Covet Thy Neighbor

tense, slightly awkward moment we’d shared. I sure as fuck hadn’t.
    I just didn’t know what to make of it.

The shop was empty on Thursday night, as it often was, but we’d had some pretty good walk-ins early in the day, so I couldn’t complain. A little downtime was good. Gave me a chance to clean, sketch, and totally not think about Monday’s hike like I’d been doing all week.
    I sat up to stretch a kink out of my neck after hunching over a drawing for half an hour. Lane was standing at the counter, skimming over the appointment book. I was just about to suggest we close up the shop early, since things were quiet, when he did a double take at something on the left side of the book. Then he rolled his eyes and turned the page with more force than necessary.
    “What?” I asked.
    “Nothing,” he muttered. “Just noticed one of your appointments next week.”
    “What about it?”
    He glared at me, but said nothing. The typical Lane expression that meant read between the lines, asshole . I mentally ran through my schedule for the next week, trying to think what I could have possibly—
    Oh.
    I groaned and sat back in my chair, pushing away the sketch I’d been working on. “Dude, seriously? This again?” I was so not in the mood for this shit. Not after being up all night thinking about Darren. Again.
    He glared at me. “Yes, this again.”
    “For fuck’s sake, man. There’s no reason it should be an issue for me to work on him. Do you have any idea how many of your clients are HIV or Hep positive?”
    He shifted his weight. “None of them have said—”
    “Do you make them bring in documentation showing recent negatives?”
    “No,” Lane growled. “I don’t.”
    “Then who’s to say you’re not inking people who are positive for either one?” I pushed myself up out of my chair. “At least I know this guy is positive.”
    “Yeah?” He watched me get up and cross the shop as he said, “And I haven’t seen you do fuck all in the way of taking extra precautions when you’re working on him.”
    I raised an eyebrow, then leaned down to riffle through a drawer for some pencils. “I take the same precautions with him as I do with any other goddamned client”—I withdrew the pencils and slammed the drawer—“because I tattoo all of my clients with the assumption they have HIV or Hep. Don’t you?”
    “Of course I do. But that’s . . .” He fidgeted again, tightening his arms across his chest.
    “Lane, think about it. I do the same thing with him as I do with any other client.” I dropped the pencils beside my sketchpad and ticked off the points on my fingers. “I wear gloves. I sanitize everything. I use new, sterile ink cups and fresh ink that’s never been touched and will never be used on anyone else. Just like I would do with anyone else because I assume—just like you should be assuming—that anyone who walks through that door could be positive.”
    “Still, I’m just not comfortable with word getting around that we tattoo people who are positive.” He pointed sharply at my workstation. “Or you inking them with the same gear you use on everyone else.”
    “You’re serious. We sterilize the hell out of everything we own, above and beyond the state regulations, and you still want me to get an entire set of equipment just for using on those clients.”
    “What would it hurt?”
    “ Lane .” I gestured at the room around us. “Where would we put extra equipment? Seriously. If we had the space, we’d have brought in another artist fucking ages ago.”
    “We can’t afford an extra artist in here, even if we had room.”
    “Ditto with the equipment.”
    “Don’t you think it’s more important to—”
    “I’m not going to keep going around and around about this, dude. If you want me to schedule him when you’re not here, I will.” Muttering, I added, “God forbid I expose you to a leper.”
    Lane grumbled something I didn’t understand, and for the sake of us not coming to blows around all this expensive equipment, I didn’t ask him to repeat it. I was tired of this same old argument, and there was no point in dragging it out again.
    I rubbed my eyes. One of these days, we’d settle this dispute. Hopefully out of earshot of our clientele.
    Right about then, fortunately, the front door opened. I glanced at it, then did a double take.
    A kid who couldn’t have been more than sixteen sauntered in. Lip pierced, eyebrow pierced, hair bleached. Punk