Bathe in Color

15. Grayson Pierce, Age 17, August 4, 2019

There I go, thinking about Paris again, in compromising positions, with me.

If I could just shift my focus on something, anything else besides him, maybe I could fall asleep. Yet all I do is lay there, rubbing the pink triangle tattoo on my bicep, the one Paris said he loved so very much, the one that made me think that maybe he's playing for my team. Or maybe he had no fucking clue what the pink triangle represents. Maybe he thought it looked nice like my parents eventually did when they saw it after I got it on a drunken whim on my seventeenth birthday.

I still remember that night so vividly. Tommy snuck out a bottle of vodka from her parent's bar, which was loaded with all sorts of alcohol and fancy liqueur I'd never heard of. He said they had so many parties with their drunken neighbors that they would never notice it was gone. I remember begging them to not make me do it, but Tommy and Maya said they had been holding out on their first shot for me. They were both already seventeen, and we had promised years ago we would try our first shot after we all turned seventeen. It was a silly pact, but we were seven years younger and giggled at the thought of pinky promising about shots.   

After the first shot, which tasted like utter shit, the three of us couldn't help but make an incredibly irrational decision and take another.

"Maybe it'll taste better the second time?" Maya suggested, knowing that was bullshit.

So we took another shot and winced at it. Tommy almost vomited in my lap, but I steadied him and threw him back on the carpet of my bedroom, which was all to us. My parents had gone out for a date night, letting my friends and I have the apartment to ourselves.

"How about one more?" He asked, burping at the disgusting taste of sour vomit mixed with burning vodka.

We laughed and took another, making all sorts of weird and goofy faces before finally agreeing to put the bottle down.

Maya and Tommy both gave me a birthday kiss on the cheek before leading me into the kitchen. Maya perused my fridge with an audacious attitude – she was desperately searching for something even though she certainly came over enough to know where we kept everything.

"Ooooooo," Maya wailed, opening up a box of cherry popsicles.

Each of us snatched one and numbed our teeth, biting with icy impatience.

After having another round of popsicles, Tommy looked me right in the eyes with the stupidest look on his pale face, slurring his words as he said, "You should get a tattoo."

His eyes peered into me, their color an electric ice blue. My head was spinning, but I felt great, the chilly mushy popsicles trailing down my throat, slickening it and freezing my entire body.

"Ah, what the hell," I replied, not even thinking clearly as Maya's face lit up, dimples forming on her mahogany skin. She played with her frizzy black curls as she dialed a number on her cell phone.

"Hey, Cam, I have a friend here who wants to get a tattoo. You think you could work your magic?"

She smiled, showing off her glittering white teeth which were the only thing I could focus on as she called an Uber and we hopped inside. The drive took about twenty-five minutes, but it felt like no time at all as the three of us screeched to the music on the radio and laughed like uncontrollable baboons.

When the car stopped, Maya led us into a colossal apartment building, similar to mine a few blocks down. The inside was nice, with fancy upholstered couches and a receptionist desk where a woman sat wearing a black blazer and matching skirt. She looked like a fancy hotel concierge, and we all felt underdressed.