Naked

  “I’ll be here.” I watched him go, the crowd parting. Heads turned to look at him even when I wasn’t on his arm. I looked back at Devon, whose mouth was still pursed, brow furrowed. “What?”

  He laughed and rubbed my shoulder for a second. “Girl, don’t get your panties twisted on me, now. Man owned up to being your valentine, that’s all. And he’s looking at you like he thinks you’re tastier than any of this candy in here. And you…”

  “Me, what?” I gave him an icy look that didn’t intimidate him.

  “We got ties, don’t we?” Devon’s broad shoulders blocked out the sight of anything behind him, but he wasn’t being aggressive or scary. He looked concerned. “We’re family.”

  “We’re dating, that’s all. I met him a couple months ago. He’s been living downstairs.”

  “At your place?” Devon’s brows rose, wrinkling his bald head.

  “Yes.”

  He let out a low whistle. “Huh. So things are serious.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  He glanced over his shoulder to the ticket booth, where Alex was now charming the volunteer in charge. “He looks like he does.”

  Before I could answer, Alex came back with a string of tickets. “They were selling them in arm’s lengths,” he explained. “I got one for each of us.”

  Devon laughed. “I need to get back to the booth before Princess Pippa makes all the valentines and doesn’t leave any for anyone else. See you all later. Liv, you call me, hear?”

  “I will.”

  We both watched him go, and Alex handed me a strand of tickets. “What are you going to try to win?”

  I ended up putting my tickets in all the baskets, while Alex put all of his in the photography basket.

  “I don’t have a camera,” he said when I laughed at his choice. “I need one.”

  “You could just buy yourself one, Alex. I can’t believe you don’t have a camera.”

  He shrugged, his tickets gone. The session was ending, and we were going to have to leave to make room for the next wave. “I had a camera, but not a digital one, and it broke a long time ago. I just never got another.”

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky and win that one, then.”

  He grinned. Took my hand. “I have a better idea.”

  When he looked like that I wanted to pounce on him, but I restrained myself since we were out in public. “What’s that?”

  “You can tell me what kind to buy. I bet you’ll give me good advice.”

  I laughed. “Uh-huh. Okay, sure. When do you want to buy it?”

  He shrugged as we waited in line to pick up our coats from the coat check. “Whenever.”

  He helped me into my jacket and shrugged into his navy peacoat, looking wickedly delicious. I watched him wrap his long, striped scarf around his neck. He had an effortless style the straight men I’d dated had lacked. It might be stereotyping, but it was true.

  “Today?” I asked, thinking of a visit to Cullen’s Cameras. I hadn’t been in ages, and there was always something there I wanted to buy.

  “Sure. Let’s go.”

  “So…what sort of camera are you looking for? Point-and-shoot or something more expensive?” I eased the car into a spot in the parking lot at the camera shop and turned off the ignition.

  “Whatever you recommend.” Alex leaned back in the seat and shot me a sideways grin. “You’re the expert.”

  “How much money are you looking to spend?”

  “Money isn’t an issue.”

  “Must be nice,” I said.

  Alex’s smile didn’t fade, didn’t wither, didn’t move. His eyes, though, went a little shuttered. “It is.”

  “Come on, then. You ready?”

  “Always.”

  I shifted him a glance as I opened my door. “No kidding.”

  His laugh rang out and hung, frozen in the winter air, on the steam of his breath, almost like a physical thing I could reach out and touch. Like ice that would break if tapped. He shook his head as he closed the car door.

  “You have a dirty mind, Olivia.”

  I scoffed. “Oh, that’s a good one, coming from you.”

  I led the way to Cullen’s Cameras, a tiny shop tucked among the houses of a residential neighborhood. I never knew how Lyle Cullen stayed in business, since he never advertised and the shop wasn’t anyplace anyone would ever look for if they didn’t already know it was there. But the business had been in his family for years and I guessed it had become more of a beloved obsession than a moneymaker.

