Where Nerves End

change besides my painkiller dosage. I had enough other bullshit in my life that was cutting into my ability to relax. I had a business to run, a life to live. Lack of sleep and an abundance of pain interfered with every goddamned thing from driving my car to enjoying my sad excuse for a sex life.
Pursing my lips, I glanced at the stairs leading up to my bedroom where Kevin—no, I was pretty sure his name was Kyle— was still asleep. Just once, it would be nice to have sex with someone without having to modify everything we did to keep from aggravating my shoulder any more than we had to. Nothing killed the mood or took the luster off an orgasm like fierce, unrelenting pain. I couldnt even enjoy rough sex anymore because I spent the whole time wound up thinking our pursuit of good pain would trigger the not so good pain, which it invariably did. That was why I hadnt been laid in weeks before tonight; sex wasnt very appealing when this was the end result.
I rubbed my shoulder, silently begging the spasms not to spread up my neck or down my back before the drugs kicked in.
Fucking hell. This had to stop. I couldnt live like this.
“You know,” my friend Seths voice echoed in my head, “I keep telling you—”
“Ill pass on the acupuncture. If Im going to spend money, Id like it to be on something that helps, you know?”
“Suit yourself,” hed said with a shrug, and gone back to working on my tattoo. “But if you change your mind, give me a buzz.”
Id been in so much pain that day, I hadnt stopped the conversation right there like I usually did. “You really believe in this stuff, dont you?”
“Absolutely,” he said without hesitation. “Hand to God, its—”
“Oh, thats meaningful coming from an atheist heathen like you.”
He laughed. “All right, all right. But I swear, the shit works like a damned charm. It drives me fucking crazy too. It shouldnt work. It doesnt make a bit of sense, but”—he shrugged with one shoulder—“it does.”
“Really? Just seems so…”
Seth smirked. “Dont tell me youre afraid of needles or something.”
I laughed. “Yeah, thats it. Terrified. Now get back to work.”
Hed chuckled and continued with my tattoo, carving a much more bearable variety of pain into my upper arm. After five years of putting up with my fucked up shoulder, the pain of getting a tattoo was a cakewalk.
“Anyway,” I said, “its not the needles. I just dont get how its supposed to work.”
He shrugged, leaning away to get some more ink. “Something about, I dont know, getting the Qi moving the right way or…yeah, something like that.”
“The Qi?” I smirked. “Seriously? You of all people buy into that?”
Seth glanced up at me. “I dont know if I buy the Qi part, but something works.”
“I cant believe anyone talked you into even trying it.”
“It took some work, believe me. Ive known Michael since before he went to Hokey Pokey school, and he still had to twist my arm after I had that car accidenta few years ago.” Seth gestured at his neck with his tattoo needle.
“But you eventually let him stick you full of needles?” I eyed him. “To fix you after a car accident?”
Seth nodded. “Made all the difference in the world. That shits amazing.”
“So what changed your mind?” I asked. “Did he bring you a stack of peerreviewed studies or something?”
“Honestly?” Seth leaned back, and the buzzing of the tattoo needle quieted. He held my gaze as he went on. “I was in so fucking much pain after that wreck, I probably would have gone to a chiropractor if someone had suggested it.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Thats not doing much for acupunctures credibility if you were desperate enough to consider a chiro.”
He put up his gloved hand. “I said Id have gone if someone suggested it. I didnt say it would have worked. But”—he leaned forward again, holding my skin taut with one hand and bringing up the tattoo needle with the other as it buzzed back to life—“Michael was emphatic he could help me out. He said the worst case scenario was that it would do nothing, and the best case scenario was that Id be able to sleep again.”
Sleep. God. Sleep .
In the silence of my kitchen, I closed my eyes and kneaded the back of my neck as the stiffness crept upward. For the first time, I was really and truly tempted to get that number from Seth.
But then there was money. All the worsening financial problems that kept me awake when my shoulder didnt. It didnt even matter if