Small black script tattoo reading Like a Boss on the inner forearm near the wrist, with a hand holding a pink cup in the background.

Like a Boss lettering on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo reads LIKE A BOSS in black ink on the inner forearm, with LIKE A in small upright capitals and BOSS in a larger looping script with a decorative capital B. The lines are fine and even, with solid black strokes and no shading. The photo is taken from above, showing a hand holding a pink cup, grey pavement and white sneakers.

Lettering Forearm Script Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You arrive at the Marram Guest House on a wet Tuesday in March with a clipboard, a carrier bag of Hobnobs and your late aunt's ledger, which has been kept in three different inks by people who clearly never met. The boiler grumbles in the cellar. Mr Pennock in room four has been paying his rent in cockle shells since 1987, and the seagulls have learned the bin day before the milk float has.

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The first week you try being firm. Then you try being kind. Neither works. The cook leaves by Thursday, a plumber on Friday calls you the new lady with a look that could curdle custard, and every sentence you say to a guest begins with sorry, I'm afraid. On Saturday night you sit on the cold back step with the ledger on your knees and realise the trouble is not the boiler. It is that you sound like someone apologising for taking up space.

So on Sunday you dig your aunt's sign-writing kit out from under the stairs, sand a board for the front window and paint LIKE A in small upright capitals, because you are careful by nature. Then you hesitate over the rest. In the end you take a breath and do the big looping script, a capital B like a swan's neck, and you write BOSS in one stroke because your hand is shaking and you refuse to stop halfway. Mr Pennock reads it from the pavement, laughs until he drops a shell, and comes in to pay his rent in cash for the first time in living memory.

By Monday the boiler is fixed by a man who calls you boss without a trace of irony, and the cook has come back for a second look at the kitchen. When the cat settles on the ledger you don't say sorry. You simply tap the page and say, off you get, and it goes.