey would teach both Hannah and me about the executive side of the business.
Of course, everyone could see the difference in Hannah almost as soon as we got home. They all wanted to know what had the two of us so happy. I finally got the videotape Harvey gave me of the segment we’d just recorded. It didn’t have all the effects and transitions and music and titles cut in—I supposed we were going to have to learn about that, too—but when we got to my sign-off and everyone saw Hannah and me kiss on the set, there was a collective sigh and then cheers. Even Mom, Dad, and Anna were clapping for us. Hannah was blushing the brightest red I’d ever seen and I pulled her into my arms and kissed her again.
Our hearthmates were hanging around most of the week, even though Jennifer, Courtney, and I had college classes, tests, and papers to do. I was happy to see Rose, Whitney, and Sam spend extra time with Hannah to make sure she was where she needed to be when it came time for her to pass Ms. Hammer’s tests. At night, I made time to make love to each of my cónyuge but I always woke up in the morning looking into Hannah’s eyes.
Wednesday night, Sarah showed up.
“I can afford a couple days of missed classes to be with my sister, my lover, and my hearthmates,” she said. “I’m staying until Sunday. I haven’t been here in six weeks.” Sarah and Hannah slept with me. Hannah practiced her new skill of rolling a condom onto my cock and then slotted it into her sister’s pussy. She kissed her sister as fervently as she kissed me and held us together all night long.
At six on Thursday morning, the caravan began to assemble. Everyone in the clan was going to go to Bloomington. There were ten cars with Moms and Dad. I stopped at UIndy and picked up Elaine. She said she could cut classes, but she had to be back for rehearsal at eight tonight. We got to Bloomington at ten-thirty and Sora jumped into Sarah’s car when we drove by her dormitory. Then Lamar and Renee followed us out of town about three miles and down a country road. Lamar was still psyched that we’d won a State Championship, even though the Hoosiers had been eliminated in the NCAA Sweet Sixteen by Kansas.
The place Anna turned into wasn’t derelict, but it was obvious by the state of the lawn and weeds along the drive that it wasn’t occupied. It was a big old standard Indiana farmhouse. If you aren’t familiar with that, think of a Borg cube. I didn’t get a chance to watch much TV, but last spring there was a time when I just didn’t want to think of anything and turned on that Star Trek show. The Borg travel around in a cube that just gets stuff attached to it. “You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.”
I think they modeled it after an Indiana farmhouse. They start out as a cube. Sometimes just the bottom half of one. A bedroom, a bathroom, a living room, and the kitchen hanging off the back so it doesn’t heat up the house in the summer. Sometimes the small room behind the bathroom is a nursery. Then they add the top floor. Four bedrooms. No. The bathroom is still downstairs next to the kitchen. The kids are moved upstairs. The nursery becomes a storeroom or maybe Mom and Dad get part of it as a walk-in closet.
Eventually, a kid gets married and they add a room onto the back of the house—maybe expand the master bedroom—and add a bathroom. The house becomes L-shaped. Depending on the family, one or both sets of in-laws eventually move in and another L is added. When the farm is really successful, Mom and Dad move one or more kids out and expand a master suite over one of the Ls upstairs.
Well, that was pretty much what we were looking at. It had three bathrooms. That was the best part. Unfortunately, they were just crowded standard bathrooms. Tub with shower, toilet, and sink. Total space about six feet square. On the other hand, there were six bedrooms. Two were pretty good size—like 12x12 or 12x14. The other four were probably smaller than dorm rooms on campus. You could fit two twin beds and a dresser. When you opened the closet door, you had a rack that continued behind the wall and was the same rack that was in the closet of the next bedroom.
But the downstairs had been remade into a kitchen and great room. It was a big open space and I could see us all sitting down to a meal here.
I’d walked around for a while, finally remembering to look where I put my feet when I crossed from the main house into one of the additions. The floors weren’t at exactly the same level. I walked into the kitchen and found Hannah just staring at it. It wasn’t that interesting as far as I could see. They’d done some modernizing and had a breakfast bar that sort of divided it from the rest of the great room. There were no appliances. I put my hand on her shoulder and she turned to me. She was absolutely glowing.
“We could do it right here, Brian,” she said.
“Do it?” I squeaked. All right. I’m a guy. I have a guy’s brain.
