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Bronx comes up and puts his arms around both me and Golden. “Tally up the scores. We have somewhere to be.”

Golden gets to work checking the scores.

“Now don’t hate me.” Bronx drops his head closer to my ear as he brings me in front of him and wraps both his arms around me. “Riot asked us to meet him. He’s still our bandmate. And—”

“He’s still a prick.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” He sighs and his breath coaxes goosebumps on my skin. “But he’s a prick standing outside of a tattoo shop. Doesn’t that make you hella curious? Because I am curious. Like dying to know what he thinks he can do in a tattoo shop that will help this situation at all.”

Damn it. Now I’m curious. “Fuck you, Bronx.”

“Good girl.” His voice lifts. I can tell he’s wearing a smirk before I even clock it on his face.

I played straight into my Drummer Boys hands. “You owe me.”

“Can’t wait to pay up.” He winks and rolls his bottom lip.

These guys... they make misery slightly easier, that’s for sure.

“Kodiak, you came second,” Golden says.

“Of course. Ladies first, am I right?” Kodiak winks at me.

“Every time.” Golden leans against the bar height table and draws me to him. He ruffles my hair. “Even when it comes to axe throwing. You, bro, just don’t have the game to keep up with this violent little thing.”

I shove him away playfully. “Only violent when I’m provoked.”

“Let’s get out of here.” Kodiak gets off his stool. He wraps his arm around my neck on our way outside. “Where do you want to go next?”

“Blood & Ink,” Bronx says.

“Do we have a theme today?” Golden grins.

“Yeah.” I turn to him. “Murder... as in I want to kill a bitch.”

“Are you going to get a tattoo, Scary Girl?” Kodiak leans in to ask me. “Cherries, perhaps?”

Cherries.

Riot and I sit side-by-side on his bedroom floor. I’m cross legged, and he has his knees bent to hold his lyric book while he writes in it. Both our backs are pressed to his mattress.

He’s writing a new song, but the pen is still on the paper. There are lines of concentration around his mouth. He’s cute when he’s focused like this. The whole world could vanish and he wouldn’t notice, but he has let me into this tiny wedge of life that will always exist to him.

He picks up his lighter. This silver Zippo with a picture of a motorcycle etched into it. He told me once that his brother had given it to him. Said that his dad had left it behind. I don’t know if Riot believes that, though, since he was a baby and his brothers would have only been like what... four?

But he’s been attached to it for as long as I’ve known him. He takes it out whenever he’s uncomfortable or concentrating super hard like now. Click, the lid opens. Click, the lid closes. Click, click, click.

No doubt he’ll say something about having a joint soon. He’ll ask me if I want a hit as he blows the smoke out the window. And I’ll say yes, because that’s the closest his lips will probably ever get to mine.

I steady the rapid beating of my heart that happens when I think about him kissing me by reading the words he’s written.

“What if you change this line to ‘I’m all yours and you don’t see’?” I ask as I lean across him to point out the line I think he should change. I hope he doesn’t mind.

He inhales and braces like he’s trying to avoid me. He doesn’t want me to touch him. Or he doesn’t want to touch me.

Either way, it stings. I pull back. “It was just a thought.”

His chest falls. His gaze is impossibly deep, the little flecks of blue barely standing out in an ocean of gray. “You smell like cherries.”