Grazielle said nothing for what felt like far too long.
She kept looking at the paper. At the sentence. At the letters written in Giovanna’s careful handwriting—the same handwriting as always, slanted to the right, with the “s”s that looked like musical notes. Ten years, and the handwriting hadn’t changed. Grazielle didn’t know why that hurt so much.
“Okay,” she said at last. “I’ll transfer it to the stencil.”
She got up from the stool. She needed to move. She needed to put distance between her body and Giovanna’s, even if it was only the five feet to the workstation. She turned on Camila’s old computer, scanned the sentence, adjusted the size. Her fingers on the keyboard. Her eyes on the screen. Anything that wasn’t looking back.
But she could feel her. Feel Giovanna there, sitting in silence, watching her. Feel the weight of that gaze as if it were a hand resting against her back.
“You work here?” Giovanna asked. Her voice was careful, testing the waters.
“No. I have my own studio. On Augusta Street.”
“Oh.”
Silence.
“How long have you been tattooing?”
“About six years.”
“You always were good at drawing.”
Grazielle stopped typing. She stood still, her back to Giovanna, fingers suspended over the keyboard. You always were good at drawing. Giovanna spoke as if she knew. As if she’d been there. As if Grazielle’s six years of teaching herself, making mistakes on pigskin, sleeping on the floor of the first studio that had accepted her as an apprentice—as if all of it had happened with Giovanna by her side.
“Yeah,” Grazielle said. “I always have been.”
She printed the stencil. Cut the paper with scissors, close to the sentence. Then she went back to the client chair and sat on the rolling stool, facing Giovanna. Close. Too close.
“Give me your arm.”
Giovanna extended her right arm. The sleeve of her linen blouse was already rolled up to her elbow, revealing her wrist—slender, pale, blue veins visible beneath the skin. Grazielle knew that wrist. She’d held it a thousand times. She’d felt its pulse against her own lips once, on a December night when they’d stayed awake until four in the morning in Giovanna’s bedroom, the door locked and the sound of the fan covering their whispers.
She pulled on her gloves. The snap of latex sounded loud in the silence.
“It’ll sting a little when I clean your skin,” she warned, her voice professional and controlled, as if she were speaking to any client. She swiped an alcohol-soaked cotton pad over Giovanna’s wrist. The skin prickled beneath her touch.
Giovanna said nothing. But Grazielle saw it—saw her jaw lock, saw the fingers of her other hand slowly close around the purse in her lap.
She positioned the stencil. Pressed it against the skin. Counted silently to thirty, as she always did, but this time every number lasted an eternity. She removed the paper. The sentence remained there, purple on Giovanna’s wrist.
I kept the taste of rain in my mouth for when you came back.
They both looked at it.
“Is the size okay?” Grazielle asked.
“It’s fine.”
“If you want to change the placement—”
“It’s okay, Grazi.”
Her name again. Grazielle swallowed hard.
She turned on the machine. Its buzz filled the studio, familiar and steady, and for a moment Grazielle clung to that sound like a life raft. It was the sound of work. Of what she knew how to do. Of what had nothing to do with Giovanna Bastos and a rainy afternoon and a kiss that had destroyed and built everything at the same time.
“It’s going to hurt,” she said. “Wrists hurt more than other places. If you need to stop, let me know.”
“I can take it.”
Grazielle pressed the needle to the skin.
And the world shrank.
It shrank until it fit inside that one point—the tip of the needle, Giovanna’s skin, Grazielle’s hand holding her wrist firmly. The buzz of the machine. The smell of ink and disinfectant. Giovanna’s breathing, which grew shorter during the first second and then steadied, controlled, as if she were forcing herself not to move.
Grazielle tattooed slowly. More slowly than usual. She told herself it was because the skin on the wrist was thin, because the sentence was long, because it required precision. But she knew. She knew she was going slowly because every letter was one more second holding Giovanna’s hand, and she didn’t want it to end.
The capital “I.” The curve of the “k.” The space before “kept.”
“Do you live in São Paulo?” Grazielle asked without taking her eyes off the needle. She needed to talk. She needed words between them, because the silence was too full.