“The show. It wouldn’t take too much work. Look, it’s open on this side. Plenty of room for cameras and lighting. We’d cut down the breakfast bar and make it a center island for the stove and prep. Can’t you see it? We could film your show right here in our home.”
The way she talked, I could see it. But one phrase stuck out for me more than anything else she said. ‘Our home.’
“Kids, you might be interested in what’s outside, too,” Anna said. We followed her out the back door to the barn.
The barn.
Everything was cleaned out of it. I mean, not even a straw on the floor. Apparently, there’d been a big estate auction before the place went on the market and everything that wasn’t nailed down was gone. My voice sort of echoed in the barn.
“Anna, how big is this place?” I asked as we looked out the back at the pasture.
“Oh, the agent said forty acres,” she said. She was so nonchalant that you could almost miss it. Our place up north was just twenty acres and we had three…
“Horses!” Jennifer and Courtney both chimed together.
“Dad?” I asked. “Could we bring the horses down here?”
“Why do you think I made you get a car that could pull the trailer? You don’t think I’m planning to take care of the horses while you’re in college, do you?” he asked. How long had they been planning this? Parents!
“Anna? You’d really buy this for us?”
“I’ve already made the offer and it is only contingent on your casa’s inspection of the property.”
We inspected and we kept inspecting. It seemed like we walked every square inch of the forty acres. We were there for three hours. Hannah got her sister to run her into town to a hardware store where she got a tape measure and paper. She was only interested in the kitchen, but as soon as she had her measurements, the rest of the girls started measuring out the bedrooms, closets, and bathrooms. They started calling out numbers and the guys kept sketching things out and drawing floor plans.
Dad took me outside again and we walked around the front of the property.
“Son, do we have your attention?”
“Dad, I don’t believe what I’m seeing. I’m just overwhelmed.”
“When Anna brought us the idea, Mom and I tried to talk her out of it. Not because we didn’t want her to do it, but because it’s really her nest egg. This represents everything she got from selling the house in Kokomo. But, son, Mom and I love that woman. If I never had anything else in my life to thank you for, I’d thank you for bringing her to us. I want you to know that when you move out, the three of us will probably move up to your big room. You have the best space in the house, you know. This… farm,” he said with a sweeping gesture, “is our message to you and your clan that we believe in you. And personally, we plan to live happily ever after.”
“Dad, I don’t know what to say. I guess, though, that we’ve got to figure out how to allocate space. What did we count? Nineteen of us? That’s three-point-one-six-seven per room and six-point-one-six-seven per bathroom. Even as big as this place is, that’s still going to be crowded.”
“Well, don’t count the other parents out just yet,” he said. I looked at him. “This is unzoned county. There is nothing that says you couldn’t expand or, say, park a mobile home in an appropriate place. I know you are all one clan, but you are different families within the clan. What do you call it? Casa? We’re not trying to force you all into one living space.”
There wasn’t anything I could say. I hugged my dad and we went to look at the barn again. We spent the next half hour calculating how many bales of hay and straw we could store in the loft and how many horses the farm would support if we decided to expand the herd. I could see there was one corral that was set up for riding. If we put a pole barn over it, we could still ride in the ring in bad weather.
I got the guys together and had them help me take measurements of the outbuildings, too. If we were going to park a couple of mobile homes, we’d need to know where electric and water were coming from, how the septic system worked and where it was located, and I needed more information on the barn and equipment shed. I wasn’t interested in raising cattle, but this place was ideal for horses and a couple dogs running around. And kids. It would be a great place to raise kids.
We had so much to think about this summer.
We kissed Sora, Lamar, and Renee goodbye and got Elaine back to Indy in time for her rehearsal. They all promised to come home for the weekend on Saturday. Hannah sat in the back seat with Cassie and Josh. Rose was plastered against my side in front with Whitney as we chattered all the way back home.
“It almost makes me wish I’d decided to come to IU, too,” Josh said.
“You can if you want to, sweetheart,” Cassie said laying her head on his shoulder. “I have to go to Bethel, but you don’t.”
“I know, love, but I was over there Monday to tour the campus and met with some of the professors and the coach. I’m sure this is the right thing for my life,” Josh said. “And Cassie, I know we haven’t made any vows to each other, but I’m telling you right now that I want to be with you. ‘Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.’”
“Aww,” Rose said. “Do we need to have a fire?”
“Rose!” Cassie was blushing hot enough to start the fire.
