Mara had been a tattoo artist for six years and a goth for much longer, and in all that time she had developed exactly one dating rule: no second date with any man who called her style "a phase".
Most of them didn't make it to the second date anyway. They liked the photos – the black lace, the silver rings, the dark lipstick – and then sat across from her in a café looking as if they had ordered something spicy and regretted it.
Daniel was different from the first message. He didn't open with "hey gorgeous" or a comment about her lipstick. He wrote: Your profile says you love Victorian cemeteries. Highgate or Père Lachaise? Choose carefully, this decides everything.
She smiled at her phone for the first time in weeks.
The first date
They met on a cold Thursday in October at a candle-lit bar that played The Cure a little too loudly. He was taller than his photos, wore a plain black coat and looked slightly nervous, which she liked more than she expected. He had read about the bar's history before coming. He asked about her tattoos – not what they meant, but which one hurt the most and which one she would draw again.
"The raven on my shoulder," she said. "I drew it at nineteen. It's terrible. I love it."
"Can I see it?"
She pulled the lace of her sleeve aside, just a little. He looked at it for a long moment, seriously, the way people look at paintings.
"It's not terrible," he said. "It's honest."
Nobody had ever said that about anything of hers.
The walk
After the bar they walked through the old part of town, past churches and closed bookshops. It started to rain – the soft, misty kind that makes streetlights glow. Mara expected him to complain. Instead he stopped under an archway, pulled up the hood of his coat and said, "This is exactly the weather your playlist sounds like."
She laughed, properly, the kind of laugh that surprises you. And then they were standing very close under the old stone arch, rain falling just behind them, and she could smell cedar and cold air on his coat.
She was the one who kissed him. Slowly at first, testing, and then not slowly at all. His hand found the small of her back over the lace, careful, as if he was asking a question. She answered by pulling him closer.
Candlelight
Her flat was above the studio, full of candles, old books and a cat called Lenore who disapproved of everyone. Daniel was officially disapproved of within ten seconds, which Mara took as a good sign.
She lit the candles one by one while he looked through her sketchbooks. When she turned around he was holding a drawing of a moth with skull markings.
"Draw this on me one day," he said.
"That's a big commitment for a first date."
"I'm not planning on this being a first date for long."
She crossed the room, took the sketchbook out of his hands and put it down. The candlelight made everything softer – his face, the black lace of her dress, the rain sliding down the window. He kissed her neck just below the ear, and she felt it all the way down her spine.
What happened next stayed between the two of them and Lenore, who left the room in protest. What mattered was this: when Mara woke up at dawn, the candles had burned down, Daniel was still there, and for once she didn't want to pretend it meant nothing.
Six months later
The moth is on his forearm now. She drew it, and her hands shook for the first time in years.
He still asks about cemeteries. They went to Père Lachaise in the spring.
He chose correctly.
