Smoked Success

10.

"On my right wrist," I start, sighing as this is making me want to piss, "the word "words" with a point. In black please." 

I didn't really like colorful tattoos, they seemed a little less mature and harder to make. The black ones are pretty simple usually. 

"Simple and easy, got it." Earl smiles at me, and starts his machine. "You want it a typewriter's font right?" 

I nod. The fact that I chose "words." to be my tattoo is that without those, we'd be speechless. I'm serious, imagine a world without words. And I love words honestly, all of them, whether profanity or not. Earl sterilizes the area where my tattoo will be and takes measures. I close my eyes, preparing myself for the pain. I know the wrist isn't that painful but still. To distract myself, I get out my book and start reading, I like reading teen books since they help you know the mentality of the future generations, and they're still fun to read. 

The tattoo looks incredible, one of my favorites. Christian's supposedly arriving home in a few, and here I am, packing again, for Los Angeles. I really am stressed about my roommates but I was stressed about talking to Christian, I'll overcome it anyways. I have prepared a little part of the sophomore's syllabus but nothing complete yet. I can't believe there's a chance of teaching students that are older than I am. My birthday's soon but yeah. My phone rings, it's Jake, Angelina's biological father. Well that's weird. 

"Mommy?" I hear Angelina's angelical voice from the phone, hesitating. 

I remember how we'd named Angelina, it was my favorite girl name then and that's why her mother chose it, for me. She thought I made plenty of stuff possible for her, but that wasn't true, she made lots of efforts to survive leukemia which fucked her up at the end. Man, I miss Kristen, I know I gave her wigs to a charity about a year ago. 

Angelina usually used to come with me to Washington for Christmas, but I don't know if that's the case for this year. I horribly miss her and her hair that reminded me of her mother, whom she looked a lot like. Jake was pretty neutral about the whole situation, even when her mother died, he didn't seem very shocked about it, as if he already knew or anything. 

"Angelina, I miss you so much." I tell her, trying to lighten up her mood. "How are you?" 

"I'm fine, but I cannot sleep." She says with her cute British accent that strongly resembled her father's.  "Daddy is asleep, and I didn't tell him I took his phone."

"Oh that's naughty." I laugh, I am not the strict type of parent, because it will just make her fear me which I don't want. "You wanna hear a little story?" 

I liked making up stories for her, with a good advice at the end if she doesn't sleep through it. Angelina used to request to see me everyday when we first had to separate, and then her father started refusing, which sort of got her to give up.

"Yes please." She pleads, trying to be as silent as possible. 

By the time I come up with a story, I see Christian getting in the room. I give him a quick kiss and tell her the story. By the middle of it, I can no longer hear her breathing, which should mean she's slept. I hang up, and go back to real world. 

"Who was that?" Christian asks me, smirking. 

Christian first saw Angelina when she was a week old, I still remember when he picked me up from Los Angeles' airport when the last time we've met he'd confessed his love to me. 

"Angelina," I start running a hand through my hair, "she couldn't sleep." 

"Oh, how's your leg anyway?" He questions, changing subjects.