“You know, that’s not a bad idea,” I said. “This afternoon was the first time we’ve had the whole clan together. With everyone coming over on Saturday, a real fire instead of just in the fireplace would be great.”
There was a roar outside and I edged to the right to give Nikki and Liz extra room to pass me on their motorcycles. Mary took a hand from Nikki’s waist long enough to wave. Doug was not being so brave behind Liz. I was willing to bet that Doug would get a lot shakier later tonight. Riding those bikes did something to Nikki’s and Liz’s libidos.
“I think Nicolette is going to need some attention tonight,” Hannah said as if reading my mind. “It wouldn’t surprise me if Mary wanted to be nearby. I mean really nearby.”
“Have you noticed that Nicolette has become more… I don’t know… more sociable lately?” Rose asked. “I see her smiling and even laughing more often.”
“She’s really been helping me get caught up this spring,” Hannah said. “It’s like she understands where I am, even when I’m not being very nice.”
“You fill a spot in our lives that was empty when you left,” Whitney said. “I’m sure you know that Brian loves you and missed you. And that Sam loves you. But we all really missed you while you were gone, Hannah. We’re so happy to have you back with us.” I looked over at Whitney. She was looking straight ahead. What a beautiful thing to say.
“Rose?” Hannah said softly. “If we have a fire Saturday night, may I sign the charter and accept a gi for Casa del Fuego?”
I choked back my tears as I listened to the exchange. She was really coming back to us.
Nikki got the special attention she craved Thursday night. And, indeed, Mary plastered herself up against us while I licked and fingered Nikki to a very vocal orgasm that got the other girls giggling so much that Nikki started to get mad until Hannah and Mary sandwiched her between them and just held her. Before long, Nikki started giggling, too.
“Brian, we have a date Saturday morning,” she said when we’d all settled down.
“What are we doing on our date?” I asked.
“Getting inked.” Everyone gasped.
“Um… Nikki… um…”
“Brian, a scared girl was ready to jump off the balcony two years ago. You stood there and said, ‘Aren’t you going to take me with you to get the tattoo?’ I’m eighteen now. I want my black rose. And I want you with me.” I’d promised. If all I ever had to do to keep Nikki happy and stable was get a little tattoo, I’d do it.
“You know, it’s going to hurt like hell,” Hannah whispered. “I speak from experience. I cried and cursed and wanted to run away the whole time he was working on my foot. He was only halfway through when I screamed out ‘I hate you, Brian Frost.’ Then I saw the finished work and my foot wrapped in saran wrap and I said, ‘I love you. I will always love you.’ Just be ready, Nikki.”
“Will you come, too?” she asked. Hannah nodded.
Jennifer, Courtney, and I went to our Friday classes so we only missed one day of school while we were in Bloomington. The rest of the clan floated in and out of our house all day long.
Rhiannon set up a portable drafting table in my room and while Hannah and Courtney were entering the measurements and data on my computer and Courtney’s computer, Rhiannon started drawing the floor plan of the house. When we were juniors and the district loosened the restrictions on boys taking Home Ec and Foods, Rhiannon had managed to finally get into the Industrial Arts program to take drafting. She was really good at it. What’s more, Hannah was completely redesigning the kitchen. She went out early in the day, bought a dozen kitchen books and magazines, and had all of them open to various pages showing layouts and appliances.
“That’s beautiful, precious,” I laughed. “But where are we going to get the money for a restaurant quality stovetop and oven like that?”
“I called Harvey. He told me that if we were going to outfit our own kitchen set that we should call the manufacturers of these appliances and get them to provide them. He had names and addresses for the people and even some of the phone numbers. I can’t call them until Anna confirms that we have the property, but then I’ll be on the phone with the exact model numbers we need. We’ll send them a video tape of your show with the syndication records so they know we are legitimate. Then all I have to do is sell them on the benefits of providing their appliances for our show. Oh. I have to work on syndication, too, but Harvey has all the details on that and will give them to me on Monday when I go in.”
“Monday?” I asked. Once Hannah got wound up on a project, she turned into a dynamo. “I thought you weren’t going to start shadowing Harvey until after graduation.”
“I’m not, but he’s agreed to meet with me for an hour each week to help me get started. It will be like having a class at the TV studio. I have to learn about lighting and cameras, too,” she said. “Brian, I’m so happy I can do something. I’m going to be the best producer in the world! At least the best producer of your television show. You need to start thinking up a whole new season of shows and I mean five-day-a-week shows. Harvey says the syndicate is ready for it.”