“For two years. I lived in Campinas before.”
“Campinas.” The city Giovanna’s parents had taken her to. Grazielle said nothing more about it.
“And you?” Giovanna asked. “Have you always stayed here?”
“I came here when I was eighteen. Never left.”
“Your parents—”
“I don’t talk to them.”
Giovanna fell silent. Grazielle felt her pulse quicken beneath her fingers—the heartbeat tapping faster against the latex of her glove. She said nothing. Kept tattooing.
“taste.” “of.” “rain.”
“I thought about you,” Giovanna said, so quietly that her words nearly disappeared beneath the buzz of the machine. “So many times.”
Grazielle’s hand didn’t shake. Years of practice. Her hand didn’t shake, but something inside her did—something that had been locked away for ten years and was now shoving hard against the door, wanting out.
“Me too,” Grazielle said. And it was true. It was the simplest and most devastating truth she had ever spoken.
She continued. “in.” “my mouth.”
“I wanted to look for you,” Giovanna said. Her voice was different now. It was no longer polite and restrained. It was the voice of someone who had been holding something heavy for too long, whose arms were giving out. “So many times. I’d open my computer, type your name, and—”
“And you wouldn’t search.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Giovanna didn’t answer. Grazielle looked up for a second—just one second—and saw that Giovanna was crying. Silently. Without moving. The tears slid straight down her face, as if they’d memorized the way.
Grazielle lowered her eyes back to the wrist. Kept tattooing.
“For.” “when.”
“Because I was afraid,” Giovanna said at last. “That you wouldn’t want to see me.”
Grazielle almost laughed. Almost. The sound died in her throat and became something else—something nameless, caught between laughter and a sob.
“I spent ten years wanting to see you, Gi.”
The sentence left her mouth and hung there in the air, between the buzz of the machine and the noise of the street. Grazielle didn’t try to take it back. There was no point. It had already been said. It had already been tattooed, in a way—as permanent as the ink she was putting into Giovanna’s skin.
“you.” “came back.”
She finished the last letter. Turned off the machine. The silence that followed came so suddenly it seemed like a sound of its own—the sound of something ending and beginning at the same time.
She cleaned the tattoo carefully. Applied ointment. Covered it with plastic wrap. Every movement mechanical, practiced, professional. Every movement an excuse to keep holding Giovanna’s arm.
“Done,” she said.
But she didn’t let go.
She stayed there, gloved fingers wrapped around Giovanna’s wrist, feeling the pulse—fast, alive, real. And Giovanna didn’t pull her arm away. She stayed there too, looking at Grazielle with her face wet and her eyes wide open, and Grazielle thought that this must be what drowning felt like—that inability to breathe without wanting to leave the water.
“Grazi,” Giovanna said.
“Hmm.”
“The sentence.” Giovanna swallowed. “Do you know where it came from?”
“I do.”
“I never forgot.”
Grazielle released her wrist. Took off her gloves. Threw them in the trash. She turned toward the counter, her back to Giovanna, and braced both hands against the surface, arms stretched out, head lowered.
She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t—
“How much?” Giovanna asked behind her.
Grazielle took a deep breath. Once. Twice.
“Nothing,” she said. “It’s on the house.”
“Grazi—”
“Go, Gi.”
It came out harsher than she’d intended. Like a door slamming. Grazielle hated herself for it, but she couldn’t—she couldn’t stay there, in a studio that wasn’t hers, with the woman who was everything, pretending everything was fine, pretending she could tattoo a sentence about rain and a kiss and longing onto the skin of the person she had loved more than anything in the world and then simply say bye, have a good afternoon, take good care of the tattoo, apply ointment three times a day.
Giovanna didn’t leave.
Grazielle heard the chair creak. Heard footsteps. Felt Giovanna stop behind her—close, close enough to feel her warmth, but without touching her.
“I’m not leaving,” Giovanna said. And for the first time in ten years, her voice wasn’t restrained. It wasn’t careful. It was firm. “Not this time.”
Grazielle closed her eyes.
Outside, it began to rain.