Ransom Page 18

I shrug, feeling embarrassed. “That song is pretty damn important to me. It was always my favorite of yours.”

  He swallows several times. “Mine, too.”

  Carlos has finished the print, and he shows it to me. “Like this?”

  I nod. “Perfect.”

  “And where are we doing this?”

  “Here?” I ask, pointing to my left side. “Like, over my rib cage?”

  “Perfect. Okay, I want you to lie down on your side. I’m going to trace it out first to make sure I have the spacing right. It might feel cold.”

  Daltrey helps me to hop up onto the table. “You sure about this?” he asks.

  I nod. I haven’t been so certain about anything in a long time.

  The pain is as bad as I thought it would be, but Daltrey distracts me by telling stories about his brothers and how they had each reacted to their tattoos. “You’re doing much better than Cash,” he says. “He moans and groans like a little baby.”

  “It’s true,” Carlos agrees. “Total wimp.”

  I laugh, and Carlos chides, “Don’t move.”

  “Then stop making me laugh.”

  It takes about forty-five minutes. When he’s done, he gives me a mirror so I can see it. The print is large, each letter about a half-inch high, and the tat stretches from just below my breast down over my ribcage, spanning around my side.

  “Perfect,” I whisper. My skin is red and swollen, but my tattoo is still one of the coolest I’ve ever seen.

  “You handled it like a pro,” Carlos says. After he wraps up my side with plastic and tape, he stretches. “I’m going to take a little break, then we’ll get started on you, Dalt.”

  Daltrey nods and helps me down off the table. “Impressive,” he tells me. “You barely flinched.”

  I nod nonchalantly. “Yeah, I’m a badass.”

  He laughs. “I’ll say.”

  “So what are you getting?”

  He shakes his head. “Oh, no, you’re going to be just as surprised as I was.” He pulls out his phone and taps something in.

  “What?”

  “Just finding an image.” He slips the phone back into his pocket. “So how’s your dad going to react to this?”

  I shrug. “I doubt he’ll ever see it.”

  “What if you wear a bathing suit?”

  I try to imagine a time when my dad and I might take a happy family vacation to the beach, and I just can’t. I don’t know if the thought makes me want to laugh or cry.

  “You okay?” Daltrey asks. “Are you guys getting along okay?”

  I fiddle with the cuffs on my wrists. “We haven’t seen each other in a while. Like, Christmas. It’s been… I don’t know.” I sigh heavily. “It’s been a weird year.”

  Carlos returns. “Ready to go?”

  Daltrey whips his phone out and shows Carlos the image. “I want this, about three inches high, right here.” He points to the inside of his forearm, just below the crease where it meets his upper arm.

  “Sounds good.” Carlos peers at the image for a minute before sketching it on a piece of paper.

  Daltrey blocks my view. “Perfect,” he tells Carlos.

  “Then let’s go.” Carlos positions Daltrey’s arm on the table and pulls a can of shaving cream and a disposable razor from below his station. “You’re a little hairy there,” he explains, shooting the cream into his hand. After he has the area shaved, he gets out his pen and begins to trace the image of what appears to be a young boy on Daltrey’s arm.

  “So what’s the story here?” he asks as he makes more detailed strokes.

  Daltrey looks at me. “Carlos here is big on stories. He always wants to know why his clients choose the tats that they do.”

  “It’s a big deal,” he argues. “I’m putting something permanently on their body. That creates a bond, you know? You can’t mess around with that.”

  Daltrey nods. “True. So when I was a kid, before my mom split, she used to read to me every day.” He looks up at me, his eyes sad. “And when she took off, I really missed it. It was one of the few things that was just for us, not my brothers, and I was so sad when it was gone. No one else in my family ever read to me.”

  I feel a lump come to my throat. He rarely talks about his mom.

  “But then we moved, and there was this little girl living in the house next to us.” He smiles at me, his expression less sad now. “A real brainy little thing, total know-it-all.”

