Black and red script lettering reading Money over Men with swirling flourishes, tattooed along a forearm.

Money over Men script lettering on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo spells out the words Money over Men in a flowing script with bold black outlines and flourishing swashes above and below. Red shading sits along the inner edges of the letters and in the thin accent lines of the swirls. The lettering runs horizontally across the forearm against a plain skin background and a dark floor.

Lettering Forearm Script Lettering Word Swirl Flourishes

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the ledger in the coat pocket of the groom's father, folded between a pressed carnation and a betting slip from Doncaster. The reception is at the Grand in Scarborough, the marquee already sagging with rain, and you are the only one who counts the envelopes at the door. Forty-two of them, cream, each with a name in silver ink. Your job is to log the gifts for the thank-you cards. Nobody told you the bride's brother would be standing behind you with one hand flat on the table.

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'Money over men,' he says, tapping the back of his hand against the wood as though the words were printed there. He says it like grace. He tells you his sister learned it from their mother, who learned it from a husband who left with the caterer's float. Then he slides a fat envelope across with your name on it, and inside is more than the whole week's wages you were promised. 'Put the Harrisons down as paid,' he says. 'Put yourself down as gone.'

You should walk away. Instead you look through the tent flap at the groom, who is standing in the rain with his tie undone, waving at a car that isn't coming. The bride is already in the back seat of the second car, engine running, her veil folded on her lap like a flag she has decided to surrender. Her brother hands you a pen. The ledger is open at the page for gifts.

By the time the cake is cut, the envelopes are gone, and so is the bride's car, and so is the groom's father's hip flask. You write the final line in your neatest hand: Received, forty-two cards, one dinner set, one groom, unclaimed. Then you pocket the pen, because it is the only thing in the marquee nobody thought to count.