Grazielle shouldn't have been there.
Camila's studio was on the other side of Consolação, in a run-down townhouse that smelled of cheap incense and disinfectant. It wasn't the kind of place Grazielle would choose to work, but Camila had asked—"Just today, Grazi, for the love of God. My dentist scheduled a root canal, and I have a client at three"—and Grazielle owed her a favor. Several, actually. Camila was the kind of person who lent you money without asking when you'd pay it back, and in São Paulo, that was worth more than family.
So there she was, at twenty to three on a Wednesday afternoon in March, sitting on the high stool behind the counter, flipping through Camila's appointment book, its round, childish handwriting at odds with a thirty-two-year-old woman whose arms were entirely covered in ink.
The ceiling fan turned slowly, pushing the hot air from one side to the other without accomplishing anything. Grazielle lit a cigarette, took one drag, and put it out. She couldn't smoke inside. She slipped the lighter into the pocket of her cargo pants and kept turning the silver ring around her thumb—a habit she'd had since she was twenty, when she'd bought the ring at a thrift store on Augusta Street for no reason at all, just because it fit.
The three o'clock client's name was Giovanna.
It was written there, in Camila's round handwriting: Giovanna B. — 3 p.m. — phrase on wrist — first tattoo. Grazielle read the name without feeling anything. Giovanna was a common name. She knew at least four.
She prepared the workstation. Gloves, a fresh needle, black ink, disposable ink caps, paper towels. The automatic motions of someone who'd been doing this for years. She turned on the power supply and tested the machine. The familiar buzz filled the silence.
At seven past three, the door opened.
Grazielle looked up over the counter, already practicing the professional smile she used with clients who weren't hers—and the smile died before it was born.
The woman in the doorway had long, light-brown hair pulled into a loose ponytail. She wore a white linen blouse, tailored pants, and closed-toe shoes no sane person would wear in that heat. She held her purse in both hands in front of her body, as if protecting herself. And she had long-fingered hands, fingers Grazielle knew by heart—the curve of her pinky, the thumbnail always shorter than the others, the thin scar on her right index finger from when she'd cut it opening a can of corn at fourteen, in Grazielle's kitchen, on a Saturday afternoon that smelled like burnt popcorn.
The fan kept turning.
Giovanna looked at her.
And Grazielle understood, with a clarity that hurt, that ten years hadn't solved a damn thing.
"Good afternoon," Giovanna said. Her voice was the same. A little deeper, maybe, but the same. The careful politeness, the open vowel at the end, the way she spoke as though every word had been chosen before leaving her mouth. "I have an appointment at three. With Camila."
Grazielle didn't answer. She couldn't. She was too busy trying to remember how to breathe. Her fingers had stopped turning the ring.
"Camila isn't here today," she said, and her own voice sounded strange, as if it were coming from another room. "I'm filling in."
Giovanna blinked. Once. Twice. And then it happened—the recognition. It wasn't a shock. It was worse. It was slow. Grazielle watched it pass across Giovanna's face like a shadow moving beneath water: her brow furrowing, her lips parting without a sound, her eyes widening slowly, slowly, until they were enormous.
"Grazi?"
No one called her that. No one had for ten years.
"Hi, Gi."
The nickname slipped out before she could stop it. It came from the same place it had at sixteen, when they met in the last row of the library and Grazielle whispered hi, Gi before lacing her fingers with Giovanna's beneath the table, her heart pounding so hard she was sure the librarian could hear it.
Giovanna didn't move. She stood in the doorway, the streetlight behind her, and Grazielle thought it was unfair—unfair that she could still look that beautiful, the light outlining her silhouette, as if the universe had no respect whatsoever for what Grazielle had gone through to forget her.
"I didn't know," Giovanna said, her voice cracking in the middle. "I didn't know that you—I made the appointment with Camila, I didn't—"
"I know."
Silence.
The fan turned. The tattoo machine buzzed softly on the workstation. Outside, a bus rumbled past, making the floor tremble slightly.
"Do you want to sit down?" Grazielle asked, because she didn't know what else to say. Because what else do you say to the person who was your entire world and disappeared on a Tuesday in October, without a note, without a goodbye, without anything—taken away as if what existed between you were a disease that needed to be cured?
Giovanna sat down.
She sat in the client chair, her purse in her lap, her back straight, her knees together. She sat the way she had in the classroom, as if someone were judging her posture. Grazielle sat on the rolling stool facing her, and for a moment they were just two women in a tattoo studio on a Wednesday afternoon.
But they weren't.
"You were going to get a phrase tattooed," Grazielle said, looking at Camila's appointment book. She needed something concrete. Something that wasn't Giovanna's face a foot away. "On your wrist."
"Yeah." Giovanna opened her purse and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She unfolded it carefully, as if it were fragile. Then she held it out to Grazielle.
Grazielle took the paper.
Read it.
And the floor disappeared.
The phrase was: I kept the taste of rain in my mouth for when you came back.
Grazielle knew that phrase. Not because Giovanna had shown it to her before. But because, at sixteen, on an afternoon when it had rained so hard the school gym flooded and they ran laughing and soaked into the locker room, Grazielle had kissed Giovanna for the first time—and afterward, with her lips still wet, Giovanna had whispered, almost only to herself: It tastes like rain.
Grazielle handed the paper back. Her hand was trembling, but she wasn't going to cry. Not there. Not now.
"Cursive or print?" she asked.
Giovanna looked at her for a long moment. Her huge brown eyes were full of everything that couldn't fit into words.
"Cursive," she said. "Yours."