“So, Bodie,” Ramona started from the wall of Penny’s booth.
When I glanced over, she was leaning on the wall from the other side, next to Veronica. They were both smiling unabashedly, their eyes never quite reaching mine — they were too busy scanning my chest.
“What is it you do again?” Ramona asked.
“I’m a software engineer. My buddies and I are working on a video game.”
They nodded their appreciation.
“What kind of game?” Veronica leaned in, shoulder to shoulder with Ramona.
“It’s an open world role-playing game. Steampunk, story-driven.”
Their faces were blank.
“Ah, like … think Victorian era, airships, like blimps. Treasure hunting, like Indiana Jones meets Han Solo but British.”
They lit up at that, including Penny, and I found myself feeling pleased.
“What’s it called?” Ramona asked.
“Nighthawk. It’s the name of the ship.”
Penny bounced a little in her seat. “Oh my God, that makes me want to draw stuff. This is seriously genius, Bodie. Who’s doing your artwork?”
“Jude. He’s a graphic artist and handles all of our 3D renderings. Phil and I are the code jockeys. Jude is the art.”
Penny waggled her brows at Veronica, who rolled her eyes.
“So how does that work?” Ramona asked. “Like, what do you do with it when it’s done?”
I took a breath and let it out as Penny carved a line in my skin and wiped it with a paper towel. “The first real step is to get a gameplay demo ready so we can pitch it to a big developer. The idea is that they pay us for the concept and bring us on as part of the development team. But we’ve been working on the demo for seven years,” I said with a laugh.
“Man, that’s intense,” Penny said as she dipped her needle in the ink and got back to work.
“It’s moving a lot faster now that we’ve been working on it full-time, but yeah. It’s been a long time coming. I mean, we came up with the idea in junior high and have been working toward this ever since. Phil’s focused on our outreach, networking through college and career buddies to see if we can get a meeting. There’s this one development company that’s at the top of the list. If we can get in with them, it’s a guarantee that the game would be everything we could possibly dream of. They’ve got the chops and the cash to throw at it.”
“What’s the company called?” Veronica asked.
“Avalanche,” I said, unable to keep the excitement out of my voice. “The games they produce are off the charts. But that’s the pie-in-the-sky kind of dream. We’ll probably get it picked up by a smaller company — I just hope they’ll let us do the work to make it what we want.”
Another gigantic hairy dude walked out of the hallway and into the shop, eyeing me in the chair, then he smirked at Ramona. He slapped her on the ass, and she yelped, laughing when she saw him.
“Hey, Shep,” Penny chirped. “This is Bodie. Bodie, this is Shep, Ramona’s fiancé and Joel’s brother.”
I jerked a chin at him in greeting. “How’s it going?”
“Not too bad,” Shep said, every word loaded, “other than the fact that my future wife is salivating over Penny’s guy.”
Everyone laughed but me. I was a hundred and ten percent sure that he could wreck my face without breaking a sweat.
“Come on, girls,” Shep said. “Leave Penny alone so she can do her job without an audience.”
They grumbled about it, but he effectively shooed them off, leaving Penny and me as alone as we could be in a tattoo parlor full of people.
Penny was engrossed in her work, and I watched her, smirking.
God, she was so beautiful, so talented, so strong and wild and free. A force of nature. I couldn’t imagine ever changing her, couldn’t imagine ever taking what made her her away. To lose those qualities would be tragic, a loss to everyone who knew and loved her. The thought that Rodney had tried to pin her down all those years ago, that he hadn’t been happy until he’d stripped it all away, made me hate him all the more.
“Something about you with that gun in your hand is almost too much for me, Penny.”
Her eyes caught mine and moved back to her work, though she was smiling. “You shirtless in my chair is almost too much for me, Bodie.”
I chuckled. “Tell me you’re free tonight.”
Her smile fell at that. “I wish I were. I promised Ronnie and Ramona that we’d go out. You know, since last time we tried to go out, I bailed on them.”
“Worth it.”
She laughed. “So worth it.” She shot up in her seat, eyes wide and smile big. “Oh my God, I have an idea. We should all go out together. Like, you should come with us and bring your brother. Make a group thing out of it. I want to hook Veronica up with Jude — she needs to get laid so bad. And then Ramona can bring Shep, and maybe Joel and Annika can come too.”