Page 18 of Nothing To Lose

Tyler chuckles. “I just mean that he has ways of making sure his interests are carried out accordingly.” A laugh bubbles out of him, one that shows just how much the painkillers affect him. “That still sounds like he’s a mobster or something. He’s not. He just knows a lot of people in high places.”

That still sounds really fucked up to me, but I don’t press the issue. I can’t imagine living under someone’s thumb like that.

“What about your mom? Is she in the picture? Does she have any say?”

“My parents divorced when I was very young, and my father got full custody. She’s… not involved.”

“That sucks, I’m sorry.”

He shrugs, like it’s not a big deal.

“What about you?” he asks, yawning. I wave him off when he tries to help me clean up from dinner, and he begrudgingly sits back on the couch.

“What about me?”

“Anything. All I know is that you’re fixing this place up to be a training gym, and that you take in strays.”

“I don’t know, that’s probably the most interesting thing about me.”

Tyler gives me a skeptical look. “Whatever. Your skin alone is more interesting than my rich boy sob story.”

I snort. “I wish I could say I have a deep story for every line of ink on me, but truthfully, only two of them mean anything. One of my buddies back home used me as a practice dummy during his apprenticeship.”

The wide-eyed look of astonishment on his face is hilarious. “You just let some guy practice on you with needles and permanent ink?”

“Pretty much. But I also knew how good of an artist he is, and I’d seen the work he did on practice skin.”

“That’s a thing?”

“Yeah. It’s like sheets of synthetic skin. They feel pretty real.”

Tyler scrunches his nose. “Gross. Okay, so tell me about your two meaningful tattoos. Which ones are they?”

Turning to one side, I show him the piece that takes up my entire right shoulder and arm. It’s a depiction of an oil rig burning with smoke rising into the sky.

I answer his unspoken curiosity before he has to ask. “My dad died in an oil rig explosion just before I turned fifteen.”

“Oh, God. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

“That’s really young to lose your dad. That had to have been hard.”

“You lost your mom younger,” I point out.

He points to the tattoo. “My mother had zero impact on my life. It’s obvious your dad, and his death, had a big impact on yours.”

See? Observant.

“It did, yeah. My mom has a chronic health condition and couldn’t work, so my dad was the main breadwinner. We struggled after he was gone. I quit school so I could work. I hated school, so it wasn’t a big deal. My sister Chelsey, that’s who I was on the phone with earlier, she’s the brain in the family.”

“And she takes care of your mom now?”

I nod. “She got a nursing license and works at a retirement home. I still send money to help out, but Chels gets mad about it, says it’s her turn. She’s the one that pushed me to do this.” I look around the gym, or what will eventually be a gym.

As terrified as I am some days, that I’m too far away to help them, or that I’ll fail and lose everything I’ve worked so hard for, having the opportunity to pursue a dream I never imagined I’d actually see through is something I’ll forever be grateful for.

“And the other?”