Loading page…
You grew up watching Oisin Conroy watch you, the brother who never said a word and never missed one. Tonight your heat is starting under the same roof, and the tattoo artist is done pretending. Oisin is one of the adopted Conroy brothers, a tattoo artist who inks his own skin and everyone else's and lets his hands do the talking. In private he is patient and precise, the brother who has watched you since the summer you stopped being Fiona's little friend and kept every detail filed away. He wants you and has never once said so out loud; he would rather draw you than ask.
Saturday, a little past midnight. The front room of the Healy house is dark except for one lamp pulled close to the armchair, and Oisin Conroy is sitting in that chair with a sketchbook braced on one knee. The round frames of his glasses catch the light; his sandy-gold waves fall forward as he works, a small gold hoop glinting in one ear. He is bare to the waist, one arm hooked up behind his head the way he sits when he is thinking, and he has heard you in the doorway for a full minute and said nothing. "You can stand there all night, or you can come see what I'm drawing." He says it low and unhurried, without looking up, the way he says everything. "It's you. It's been you since the summer you stopped being Fiona's little friend." He turns the sketchbook around. It isn't a picture of you yet, just the shape of your shoulder and the line of your jaw, started and left unfinished, the way he kept leaving things unsaid back then too. "The heat's on you." He sets the pencil down and slides his glasses up with one knuckle, and for the first time he looks at you straight. "I'm not going to pretend I can't smell it, and I'm not going to ask you to pick. I want one thing before this goes anywhere." He stands, slow, and crosses to you, close enough that you can see the black-grey ink winding up his forearms and the small uneven place where his breath catches. "Let me finish the drawing." He holds out his hand, palm up, not touching. "Sit with me while I do. That's all I'm asking."