I had bubbles up to my eyebrows when Fletch returned to his apartment. I didn’t see him at first because of all the bubbles. He was racing around frantically.

“Fletch!” I called to him over the mountain of bubbles. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is fine. I just need to get my keys and run down to the drug store. I’ll be back before your bath cools.” The door slammed.

By the time he returned, I had almost dropped his copy of Creating a Xylophone Soundscape into the bathwater three times, and the bubbles had considerably come down.

“I’m back,” he shouted, “and I’ve brought three types of cures for ink on skin.”

“I had a lot of success getting it off my legs, chest, and stomach, but there’s nothing I can do about my back,” I replied.

He got a clean towel and draped it over the edge of the tub. “Lean on that and I’ll scrub your back,” he offered.

I unhooked my bra and leaned my chest against the towel while he rubbed baby oil into my back.

“Are you really upset?” he asked.

“Yup,” I replied through gritted teeth. It wasn’t really that I felt as savage as that sounded. I just felt like I was on the verge of crying again and I didn’t want to cry. Carver had pulled a practical joke on me. This wasn’t even the first time I’d had an ink-style practical joke played on me. I should have been tougher. What was making me into such a baby that night?

“Is it coming off?” I questioned stiffly.

“Yeah. All your soaking in the tub is taking your skin off with it. Nothing to worry about. Just a bit of healthy exfoliation.”

“You sound so cheerful,” I moaned as I glanced over my shoulder. Unless I was mistaken, he had that expression on his face the night I kidnapped him. For the first time, I wondered if that look didn’t mean he was pleased. “Is this awkward for you?”

He shrugged. “I was just thinking that if Carver Criche had any idea that his prank would lead to me scrubbing your naked back in my bathtub, he would not have done it. This almost feels like revenge.”

“Pleasant revenge?”

“Very pleasant.” He grinned.

I winked back at him before turning my head forward and giving it a break from the strain of looking over my shoulder. “What happened after I left?”

“I quit, told Ringlet to get a drum machine, told her I would not work with her in the future and left the club with no shirt. Then I realized I’d given you my car keys, so I had to walk home.”

“You mean that you were out walking with no shirt on while I was at the police station giving my statement?”

“Yes. I managed to snag a bus on the way to pick up my car and the baby oil. I also bought you some chocolates. They’re only from the drugstore, but I thought you’d rather have cherry cordials and coconut white chocolate than nothing.”

“Yes! Yes, I would rather have those things instead of nothing. Can I have one now?”

“Sure,” he said, tossing the sponge at me before drying his oily hands on a paper towel and retrieving the chocolate from the plastic bag. He set them out in front of me on the bathmat while I added more hot water to the tub. He clicked on some soft xylophone instrumentals and took up his sponge again.

After about two minutes of eating cherry cordials, listening to chill music that barely had a melody, having my back scrubbed and massaged, I realized that this was the best date I had ever been on. I was about to tell Fletch how I felt when the door buzzer rang.

“You can’t be expecting anyone!” I yelped.

“I’m not, but I am going to see who it is,” he said, getting up and drying his hands a second time while the door buzzer made impatient, unpleasant noises. He clicked the button. “Who is it?”

“Chase.”

“You sack of crap,” Fletch replied. “What are you doing here?”

“I want to talk about Natalie,” his disembodied voice answered.

Fletch looked at me as if to ask me what I wanted.

“Are we finished?” I asked, pointing at my back.

“No, but I would have stretched that out for hours,” Fletch admitted with a shrug and an especially pleased grin.

“Do you have a robe I can ruin?”

“I guess that means you want me to let him up,” Fletch said, pressing the button. Then he went over to his closet area and dug up a robe. “I don’t think you’ll ruin it. It’s already black.” He brought it over with a fresh towel, set them on the toilet seat where I could grab them, and turned his back.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Are you sure you can’t see a reflection of me somewhere?” I asked suspiciously from the bubbles of the tub.

“I am trying to be a gentleman, but I’m going to reach my limit soon, so get out of the water quickly. I wouldn’t mind having ink spread all over my body in the least.”

I had been thinking something similar. Usually, I didn’t want to have sex with the men I knew. I didn’t want to give them any knowledge of who I was or what I was like, in or out of my clothes. Those were things I kept to myself for good reasons.

Following his advice, I hopped out of the tub quickly, wrapped the towel around myself, and then his bathrobe over that.

“I’m finished,” I said, just as the tap came at the door.

Fletch walked over to it and peered through the peephole. “Are you alone?” he asked.

“Of course, I’m alone. It’s one in the morning on a weeknight. The club closes at eleven. I had to wait this long to get rid of Carver and come see you. I would have called you sooner, but the man was watching me like a hawk.”

“Okay,” Fletch said as he opened the door.

Chase burst in, sweaty and red-cheeked. He stopped in his tracks when he saw me. “Oh,” he said, stopping to straighten his shirt. “You have company.”