  I make a face at him, and he laughs softly.

  “One day, I saw her reading a book on her lawn, all by herself, without any grown-up helping her. I couldn’t believe it. My brother Lennon couldn’t even read yet, but here was this tiny little thing in pigtails reading like a damn adult.”

  He looks back at the sketch, which Carlos is now adding shadows to. “So I ran inside, all excited and found my favorite book—Where the Wild Things Are. My mom used to read it to me all the time, and we’d act out the wild rumpus thing. She would call me her own mad man, just like Max in the book.” He gets quiet for a moment, and I realize I’m hardly breathing. I think I know where this particular story goes.

  “So I bring the book out to our neighbor, and I ask her if she can read it. Of course she said yes because she totally wanted to show off.” He shoots me another smile. “And she read it to me, the whole thing, just like my mom would have done. Didn’t even mess up any words.”

  There are tears in my eyes as I stare at him. That little moment of our shared past seemed so inconsequential at the time.

  “But it made me sad, in the end, you see,” he goes on, his voice softer. He’s telling me the story now, the part of it that I never knew. “Because at the end of that book, the little boy gets tired of being with the wild things. He hears his mother calling him, and he goes home. But my mom was never going to call me home. She didn’t have dinner waiting for me. And I think that was the day I realized she was never coming back.”

  “Daltrey,” I whisper, crying in earnest now.

  Carlos has finished sketching, and a perfect representation of Max, in his wild thing costume, is on Daltrey’s arm.

  Daltrey shakes his head. “I cried, right there in front of a girl. How embarrassing, you know? But she never teased me, not at all. She just pulled me up from the grass and told me we should pretend like we were the wild things. She made us costumes out of pillow cases and the end of an old mop, and we played and played until I didn’t feel sad anymore.”

  I bury my face in my hands, unable to look at him any longer. I had no idea that day affected him like that. I never understood why he asked me to read to him long after he’d learned to do it himself. I hear the legs of his chair push across the tile floor, and then his arms are around me, pulling me into his chest.

  “Thank you for that,” he says, a sad sort of laugh in his voice.

  “You’re welcome.”

  He rubs my back for a minute or so while I try to calm down. When I’ve stopped crying, he pulls back and looks down into my face. “You okay?”

  I nod. “Go get your tattoo.”

  He tweaks my nose and goes back to his chair. “She cried more for my tattoo than her own,” he tells Carlos. “Aren’t girls weird?”

  Carlos chuckles. “The weirdest.”

  “Come sit with me,” Daltrey says. “Come make me forget how bad this hurts.”

  I know he’s just joking, but I can’t help but read the double meaning in his words. That’s what we do, after all. Since the first day we met and learned that we shared the sad distinction of being motherless, we help the other one to forget about the pain.

  So I go and sit next to my best friend, just like I did when he cried about his mother, and I hold his hand until it’s all over.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Daltrey

  Some pretty cool things have happened to me over the past year: performing at the Hollywood Bowl, meeting some of my musical idols, touring the country with my band. But this day, here with Daisy in New York, is the mo
st fun I can remember ever having.

  After we get our tattoos, we head back out into the city. I show her the Village and Washington Square Park. We take a stroll through the Met, window shop at Barney’s, and spend a full hour browsing the books at the Strand. We even take a river cruise before making our way over to Little Italy for a very late dinner.

  As the day goes on, I can feel a delicious sort of tension building between the two of us. It’s like we’re hurtling towards something, something out of our control, and I don’t know if I should be exhilarated or completely terrified. When I realize, over gnocchi and wine in Little Italy, that Daisy is actually flirting with me, I have to fight to keep from cancelling the rest of our plans so I can take her back to the hotel that very minute.

  But the last event of the day is the one I’ve really been waiting for. I had to shell out an absolutely obscene amount of money to make it happen, and I can only pray it will be worth it.

  We have a bit of time to kill so we wander around Midtown again, visiting the fountain at the Lincoln Center, all lit up for nighttime.