“Whoa! Hannah, I don’t know if I can do five shows a week and school, too. I’ll start working on a plan for it, but we really need to talk about what I can handle in addition what the market wants.” She stood up and stalked over to me. I was caught in her eyes and couldn’t tear away from them—wouldn’t if I could. I knew how prey felt when it looked in the eye of the predator.
“Speaking of things you can handle, can you handle me? As a real girlfriend? As a cónyuge?”
“Hannah! Yes, love. You know how much I love you and I want us to be together. But are you ready, sweetheart? I don’t want you to feel rushed,” I said. A few days ago, I was sure she was going to run away as soon as she turned eighteen. Was she really saying she’d stay with me? With us? Forever?
“I’m not ready to be your lover, Brian. I wish I was. Oh God, I wish I was ready… that I thought my body could love you as much as my heart does,” she said. “But I’m ready to promise that I will. I will love you and be with you. I’m trying so hard to be the girl you thought… that I thought I was.”
“Then yes, Hannah. I promise to be your cónyuge when you are ready. I love you.”
Saturday morning, Hannah dragged me out of bed when I opened my eyes at four-thirty. Sarah moaned on the other side of me and begged for more time.
“Just cuddle me a little longer,” she sighed.
“You go ahead,” Rose said next to us. “I’ll cuddle her. We can’t have our compañera feeling abandoned.” Both girls giggled a little and then cuddled up against each other as Hannah led me to the shower.
“Why are you dragging me out so early in the morning, Hannah?” I pled. “I don’t have to tape this morning.”
“No, but we need you all nice and clean. Then we need to make breakfast for everyone. And finally, we have to take Nicolette to Fort Wayne,” she said as she started to lather my hair.
“Oh dear. She’s really going to do it, isn’t she?” I was of mixed emotions about this. Then a thought struck me. “Oh no! I’m getting a tattoo today!”
“I thought you’d remember eventually. You told her you would.”
“I didn’t promise.”
“Really? Does she think that?” Hannah asked.
“No. She knows I’ll do it just because I told her I would. I never thought about actually getting a tattoo. And a rose. It’s not very masculine, is it?”
“Depends on where you put it,” she said as she began stroking my cock. Just being in the shower with Hannah was enough to make me stiffen but when she started pulling on my dick I was hard in a minute. My days of professionally and calmly washing her in the shower without an erection were gone. I was turned on around her all the time.
“Where do you think I should put it?” I asked, referring to the tattoo. She splashed water on my front to rinse the soap off and turned me around. She was shaking.
“In my mouth,” she said, dropping to her knees.
Oh fuck! Hannah, my precious, my love, my little papergirl, my girlfriend, was on her knees pulling my cock into her mouth. My knees weakened and I pressed my hands against the wall to keep from collapsing.
“Honey, I’m not going to last. This is too much. Too exciting. God, Hannah, I love you!” She kept my cock in her mouth, moving back and forth on it. It wasn’t the world’s most expert blow job. It was Hannah.
I came.
Come was running down her chin as she stood and washed herself off and rinsed her mouth under the water.
“I’m sorry, Hannah. You don’t ever have to do that. I’m…”
“Shh,” she said as she kissed me. “You didn’t make me do it. I wanted to. And you don’t taste as bad as… as bad as I thought it might.” She caught herself, but I could hear the words she didn’t say. I don’t taste as bad as Tommy. I hated the very thought that he had sex with her in any way but I knew. I just hugged her to me. “Come on. We need to get breakfast ready.”
Nikki was a cautious person when it came to getting our bodies decorated. She’d visited nearly every tattoo parlor in Northern Indiana over the past year to look at their work and examine how they kept their equipment. In spite of the simple design she’d chosen, she’d chosen an artist who was really an artist. They’d talked and gone over her stencil. He’d made suggestions and improved the basic design.
Still, walking into Little Buddha’s Skin Art was a little frightening to me. I didn’t really like tattoos all that much.
I shouldn’t put it quite that way. They certainly weren’t common around St. Joe Valley High School. Or anyplace else that I hung around. I knew that Lamar had a couple tats and that Lionel was planning one. Occasionally I would see someone with some spectacular art on his or her body and it was fascinating. But I didn’t know any of them. I still cringed a little when I thought of Hannah defacing her pale skin with the tattoo on her foot. Even understanding it and loving the sentiment and how it supported her in a dark time, I’d still love to kiss her bare toes without the words written there.