  I reached for the door, but Alex was there before me, holding it open. Gentlemanly. Inside I breathed the smell of dust and the hot air spilling from the old iron radiators. Underneath it the faint smell of chemicals from the darkroom. Alex sneezed.

  I got my first camera for my birthday when I was three. It was big and clunky, with a plastic view screen that showed pictures of farm animals when you pushed the “flash” button. Nobody told me it wasn’t real.

  It didn’t really matter. The pictures I made when looking through the small plastic hole didn’t have to exist for me to see them. I remember talking to my grandpa about the lady in the long dress in the corner. I asked him if she was an angel. Angels, to me at the time, were always ladies with wings and halos of tinsel, or babies in diapers who shot arrows to make people fall in love. That woman had no wings, but it was clear to me that viewing her through the lens and no other way meant she was special.

  Grandpa only saw the barnyard when he looked. So did Grandma, and my parents, and everyone else I asked. After a while, when there were other toys to play with, I stopped asking about her. I didn’t forget about her. I just moved on.

  Cameras with removable, disposable flashbulbs that came in packs of six. Cameras I had to load and wind by hand, and later, when my parents saw how serious I was about photography, cameras with better lenses. My dad gave me his old Nikon, complete with the original neck strap in a 1970s hash mark pattern of orange and brown, and I discovered bulk packs of film stuffed into the toe of my Christmas stockings.

  The best camera I got, the one I still used, was a Nikon D80 I’d bought for myself with my first check from Foto Folks. It had seemed a fitting use of the money, even though I’d had to cancel cable television for a few months. I hadn’t missed the TV shows, and I used my camera almost every day. I considered it a good trade-off.

  “Olivia. Hello.” Lyle Cullen beamed at me as he came out of the back room. He rested his chubby hands on the glass case displaying several cameras resting on soft blue velvet. “Who’s your friend?”

  “Alex Kennedy.” Alex held out his hand and the men shook.

  “Here for a camera, Alex?”

  “Yes, sir. I am.”

  Lyle’s broad grin widened. “Good, good. Let me show you some lovely models. Tell me a little bit about what you want to do with it, and we’ll see what we can do for you.”

  Alex followed him to the case along the far wall, and I listened with half an ear while Lyle asked what he was looking for. The rest of my attention focused on the Nikon D3 seducing me from a narrow glass case where it sat like a jewel in a crown. Which, in my opinion, it was. It might as well have been a diamond or a ruby for the price, and for how unlikely it was I’d ever be able to afford it. I stared at it longingly as I tried to convince myself it wouldn’t really take better pictures, and I’d be so afraid of breaking or losing it I’d never take it out of the box.

  I wasn’t convinced, but then I’d never been very good at making myself believe I didn’t want something when I knew I did.

  “Olivia? What do you think of this one?” Alex held up a simple point-and-shoot digital camera. “It’s waterproof. And takes video.”

  If Lyle had suggested it, that meant the camera was a good choice for the buyer. Lyle never tried to upsell just because he could. I nodded and crossed to take a closer look.

  “It’s great.”

  “Mr. Cullen says it’s good for taking to the beach or skii
ng,” Alex said, and held the camera up to look at the view screen. “Smile.”

  I’m used to being on the other side of the lens, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to strike a pose. I flashed him a grin, a finger beneath my chin. He laughed at the picture he took and showed me. It wasn’t half-bad.

  “I’ll take it.”

  “Very good, very good. Let me get you one from the back,” Lyle said. “And for you, Olivia? Anything today? The D3 maybe?”

  He knew of my lust for the D3, knew I couldn’t possibly afford it, but he never failed to ask.

  “You’re tempting me, Lyle. But not today.”

  “What’s the D3?” Alex asked when Lyle ducked into the back room to get his purchase.

  “C’mere.” I showed him. “It’s gorgeous, huh?”

  He left a beat of silence, proving he didn’t see the difference between my dream camera and any other, before answering. “Sure.”

  I laughed. “It’s a nice camera. Top of the line. Too rich for my bank account, though.”

  “Ah. It’s a sell-your-firstborn sort of thing, huh?”

