Page 13 of Priest

Hey you can stop looking for me. I left because we hit our expiry date. It was good while it lasted. Thanks for the good times. Have a sweet life.

Expiry date.

Like I was a gallon of milk she found shoved in the back of the fridge.

Thanks for the good times.

Jesus Christ. What was I, a concert she attended once?

And then there was the kicker.

Have a sweet life.

I snort under my breath before I can stop myself. Sweet. Life. Who the hell breaks up with someone like that?

I’d spent years carving rules into stone, and she walks out with a Hallmark card and a smiley wave.

It shouldn’t get under my skin.

It does.

A rule I live by surfaces unbidden, something I tell clients when they come in angry or desperate or drunk enough to regret themselves tomorrow.

I don’t put lies on skin.

Blue noticed things like that.

My hands never shook. Never rushed.

They were honest in a way my rules never were.

The bell jingles again.

My first client steps in, eyes flicking from my face to the shattered machine. “You okay, man?”

I force a smile. “What’re we doing today?”

He hesitates. “You sure you’re good to ink?”

I meet his gaze. “Yeah.”

It’s a lie.

Not the first thing I ever learned.

Just the one I got best at.

I know exactly who taught me how to tell them.

5

Blue

A month in, the apartment still smells faintly of cardboard and lemon cleaner.

Unclaimed more than new.

I stand barefoot in the middle of the living room with a half-unpacked box at my feet and a mug of half-caf cooling in my hand. The only one I’ll allow myself all day. I was annoyed about that at first, the way rules always chafe, even when they’re sensible. Now it’s another quiet calculation my body has learned to make.