I’d inked and hennaed Nikki’s tattoo so many times that I should be used to it, but there’s a difference between something that will eventually wear off and something that was going to be forever. Especially when it was going to be forever on me.
Nikki introduced Hannah and me to Artie, the artist. He was wearing a T-shirt with the ribbed neck torn off so it exposed a pair of wings tattooed beneath his collar bone. He had a geometric design that looked like a maze on the left side of his face. Another feathered creature crawled up each of his arms and disappeared under the sleeves of his shirt. I had a feeling he wasn’t showing everything. This guy had serious ink.
“So, this is the big day, Nick. Are you ready?” I glanced at Nikki but she didn’t seem ready to kill the guy for shortening her name.
“I’ve been waiting for this ever since this klutz inked my breast two years ago,” she laughed.
“You’re the one who’s been inking her tits? You want to become a tattoo artist?” he asked.
“No. I’ll be glad when this is over,” I said.
“You, little girl, are too young for a tattoo. I shouldn’t even allow you in the shop,” he said, looking at Hannah.
“I already have mine,” she said. She kicked off her shoe and wiggled her toes at him. He patted his knee and she put her foot there, one hand on my shoulder for balance.
“Mmm. Lied about your age, didn’t you? It made your artist nervous. You know he could get in serious trouble for tattooing an underage girl. It’s not bad, but when you turn eighteen and want to have it cleaned up a little, come back and I’ll fix these little shakes. Maybe put a feather under it. It would suit your foot.” He caressed her foot and Hannah shuddered.
“I was screaming ‘I hate you’ at the top of my lungs the whole time he was working,” she laughed pulling her foot away. “It probably made him nervous.”
“You scream that at me and I’ll quit right where I am.”
“Oh, I was screaming at Brian, not at the tattooer.”
“You made her do this?”
“No!” I said. “I didn’t even know about it. Look, I’ll go first today. All this talk is making me nervous.”
“What are you talking about, Brian? I’m getting a tattoo, not you,” Nikki said.
“I told you that I would, too. I just want to get it over with.”
“Like hell. You were lying. Nobody’s holding you to that,” Nikki practically yelled at me.
“It wasn’t a lie. I keep my word, Nikki.”
“Listen here, Frost. This is my party. My dream. Don’t fuck it up.”
“But, Nikki. Didn’t you want me…?”
“No! I knew you were lying to me even when I was standing on the railing. It didn’t make a difference. You cared enough to lie to me.”
“I wasn’t lying.”
“If proving what you said to save the life of a frightened sixteen-year-old is more important to you than actually having her around, you go right ahead. But if that needle touches your skin, I’ll never speak to you again except to say ‘Fuck you’ when I kill us both. If you really want to keep your agreement, help me take my shirt off and sit beside me. Pinch and kiss my right tit while he inks the left and keep my mind off what’s happening. If it gets too bad, I’ll take my pants off and you can do what you do best while he finishes.”
Holy shit!
“Are you with the program, dude?” Artie asked.
“Yeah. I’m with it,” I whispered. I helped Nikki take her shirt off. She was wearing nothing under it and stood topless while Artie told her where to sit. He had a reclining chair so she could lie back while he worked on her.
“There’s still a trace of your last henna here,” Artie said as he touched her skin and followed the outline around the rose. “Is that the final position?”
“Yeah. He got it right last time.”
“We’ll do the outline and fill a couple of the smaller areas today. Then in a couple of weeks you come back to do the fill on the larger areas when you’ve healed.”
“Is that necessary?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“So I can have one more opportunity to look at and feel your tits,” he said bluntly.
“You know I’d kill you, too,” Nikki growled.
“Yeah, I know,” Artie laughed. “But not until I’ve finished.”
He used a pen to mark a couple key points, but everything else was freehand. When Nikki was pretty relaxed, he turned on the needle and a buzz filled the room. Nikki tensed. Hannah was at her head and petted her hair.
“The first time you hear the needle you think ‘this is where the shit gets real.’ Don’t worry, baby. You’ll love it when it’s over,” Hannah said.
As soon as the needle touched her skin, Nikki pulled my hand to her other breast and I went to work.