  I hesitated, thinking of my firstborn. “No. Not that. Maybe I could sell a kidney, though.”

  Alex bent to peer into the case. “How much is it?”

  “Too much,” I said as Lyle came back.

  Alex paid for his camera, along with a bunch of accessories, a case, an extra battery, a car charger, an SD memory card. He tricked that camera out like a show pony, and watching him, I couldn’t even envy the money he was dropping as if it really was nothing. His excitement about the new toy was infectious. He started taking pictures as soon as we left the store.

  He posed me in front of the car. He stood with an arm around my shoulders and held the camera at arm’s length to take both of us—and laughed when the shot cut off the top of his head. He took a picture of me in the driver’s seat, and one of himself in the passenger seat, and then he took an accidental picture of his crotch.

  “Another one for the fridge,” I said when he showed it to me. “Wow. I can’t imagine not having a camera.”

  “I can’t imagine you without one.”

  By the time we got home, Alex had already taken about fifty shots—of me, of the car, of the scenery. Of himself. Most of them were blurred and only a few were any good, but he had a great time. He cornered me against the car again when we got home, this time taking a picture of us in which both of our heads were cut off.

  “Maybe I should leave this to you,” he said.

  “You’ll get better.”

  Hand in hand we went to the back door, where a plastic bin that hadn’t been there before waited. I recognized it right away because I’d been with Patrick when he bought the set at Costco. I let go of Alex’s hand and bent to touch the top.

  “What the hell?”

  I opened it. A pair of gloves, a scarf. My small bag of earplugs. A sleep T-shirt. Balderdash, the board game I’d taken to share at the New Year’s party. There was nothing I couldn’t have lived without. I moved aside a box of crackers, and my heart twisted.

  Patrick had sent back the photo I’d taken of him and Teddy. This was bad. Worse than bad. Even if we made up, even if this moved behind us, he’d ruined the gift I’d chosen so carefully. I could never give it back to him and I could never keep it for myself. It would always remind us of the fight. It would have been better for him to just throw it away than return it.

  Alex’s hand squeezed my shoulder. “You okay?”

  I shook my head.

  He sighed and enfolded me in his arms. “He’s an asshole. Don’t let him do this to you.”

  No soft words or kisses could change the way I felt. I picked up the bin and dumped it in the large garbage can and shoved the lid down. Alex watched me silently.

  “Let’s go inside,” I said, subject closed.

  Chapter

  12

  I hadn’t gone without talking to Patrick for longer than a day or two since we’d made up after we broke up. Even when he went on vacation he called or text-messaged me, and when I went out of town I usually found time to check in with him, too. It had been weeks without a word, and then this. The return of everything that could possibly give me reason to see him again.

  Well, fuck him. I wasn’t going to put on a hair shirt and beat myself with a chain to get back in Patrick’s good graces. I had other things to occupy my time.

  I knew things were moving fast, but it was so easy to see Alex, to be with him, I wasn’t sure how to slow it down. We didn’t live together, exactly, but the doors between our apartments stayed open more often than not, with us going back and forth between. It showed me how easy it would be to convert the firehouse into one residence, an idea I’d tossed around briefly before realizing I didn’t have the cash for renovations, and the only way to get it would be by renting the downstairs unit.

  I had no reason not to be with him. He was funny. Sweet. He was a better cook, had better movie choices, was a killer at Monopoly. Every time I thought about pulling back, Alex did one more thing to bring me closer.

  “I can honestly say I have never made matchstick carrots.” Knife in hand, I sliced into the carrots on the chopping board and prayed I wouldn’t end up with matchsticked thumbs. “I usually just chop them into chunks.”

  “They need to be thin to cook in the right amount of time.” Alex eased in behind me, his hands on my hips, and nudged aside my hair to kiss the back of my neck.

  My nipples tightened at that simple touch, and I leaned back against him. His cheek rested along mine. His hands moved flat over my belly. We swayed a little to the music coming from his iPod speaker dock. This was the third night in a row he’d cooked me dinner, and I had no doubts it would be the third we’d end up making love for a few hours before falling into exhausted sleep. In my bed, though. No more futon.

