The chair creaked.
My wrist cramped from the camera’s weight, my fingers holding it in a death grip. I eased it free and settled it gently on the end table next to the chair. Then I pulled Alex by the front of his shirt until I could kiss him.
“What would it take for you to drop that thing?”
He tasted of me, of my desire. I couldn’t tell if he was hard. I could reach between us, grab his cock and find out, but for now I slid my fingers through his hair.
“I’d drop a baby before I dropped my camera.”
He laughed. “That’s what I thought.”
We kissed, each kiss still new. Each felt it would always be new, after two weeks or two years, or two hundred. I knew it wouldn’t always be like this. Nothing ever was. But that’s how it felt.
“Does it turn you on?” he asked.
“What? You going down on me? Umm, hello, yes.”
Alex laughed again. Pulled away. “Taking pictures.”
I licked my mouth and tasted myself. I had no easy, ready answer. “Sometimes.”
His hands slid up my thighs and stayed there. He steadied the chair, kept it from rocking. “That time?”
I cupped his cheek. “It’s something I do…”
He shook his head a little. His shaggy bangs fell over an eye. I pushed them away.
“I mean, did taking those pictures, then, turn you on more than if I’d just been going down on you?”
I tried to see if he wanted me to say yes or no, but saw only myself reflected in his eyes. If the eyes are the body’s camera, I wondered what pictures Alex was taking of me.
“I don’t know.”
“I liked it,” he said.
“Did you?” I traced his ear, then both his brows. His lips. He opened his mouth to nip at my finger, and I laughed.
“It was fucking hot.”
I raised a brow and sat back a little in the creaky chair. “Oh, really?”
He nodded.
“Like that day…before. When you came the day Sarah was in my studio.”
“Yes. That day.”
“I never would’ve guessed.”
Alex smirked. “The hard-on didn’t give it away, huh?”
I kissed him. I wanted every word we ever said to each other to come between kisses. And I wanted not to be afraid of that.
“Let me take your picture, Alex.”
“Again?”
“Sit on that chair, there.” I pointed to a straight-backed chair in better shape than the one he’d been in that other day.
He looked over his shoulder, but didn’t hesitate. On his feet, on the seat, hand already at the button on his jeans. “Like this?”
“Just like that.”
He popped the button and unzipped to free his cock. If he hadn’t been hard when he was making me come with his mouth, he sure as hell was now. He shoved his jeans and his briefs down to his calves. His black T-shirt hugged his chest, and his cock, firmly held in his fist, brushed the hem of it.
“Push up your shirt.” I already had my camera to my face. “I want to see your belly.”
I’d used the camera as a barrier before. A shield. Watching him now through the small square of glass, I wasn’t separated from Alex but brought closer. Joined, somehow. A part of what he was doing in a way I hadn’t been when we fucked. Making a picture of him, I almost was him.
I moved behind him to get a shot of his perspective. “God, that’s fucking gorgeous.”
He grunted at my words. I took pictures. I moved around him as he fucked his fist.
It could’ve been porn, what we did. A closeup of his prick imprisoned by his fingers followed a shot of just his face. These pictures told an intimate and private story and yes, it was about sex, but it was about something else, too.
Trust.
I set the camera aside to kiss him and put my hand on his to help him along. He came in another minute. I was looking in his eyes when he did, and I had no trouble seeing what was inside them.
“I need to jump in the shower,” he said.
The timer on the oven went off. We pulled apart. He grabbed me for one more kiss, then went into my bathroom while I headed for the kitchen. My cell phone rang as I pulled a pan of something cheesy and delicious smelling out of the oven and set it on the stove.
I grabbed up my phone. “Hello?”
“Hello, Liv. Did you get the stuff I left for you?”
Patrick. My appetite fled. I cocked an ear, listening for the sound of the shower running. Alex wouldn’t be in there long.
“I threw it in the trash,” I said.
“I can’t believe you.” The coldness in his words seeped all the way through the phone and straight to my heart.
“Did you call just to bitch me out again?” I leaned against the counter.
Patrick’s laugh grated into shreds. “You’re fucking Alex Kennedy. Aren’t you?”
The floor dropped from beneath me. “What?”
“You are. I told Teddy it couldn’t be true. But it is, isn’t it? You really are. I can’t believe you, Olivia! I told you about him!”
“You told me he doesn’t like girls,” I hissed. “Well, guess what, Patrick. He does.”
“I told you he was trouble!”
“What’s your problem?” I said evenly. “That I’m fucking Alex? Or that I’m fucking anyone?”
Silence.
“I like him, Patrick. A lot.”
“Of course you do.” I could hear the sneer. “Everyone likes him. Everyone wants to get in his pants. He’s a slut. It’s what he does.”
The phone slipped in my suddenly sweaty palm. “It’s what you do, too.”
“That’s not the point,” Patrick snapped.
“What is?” The dinner smells that’d had my stomach rumbling minutes ago now turned it.
“I just can’t believe you’d go for him,” Patrick said in a low, hard voice. “For fuck’s sake, Liv, haven’t you learned your lesson?”
“What lesson is that? The one where I don’t fall in love with a gay man?”
More silence from us both. Patrick’s breathing turned sharp and short. Mine had, too.
“You don’t love him,” he said finally. “Jesus, Liv. You barely know him.”