Fletch closed and locked the door behind Chase and offered him a seat at the kitchen table since the only other seats were the toilet or the bed. I took the bed and wrapped Fletch’s blankets around me, letting the wet towel fall on the floor. Fletch scooped it up and hung it on a wall hook. Then he brought me the remaining chocolates.

“Why does she get chocolate?” Chase teased, obviously trying to lighten the mood.

“Because she’s prettier than you are.”

Chase was about to say something, but stopped and ran a finger sideways along his neck. He had been about to say something about how I wasn’t so pretty with that ring of ink around my neck. I had tried to scrub at it, but without a mirror, I had had very little success.

He cleared his throat and said, “I feel responsible for this.”

“You do?” Fletch asked quietly. “Why?”

“Because I’m the one who told Natalie that if she really wanted to get Carver’s attention, she should pull a prank on him involving guns.”

“How do you know Natalie?”

He balked. “I’ve known her for ages. She has sung at the Spider every Tuesday night for years. I don’t pay her, because hardly anyone comes in on Tuesdays, but she gets the practice of playing for an audience every week, and if she was really talented, she could get a following that way.”

“But she’s not really talented, is she?”

“No and yes. Her voice is great. The songs she writes aren’t catchy, but everything works out if she sings covers. Then, at least, people don’t throw things at her. They tap their toes and wonder why she isn’t famous. If singing every Tuesday could make her happy, I would f-ing marry her--”

I gasped. “You’re the guy!”

“What?”

“You’re the guy. When Natalie left me and Fletch in the camp kitchen, she left and went to a few places, but the place she ended up was at a man’s house and she went in to stay the night. That was you!”

Chase sighed. “Yes. That was me.”

“And Carver saw you, recognized you, but didn’t tell me who you were when he recounted it to me.”

“Yeah, and I knew that if she could get his attention with a prank, he might decide to help her. If he helped her, something might click for her. Maybe he’d set her up with a decent songwriter or something.”

“Weren’t you afraid he’d be so taken with her little prank that he’d fall in love with her?” I asked.

“No.” Chase seemed to think the idea remarkably funny. “Even if he was very impressed, it would only last a minute. Natalie is not the type of woman who thinks on her toes. It was a stunt I designed to get his attention, so he would listen to her sing. It didn’t work, but the flyers I wrote worked better, and your little lecture to him where you talked down on him and made him feel like an insecure little boy who couldn’t play with the big kids. That was more than I could have hoped for. He became hyper curious, found Natalie, and became obsessed with the idea of showing you how powerful he is. Are you having fun yet?”

“So the job offer with Ringlet was all part of his scheme?” Fletch asked.

“Oh yes, but that doesn’t mean that Ringlet doesn’t want you. She wasn’t even having problems with her drummer. They asked you to come in just so Carver could shove a wedge between the two of you. He’s very jealous of you, Fletch. I’ve never seen anyone that jealous in my life and I work in the music industry.” He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Can I smoke in here?”

“No,” Fletch replied stonily.

“Whatever. I’m not staying long. I came to tell you that I masterminded this, but I didn’t take Shannon into account. Natalie bringing Shannon along with her that night was something she thought of herself because she’s not gutsy, but Shannon is. Shannon did all the hard parts. From what Natalie told me, she handled the gun, your conversation, and everything… Natalie never could have done it alone.”

I thought as much.

“What’s more,” Chase continued, looking at me. “You’re stuck with him.”

“I’ve been reporting him to the police,” I replied.

“Good. Great. You do that,” Chase said, stroking the tattoo on the side of his neck. “He’s going to discredit you. He’s going to make it sound like everything you’ve said is nonsense. Remember, he’s determined to show you he’s the biggest man in the city.”

I mulled that over.

“Is that all you have to give her after the trouble you’ve caused?” Fletch asked.

“I didn’t tell your girlfriend to be so damn sexy that Carver Criche, who practically stamps panties for a living, can’t control himself. If it had been up to me, she wouldn’t have become involved.”

“You think about him this way and you sent Natalie to prank him?” Fletch asked.

“But Natalie is not interesting.”

“Yet you’d marry her?”

“I’d always know she wasn’t cheating,” Chase said, pointing an unlit cigarette at Fletch.

I put my hand up. “Stop it. I think you’ve given me more than enough advice. Thank you.”

“See? She thinks I’m cool,” Chase said, sticking a thumb out at me.

Fletch rolled his eyes.

Chase stood up to leave. “One more thing. Ringlet is heartbroken you gave her the boot. She was in the VIP lounge crying until Carver sent her back to her hotel. She’ll be back begging for sure.”

“Please discourage her,” Fletch said with disgust on the edge of his words.

“No problem. I know lots of drummers,” he said, sticking his cigarette in his mouth. “Shannon,” he said, turning to me. “I'm not certain you heard the important part of what I said. Did you get what I came here to give you?”

I nodded. "More or less. He's not really after me. He wants to be the biggest man in the city?"

"Or the country."

"Or the world?" I said, giving Chase a kissy face.

Chase hooted another laugh. "Then I'll leave you two love birds to it. The man wants to be big."