  “Where’d you learn to do all this?” I gestured with the tip of the knife at the mess I’d made of the carrots.

  Alex put his hands over mine and guided them as he answered. We cut together, making perfect, thin slices. “It was learn to cook or starve.”

  I paused in cutting and turned in his arms to look up at his face. “Most guys settle for pizza and sandwiches.”

  Alex grimaced. “Yeah. Well, most guys live like pigs and dress like slobs. Besides, cooking someone a gourmet meal practically triples my chances of getting laid.”

  It didn’t escape me that he’d said someone and not “a woman.” Sarah’s advice rang in my head, but I pushed it aside. I pushed him aside, too, to grab my camera from its place on the dining-room table. I’d never be much of a chef, but I could take a mean picture.

  “Oh, no.” He laughed, holding up a hand that covered his face in the first shot I took. “I thought you were going to be my sous-chef.”

  “Too many cooks.”

  Point. Focus. Shoot.

  I caught him looking down, his smile tilted, his eyes half-closed. Alex shook his head and turned back to the cutting board to make the carrots into something beautiful. I tried my best to capture him doing it.

  He scooped up a handful of the carrots and tossed them into a sauté pan already sizzling with olive oil and garlic. He turned them deftly with a wooden spoon. The smell was incredible, and my mouth watered as my stomach rumbled.

  “I’m going to gain a hundred pounds.” I pulled up a chair to stand on to get a shot from overhead. Steam whirled around him and the light from the stove hood cast funky shadows on his face and hands.

  “I’ll just have to help you work it off.”

  “Uh-huh.” I hopped off the chair and kept my camera in the hand well away from spattering grease as I leaned in for a kiss. “How you gonna do that?”

  He laughed and eased the pan off the flames. Then he backed me along the kitchen cabinets, up the single step to the raised dining area, and into the basket chair I’d hung from a ceiling beam with a large, heavy chain.

  Wicker creaked as I sat. The thin cushion shifted
as I leaned against the curved back. Watching him. Laughing. I clutched the chair’s side with my empty hand and gripped my camera firmly with the other.

  “What are you doing?”

  He grinned and yanked the beanbag chair, most of its innards missing so it was flatter than it should be, toward my seat. When he knelt on it, my heart stuttered. I knew exactly what he meant to do.

  Wicker creaked again as Alex pulled my panties off and pushed my loose skirt up my thighs. He put a hand on each side of the chair. It moved freely under his grip, and so did I inside it. He nuzzled against my thighs, then deeper, finding my clit with his lips and tongue and rocking the chair so he didn’t have to move.

  I closed my eyes to give in to it, but opened them after only a few seconds of pleasure. This felt too good. All of it. Not just the sex, and not just the food. Everything about being with him.

  So I put my camera to my face. Focused. Snapped a shot of his head between my legs, and it blurred because of the way he rocked the chair. Alex looked up at the sound of the shutter, his mouth slack and wet, his eyes heavy lidded.

  Another picture taken, as I was. As I couldn’t help being. I saw his mouth and eyes, and he saw nothing but a camera where my face should have been.

  It felt safer that way.

  “Don’t stop,” I said.

  He bent again to nuzzle and suck, to lick and nibble. To fuck inside me with one finger, then two, then an impossible three that stretched me so I cried out and shook the camera. But I didn’t stop taking pictures.

  I didn’t mess with settings or shutter speeds, not when Alex’s mouth was working such magic on my cunt it was all I could do to look through the viewfinder. My finger twitched, snap, snap. When he turned to the side, I caught his profile.

  Eyes closed, mouth open. Pressed against me. Some of him inside me.

  I couldn’t keep my eyes open when I came. Orgasm blinded me, though my finger kept its place and my camera whirred. Pleasure burst inside me and all around. I said his name, then again, louder, as a second wave of climax ripped me up and scattered me, petals in a breeze.