One More Day Read Online Free Page B

yellow, but all yellow is good."
    "Wow."  He paused with his hand on the knob.  For a moment, he looked at her - his face showing a pleased surprise - then realized what he was doing.  Pushing the office door open, he made his way to a desk.  "Yellow.  That's not a common one.  You know they say the colors you like say a lot about a person."
    "So what does yellow say about me, then?"
    "That you're happy?" He grabbed a manila folder and dropped it on her side of the desk, then sat at his chair on the other side.
    Mack grabbed it, flipping to the first page and taking a pen from the container.  "Yep, think they might have gotten that a bit wrong.  What's yours?"
    "Red.  Not dark red, but like, the sun sinking below the horizon red.  The kind that burns holes in your retinas."
    Her pen stopped halfway through her name.  Unable to hide the smile, she looked up.  "So, you're supposed to be mad?"
    He raised his hands and shrugged.  "Something like that.  Yeah, so, the last form is medical.  Um, the basic part's paid, but I can pull some out of your check and increase the coverage.  Most people don't want it, not at our age, but - "
    "Yeah," Mack said quickly.  "Wow, didn't realize you had insurance, too.  Yeah, I want it."
    Ryan looked at her for a moment.  "Really?  You want the Cadillac package?"
    Focusing on printing clearly and legibly, she just nodded. 
    "That's like a quarter of your check, Mack."
    She waved that away.  "It's good.  Learned the hard way not to take it for granted, ya know?"
    He nodded and turned his attention to the monitor on his desk, his hands finding the keyboard.  While she completed the stack of forms, he lost himself on the other side of the screen.  She'd done this all too often lately, filling out paperwork for a new job.  It seemed like every time she found something that might work, it never did.  This time felt different.  Granted, she was grasping for straws of hope, lately, but a straw was better than the steaming pile of crap she'd been dealing with all week.
    It took less than thirty minutes.  When she signed the last page, having read through everything, she stacked them neatly in the folder again, and dropped the pen in the wire container alongside the rest.  Ryan's desk was shockingly organized, she realized belatedly.  He had a small stack of files, the monitor, and that was about it.  So far, nothing about this place was what she expected of a tattoo parlor.  Not the owner, not the decor, nothing.  He ran it like a business, and it showed.
    "So," she said, breaking the silence, "I thought tattoo artists were supposed to show off their tattoos."
    "Huh?" he asked, glancing over.  He'd been absorbed in what ever it was he was messing with.  "Oh, yeah.  Um.  I do, it's just too cold out lately to run around in a T-shirt.  Once I'm working I usually pull off the long sleeve."
    "Can I ask how many you have?"
    He smiled and looked away.  "Sure, but it depends on how you count.  I really only have three.  They're just kinda big."
    "Like the sleeve?" 
    "Yeah.  So, lemme show you the shop."
    She stood, and was falling in behind him when she heard the front lock click.  The faint chime for the door sounded, followed by a loud voice.
    "What up, bitch?"
    "Colby," Ryan told her before yelling back.  "Get the lights man, we're open in fifteen."
    "You lazy shit," the man yelled back.  "What have you been - "
    When they walked into the room he paused.  Colby was everything a tattoo artist should be, from the large curved ring in his septum to the ink crawling up the side of his neck.  His head was shaved and his goatee was long.  Without shame, he looked her over slowly and grinned.
    "Hey, baby."
    "Colby, meet Mack, she's the one that did the chameleon."
    "Dude!  No shit?  That's some kick ass work.  Ryan said you can whip that shit out over and over too.  Fuckin' impressive."
    "Yeah."  She felt completely caught off guard.  "Kinda why I'm