It wasn’t that Ella dropped everything when Logan texted. Don’t be ridiculous. She was a busy girl, after all, with another dog to walk before the day was out. It was just that, well, she’d taken Scrappy on such a long walk yesterday, he seemed rather tired today. He didn’t have his usual zest, and once he’d gone, he seemed ready to go back in. And then, she was planning to spend the rest of the afternoon making stew, but they had leftovers, and she was already nearby the shop with the cat treats. It’d be better for her to go right to Logan.
She popped right in, pleased as could be to seem Logan. In the years since she used to know him, he’d changed. Gotten more distant, a little shy. Ella hoped that was just rust and it’d wear off, but she couldn’t know for sure yet. “Thanks for inviting me. You’ve got a–uh, a real nice place here.” She didn’t know what a tattoo parlor was supposed to look like. Ella had looked up some online–she had an idea but hadn’t found the right person yet–but they rarely actually showed the shop. While he was gone, she looked around. There were a few drawings, and a small scratching post in the corner. The music coming from an unseen speaker was distinctly Logan–she couldn’t name the artist, but the sound reminded her of hearing him study or work out. The thought made her smile. At least that hadn’t changed.
By the time he was done, though, she’d settled in to the tattoo chair–if that was what that was called–and begun flipping through a book. “Gosh, isn’t that pretty?” she asked, holding out the book to show a particularly pretty sweet pea design on someone’s arm. “Those’re my favorites, sweet peas. I just think they’re lovely.”
Even as he stepped away and back towards his client, even as he bowed his head to focus on the iPad in his hands, his attention was still somehow on her. There was something about seeing Ella in his space, in the little corner of the world that he had curated for himself, that felt suspiciously like comfort. She moved around his station with an easy familiarity, as if slotting into place like a missing piece of a puzzle. Logan wouldn’t be dramatic enough to say that there had been an Ella-shaped hole in his life ever since he had left Boston, but some traitorous part of his brain had never really stopped looking for her. He’d seen her in warm smiles and in mugs of tea and bakery windows. He’d thought of her every time someone sent him a cute dog video or he’d said some stupid pun that she would have laughed at indulgingly.
Logan forced his brain to switch back into professional mode, allowing him to finish up with his client as quickly as possible. He didn’t want to rush the process, denying them the attention and care they deserved when designing something that was going to be on their body forever, but he couldn’t help the sense of urgency that rushed through his veins. He wanted to get back to her. Once they seemed happy with the design, he was able to hand them over to his receptionist and step back towards where Ella was waiting for him. He leaned towards her to look at the page she was presenting, immediately recognising the work as his own. “ Oh, they are ?? I gotta admit, my flower knowledge still leaves much to the imagination. ” He wished that he could take credit for remembering her favourite flowers, that he were the kind of thoughtful, sentimental person that remembered every minute thing that people said to him and tucked it away for later. He had never been that attentive or considerate. But he did always think of her whenever he tattooed flowers; he always remembered her like the first days of spring, when bright colours started to appear everywhere and the world felt like it started to hum with life once again. “ That was one of my first tattoos in this studio, actually. I promise I’ve improved a lot since then. ” He reached forwards again, flicking through the pages of the portfolio until he reached a relatively recent addition that he thought she would like, “ I’m obsessed with the placement of this one, I think it looks stunning. ”
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