Tattooed on my heart

Shop talk

Mari’s POV -

As I doodled sitting on the couch I heard Thalia’s machine slowly buzzing in the back, it’s my favourite sound in the world, tho it kept being overpowered by her influencer client who insisted on streaming it live and asking a million questions while doing so.

I admired Thalia’s will to succeed so much at this point she was willing to go through that, to me it seemed like something of nightmares.

I heard the front door open and looked up to see our other colleague, Elena walk in the door.

“Ciao everybody!” She called out, just to look at me sitting on the sofa by myself and say “where is everybody?”, I smiled and said “Ciaooo, well Thalia is live streaming a tattoo in the back and Jess hadn’t arrived yet”.

“I see, well I’ll go drop my stuff in the back and call some clients”.

I nodded and said “when you’re done come take a look at some of these sketches I made, I can’t seem to get it right and I’m getting annoyed”, she smiled at me and said “be right back!”.

In less then a minute she had returned, plopped on the couch next to me and said “let me see” I opened the latest files of the sketches I’ve made and we went over them one by one while she pointed some little things to change and improve through it all, Elena was a meticulous artist, she did fine line work and her whole aesthetic was fine clean lines with a very clear image, which meant she knew how to edit me best.

Looking at her you’d never guess her style, she looked the complete opposite to her art, she was short about 1.58 cm but extremely curvy, big breasted, small waists, large hips and all of that hidden behind her granny clothes.

She wore mom jeans and loose T’s, her glasses were very ‘my mom bought me these when I was 12’ and her wavy hair was always either down and wild or up and wild, she’d never wear makeup or dressed up, she has a statuesque face with Roman features,but beautiful deep green eyes, her body filled with tattoos of various styles, she got here and there and patch work sleeves decorated her arms.

If she was the type of girl to dress up she’d be a s*x bomb, since Thalia started to work here she’s been trying to convince her to giver her a makeover.

But Ele is taken since she was young which we believe is the cause that she never tries, her boyfriend is a couple of years older and they’ve never had eyes for anyone else but each other since they met in middle school, we’re all just waiting for the official wedding since to us they’re basically married already.

Elena moved from the sofa to the front desk to make some client calls as the door to the studio opened again, finally Jessica walked in, and hour and a half late.

She was the main owner of the shop, when we got it I didn’t have enough funds so she put most of the cash into the shop, I’ve been saving a while now to buy the rest of my 50%.

Jess was tiny, even shorter than Elena, she was about 1.50cm without her 20cm boots and pumps, she had beautiful wavy blond hair that she added highlights to and made her look like a tiny angel with a round soft face and big blue eyes, a button nose and small pink lips.

Even tho she had a tiny frame she still had sizeable breasts and ass, she was no where near Elena or Thalia, but compared to me they looked big enough.

Jessica knew she looked good, always in high heels, wedges, platform boots or pumps of minimum 15cm, her clothes always tight and fitting and usually very revealing, even in wintertime.

Today she had on a black and dirty blue tie-dye dress, with holes caved on her sides and off the shoulder sleeves and a push up bra created a nice big cleavage, and huge black pumps that had her at 1.65 cm.

All her tattoos were meticulous, one floral arm in black and grey, the other was a Japanese style wrapped up dragon with peonies and clouds, with touches of color but not too much, her exposed thighs had a symmetrical butterfly tattoos right on the front with loads of details and so did the rest of her legs.

She walked in every hair in place, light makeup on with very heavy liner and eyelashes, her body decorated with tons of back and silver jewellery and all of her piercings.

“Ciao girls..” she said almost sounding annoyed “what a day, took me forever to get ready and a million requests to answer to, people just won’t send emails anymore”.

“Ciao? But yeah, nothing new, just need to filter the bullshit DMs and it’s all good”.

Elena just waved from the front desk since she was still on the phone.

In the back I couldn’t hear talking or the tattoo machine buzz anymore, Thalia is done I figured.

I decided to get up and help her, as soon as I stood up Jess said “Where are you going?”, I knew she wouldn’t like me helping, she was always talking about how we didn’t get help, but I hated that and always wanted a shop where I can do things my own way, I calmly responded “I want to see the final result”.

Jessica just shrugged and headed to put her things in her locker.

I went over and saw Thalia snapping pics of the tattoo, it looked really good! Some little mistakes and a couple of shaky lines but that could also be due to the fact that this girl didn’t stop talking or moving the whole time, I walked beside her and said “here let me help” as a held the ring light at a better position so it didn’t make the soft lines disappear, Thalia was smiling big “Perfect! Thank you finally some decent pics, now I need to cover her up clean and set up for my next client”, she put gloves back on and grabbed the tattoo cream from the shelf, put a thin layer on and some saran wrap, I decided I’ll help her clean up so her next appointment won’t get too delayed.

As she grabbed a paper from the drawer explaining the treatment while healing a tattoo and a kit for sun care at the clients’ request.

They both went to the register so she could pay and not even 2 minutes later Thalia was back, she put a glove on and said “Thank you I really appreciate all the help!”

I smiled softly and said “you help out all the time, also I don’t want all of our schedules delayed” she smiled and nodded.

In 20 minutes the station was ready for her next client, headed out to smoke which right after she ran back in to snack on something, drink and pee just as her next client came in.

The client was a kid who’d gotten a blue diamond tattoo a couple of months ago but got it tangled in a something while it healed so they booked a touch up for today, it wasn’t a great pay but it was important for her to have it displayed well when healed.

I was sitting in the reception desk beside Elena who was tapping away on the computer, glancing into the back to see Thalia at work as the shop’s door opened, I looked to the front to greet the client but as soon as I saw him all my words had disappeared.

The man had closed the door behind him just as Elen turned to see why I wasn’t speaking, she looked at me staring at him then looked at him, rolling her eyes to me, smiling to him and said “Ciao! Welcome! Please come in, how can we help you?”

The man at the door was now walking towards the reception desk was huge, especially for tiny me.

He was at least 1.90 cm of pure muscles and golden skin, cleaned shaved face with a squared jaw and a sculptured nose, his light honey coloured eyes popped even tho his eyes were a bit sunken in, he looked almost too good to be real.

“Ehi” he said softly “I’m looking for one of your artists”, upon him saying that Jessica pipped up from the kitchen “I’ll be right out!!!”.

I mentally facepalmed myself thinking ‘of course, Jessica is trying to make another love connection through the shop’ and that’s after her ‘we don’t date clients policy’, tho the reasoning behind it was valid I disagreed on how her brain worked.

I looked back up at the guy, his face showed some sign of confusion but he didn’t say a word, so I spoke “Take a sit if you want, Jess will be right out”, he then shook his head and questioned “Jess?”.