  “We should go,” I tell her eventually, taking her hand and pulling her toward the steps. “We can’t be late.”

  “Where are we going now?” She sounds breathless, happy.

  I wish, once again, that I could wrap her up in my arms and kiss her right now. But I want this to be right, have waited too long for it to be anything else. Daisy deserves perfect. “You’ll see.”

  Benny drops us right at the foot of the Empire State building, and I think she knows what’s up as soon as she gets out of the car.

  “I thought you forgot,” she says, shaking her head at me.

  “Nope. I just had something special planned.”

  A woman is waiting for us inside. I’ve spoken to her several times on the phone, arranging everything.

  “Hello,” she says, shaking hands with both of us. “My name is Natalie. I’m happy to welcome you to the Empire State Building tonight.”

  “Thanks,” Daisy says, looking at me questioningly.

  “Won’t you follow me?” She leads us through the packed lobby to the elevator.

  “What the hell is going on?” Daisy whispers. “Are you playing the rock star card to get special treatment?”

  “Yup.” I watch her face, wondering how she’ll react. “We’re going past the main observation deck, up to the one-hundred-and-second floor. We’ll have the entire place to ourselves.”

  She stops, staring up at me. “How’d you manage that?”

  I shrug. “I have my ways. I may have slightly exaggerated in the park. There are some other really nice benefits to being in a rock band.”

  She shakes her head. Natalie has reached the elevator and is waiting for us.

  “Come on,” I say, taking Daisy’s hand. “Let’s go up.”

  In the elevator, Natalie explains that we have the smaller observation deck for twenty minutes before they’ll have to open it to tourists again.

  Daisy shakes her head again. I think she might be shocked speechless.

  The upper observation deck is quite a bit smaller than the main one down on the eighty-second floor and entirely enclosed by glass rather than open to the elements. Natalie leads us to a door beside the elevator, opening it to reveal a flight of stairs.

  “Uh,” Daisy says, looking at me uncertainly. “What the heck is above this?”

  “It’s kind of a secret floor,” Natalie explains. “You’re about to see something most people in this city never will.” She gives me a somewhat stern look. “And we usually don’t do this at night, so please stay right next to me.”

  I nod and hold Daisy’s hand all the way up the steps, feeling a little nervous myself. I’m not crazy about heights.

  “Holy hell,” Daisy murmurs when we exit the stairwell.

  Holy hell is right. We’re on a narrow ledge, nothing but a small barrier between us and the night sky. The view is incredible.

  “I didn’t even know this existed,” Daisy says.

  “Many don’t,” Natalie replies. “It’s not exactly on the regular tour.”

  We’re on the top of the world. The island is all lit up below us, the buildings looking like nothing more than toys. I’m relieved Daisy seems content to hang by the door. The thought of her leaning on the barrier makes my palms sweat.

  Natalie gives us just enough time on the ledge to take a few pictures before she hustles us back down the stairs. Daisy keeps thanking her profusely. I’m relieved when we reach the enclosed observation deck on the next lower floor. It feels much safer down here.

  “I’ll wait here by the elevator,” Natalie says. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  I’m still holding Daisy’s hand, so I pull her over toward the windows. As we approach the glass, I see that Natalie has set up a small table with champagne and strawberries for us, just like I asked. We look out over the city. Behind the safety of the glass, I can much better appreciate how beautiful it is.

  “You okay?” I ask. “Is it too much?”

  Daisy turns to me, eyes wide. “It is too much,” she whispers. “How much did it cost to shut down the entire observation deck? You didn’t need to do all this for me.”

  I shrug, worried now that she’s unhappy or freaked out. “I just know you love that movie so much. The one where they’re supposed to meet here.”

  She smiles. “An Affair to Remember.”

  “Yeah.” I laugh at the memory. “I know this isn’t the space you see in the movie, but there’s no way I could have gotten them to shut down the main observation deck for us, rock star or not. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?”