“I can’t believe my so-called artist wrapped my tattoo in saran-wrap and told me not to touch it. How did you find Artie, Nicolette?” Hannah asked. “He actually explained why you should have a bandage and when to remove it and how to care for it. I was afraid to take the saran-wrap off for a whole day!”
“I wandered around the areas where there were tattoo studios and when I saw someone with a neat tattoo, I asked them where they got it. The best ones all came from Artie. When I went into his shop, he immediately asked for I.D. and then gave me a lecture on why I couldn’t have a tattoo. After he learned that I wanted one after I turned eighteen and was trying to be well-informed, he explained everything and even invited me to watch him a couple of times.”
We’d wandered around Fort Wayne for a while and had lunch at a cheap restaurant that ruined all our appetites. After a couple bites we left and headed for the car. I’d pretty much been a useless ornament or a chauffeur all morning.
“According to Artie it’s a wonder my foot didn’t get infected and have to be cut off,” Hannah laughed. “He worked like a doctor with all that sterilization stuff and gloves.”
“I’m so glad you were with me, Hannah. I’d never have made it through it without you.”
“It’s Brian who was chewing on your nipple.”
“Yeah. That helped.” She patted me on the arm. “The disadvantage of that was he couldn’t talk to me. You did. And you asked questions.”
“I’m sorry I made you laugh.”
“He jerked back so fast I thought he’d been stung,” Nikki laughed. “Hannah, when you came back, I hated you. I didn’t know you before, but when you left was when Brian became my friend. It might sound strange, but I never had friends before and then all of a sudden there were all these people who just were friends. And Brian took me on dates and they were tolerable. But most of all, I was jealous. It was bad enough that he loved you and spent all his time with you, but then you already had your tattoo. I was so mad that I didn’t have a false I.D. that I could use and get mine. But even when I hated you, you were nice to me. And Liz and Rose, too. The three of you kept me from going off the deep end and I couldn’t hate you anymore.”
“You were the only person I felt really understood,” Hannah said softly. “You’re the only one who’s been there.”
When we got back to the house, the bandage had been on long enough and Hannah and I took Nikki to the shower. We made it all about her, washing her and gently using the anti-bacterial soap on her new tattoo, curled around her left breast. I had to admit, it was pretty cool. And Artie had relented and done all the fill at the same time. It took an hour longer than he planned, but no one else had come in the shop, so he just kept working. When we’d finished the shower and patted her dry, all three of us went to the bed without dressing. I continued to kiss and fondle Nikki, finally moving down to what she really wanted. It was sweet to have Hannah holding her while I licked her to a powerful orgasm. The only other person who had ever touched Nikki while we had had oral sex was Liz.
We had a huge spaghetti feed Saturday night and all our clan was gathered. Then we went outside and had a bonfire. The weather was a little unpredictable, but we took our food on paper plates and sat on blankets around the fire.
“When we signed the charter in December, Hannah was not with us. But now she is back and we saved a space for her signature when she returned.” Rose turned to Hannah. “Hannah, do you wish to be a member of the Clan of the Heart and sign our charter as our last charter member?”
“Yes,” she answered simply. Rose held the charter on a clipboard and Hannah signed it. I was so excited about this that I was dancing from foot to foot. It wasn’t just the charter. All the clan lined up to greet Hannah and give her a kiss on the cheek, but when it was Casa del Fuego’s turn, I got to lead.
“Are you sure, honey?” I asked.
“I love you, Brian. That’s as sure as I’ll ever be.” Sarah and Samantha stepped up beside her. Samantha untied her white robe. She’d never worn a gi. Sarah slipped the robe off her sister’s shoulders. Some of our cousins had never been at a gathering where anyone was naked, but I held the emerald green pants and she steadied herself with a hand on my shoulder as she stepped into them. Sarah handed me the gi jacket and I slipped it on her. Samantha returned the red belt to me and I tied it around Hannah’s waist.
“Casa del Fuego, let me introduce our hearthmate, my novia Hannah.” I kissed her deeply, pouring all my love into it. Sarah kissed her sister in a very unsisterly way and was quickly followed by Samantha. Unlike all our cousins who had kissed Hannah on the cheek, our hearthmates kissed her on the lips. They certainly weren’t all lover’s kisses, but even Nikki, Cassie, Josh, and Mary kissed her on the lips. The whole clan clapped.
I felt that at last my family was complete.
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