Tramp Stamp

They’ve been seeing each other a week when she finds out about it. A mistake, he confesses, that’s all. He was dating this girl who he really liked; they got drunk one night, ended up at a tattoo parlor, she dared him, and he called her on the dare. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time, he tells her, and she wants to believe him, she does. But as he lies there in her bed, his tear-streaked face nearly buried into her pillow, she shakes her head at the butterfly tattooed on the small of his back. What happened afterward? she asks, and he says, She left me. She said she couldn’t believe I went through with it. I told her it was to prove my love. I mean, how many other guys, I asked, would do that for her? But she didn’t care. She left anyway. A silence passes and she keeps staring at the butterfly. In the dimness it looks real enough that, if she were to suddenly reach out, it might flutter away. Would you do this for me? she asks, and he says, Of course. You’re my world.

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Robert Swartwood has no tattoos. He blogs at www.robertswartwood.com.