  I shrug. “It’s your favorite movie. You made me watch it so many times. I used to pray all the time that my brothers would never catch me watching it. They would have crucified me.”

  “But you did it anyway,” she says.

  I sense that she’s tense, can feel the strain in her hands. She looks rigid, on edge. “Of course I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it made you happy. Because it was you.”

  Her eyes widen further. “What does that mean?”

  Can she really not see? Is it possible that after all of these years, all this time, she hasn’t realized what she means to me? Is that why she left for so long? “Come on, Daisy. You know what it means.”

  She shakes her head, looking close to tears. “No, I don’t.”

  It’s now or never. There’s a feeling I get in my gut right before I step on stage. It’s a mix of excitement and adrenaline, fear and utter joy. The first step is hard, walking out into the light, but I know, deep down, if I can just take that first step, the result will be so worth it.

  This feels a little like that, the same adrenaline and excitement. But this fear is worse. If I mess up on stage, it’s one song. It can be fixed. I can get back in the game. But what if I mess this up? There’s no going back, no fixing the disaster that would occur should I break this. But I know that the result, should it work out, will be worth it. Because Daisy is worth it. Daisy is everything. So I take that step, out into the light.

  “I love you.” My voice is stronger than I expected, no shaking or doubt. The words have been in me for so long, waiting to be freed. Waiting for her. Waiting for this.

  Her eyes, so wide just a moment ago, slam shut, and she takes in a shaky breath.

  “I have for years,” I continue. “Forever, probably. Look at me, Daisy, please.”

  Her eyelids flutter open, and I see an unfamiliar look there. Panic? Before I can ask, she reaches up and touches my cheek, her fingertips so soft I have to sigh. Then she rises on her tiptoes and kisses me.

  It’s strange how familiar it feels. It’s been years since we’ve kissed, and it was only a moment at that. So why does this feel like the most natural, normal thing in the world?

  If normal means the absolute best feeling I’ve ever had. If normal means there are flashes of light shooting off at rand
om in my brain. If normal means every nerve in my body is coiled tightly, arching toward her, aching for her touch, aching for more.

  “Daltrey,” she whispers against my mouth. I feel the corners of her lips curling up into a smile. “Daltrey.”

  “I love you,” I say again to make sure she heard, make sure she knows.

  I want to hear her say it back. Please, God, let her feel it, too. But my lips decide they want to kiss her more than they want to hear her speak, so I press them against hers again, parting her mouth with my tongue, feeling as if my heart might explode from the sheer amazingness of it.

  Her hands are still on my face. My arms are wrapped around her waist. I don’t remember grabbing her, but I still manage to be careful of her newly tattooed side. My hands must have acted on their own accord, needing her as badly as the rest of me did. But I want to feel more than just her back through her hoodie. I dream of her skin sometimes, of the way it feels when I accidently brush against her. The idea that I get to touch her now, on purpose, makes me giddy.

  I slowly rub one palm up over her back, around her shoulder, and down her arms. When I reach the hem of her sleeve, I gently push it back. There’s a swatch of leather beneath my fingers, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s that bracelet she sometimes wears. As I allow my fingers to slid past it, to the soft skin of the inside of her wrists, she jerks her hand away as if burned.

  “Daisy?”

  She practically leaps out of my arms so that her hip hits the wall beside us. She’s breathing heavily, her eyes wide and panicked, her face red.

  “Are you okay? Did something—”

  She turns away from me, her hands going to her face. I watch, stunned, as her shoulders rise and fall with each gasp of breath she takes. Is she having an asthma attack? Daisy doesn’t have asthma.

  “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?” I can’t imagine what I could have done, what could cause this kind of reaction, but she won’t turn back to me, and I can’t see her face. “Daisy?”

  “I just,” she gasps, her voice high pitched and reedy. “I just need a minute, please.”

  I gingerly reach out to touch her shoulder, thinking I should comfort her.