“I’m not saying I do. I’m saying I could. You must think I could, or you wouldn’t be in such a frenzy.”
“I’m not in a frenzy. I just don’t want to see you making a mistake—”
“Like the one I made with you?”
Dead silence.
I hung up the phone.
“Babe?”
It was the first time Alex had used an endearment for me. It cemented how far this had gone. I turned to face him, wet from the shower, his hair rumpled and dripping and a towel hanging low on his hips.
“We need to talk.”
He nodded, as if he was expecting this. Every glimpse I’d had of what he was thinking disappeared, locked up tight behind those deep gray eyes. He ran a hand through his hair, slicking it back.
“Okay.”
My phone rang again. I turned it off without looking at who was calling. “It’s Patrick. I don’t want to talk to him.”
“Okay.”
I put the phone on the counter and crossed my arms over my stomach. That didn’t help the butterflies, but I kept them there anyway. The picture we were making needed a caption: “Argument Waiting” or something artsy like that.
I could do what Sarah had said. Frame my question like cropping a photo, already knowing the answer the way I knew which piece of the picture I wanted to keep and which to cut.
Knowing changed things. It had for me, and it would for him. I thought I could deal with knowing my current lover went both ways and had once slept with my ex. I didn’t know if Alex could.
“Olivia?” He didn’t move closer. Didn’t touch me. His gaze caught and held mine.
Asking him would show me if he’d lie or tell the truth. I thought of the past few weeks. Sex and movies and dinner and laughter.
I didn’t want to know if he would lie.
“It’s about that word,” I said. “You know, the one I said I wasn’t ready to use.”
Alex smiled, nice and slow. “Boyfriend?”
“That one.”
“What about it?”
I crooked a finger, and he moved closer. I touched his damp skin. “I think we should reconsider the option on it.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded and kissed him, breathed against his lips. “Yeah.”
Alex put his arms around me and pulled me close. “What about girlfriend? Is that okay, too?”
“So long as you’re not saying it with two snaps up.” I demonstrated, snapping my fingers over my head.
He gave me an odd look, his mouth parted as though words were about to come out, but I stopped him with another kiss. This one deepened. His hands started roaming.
“Dinner,” I said into the kiss.
“It’s just as good cold,” Alex said.
“So you didn’t tell him?” Sarah spoke from around a mouthful of nails. Perched high on top of the ladder, she wielded both a hammer and a nail gun. I’d stopped worrying about what would happen if she fell.
“No.” I was a little more worried about what might happen if she dropped something, since it would hit me right on the head.
Sarah shot another nail into the strip of wood, tacking up another inch of fabric. I held the ladder steady while she reached, pleating the material and adding another nail. She looked down at me.
“He told you he wouldn’t lie.”
“Everyone says they won’t lie,” I said. “And that’s not really the point, anyway, because I believe him. I just don’t want to know.”
Sarah climbed down the ladder and we moved it over a foot. “But you already know.”
“I know.”
She hammered another few pleats, curiously quiet. I’d expected a much, much bigger discussion about this.
Down the ladder, move it a foot, up again. We worked without much talk for a few minutes. The next time she came down, Sarah leaned on the ladder and didn’t head straight back up.
“You really like him, huh?”
“I do. Want a drink?”
She nodded and we both grabbed colas from the small fridge by my desk. I sipped mine, but Sarah guzzled hers with a lot of drama. She belched, pounding her chest.
“Nice one,” I said.
“Thanks.” She rolled the can in her palms, back and forth. “So…if you already know, why not just ask him? Doesn’t it bother you to know he fucked Patrick?”
I’d had a few days to digest the information, mull it over. Chew on it. I’d had time to crop it or blow it up, and I’d chosen cropping.
I shrugged. “I’m more upset at Patrick for doing it. It’s not like I was a virgin before I got together with Alex, Sarah. I know he had lovers. So did I.”
She snorted lightly. “I don’t think I could deal. Hanging out with someone who’d screwed someone I was screwing? I’m open-minded, but not that open.”
“Look at it this way. I don’t believe it will happen again.”
“You don’t?”
“Patrick wouldn’t be such a bitch about it, otherwise.” I laughed, not entirely lightly.
Sarah’s laugh was more genuine. “That’s the truth.”
We both drank the rest of our sodas and tossed the cans in the trash. I stopped to look around the room as Sarah climbed the ladder. It was really taking shape.
“Let me get a couple pictures of this. I want to make sure I have it properly documented.” I got my camera.
Sarah struck a pose. “La, la, la.”
I hadn’t yet deleted the photos from the last time I’d used the camera, and when I turned it on, the last shot showed in the view window. Alex and me, kissing, the angle odd and shadows deep, motion blurred. We could have been anyone.
I studied it. “Is it wrong of me to want this to work?”
Sarah got off the ladder and gave me one of her patented hugs. “No, bunny. Of course not.”
“Because…I really do.”
She gave me another squeeze. “Then you should probably tell him you know. It’s going to eat you up inside, otherwise. Worrying.”
I sighed. “Yeah. I know.”
Sarah grinned sympathetically. “If it makes it any easier for you, I think I might be in love with a guy who fucks women for money.”
“What? I didn’t even know you were dating anyone!”
“See?” she said. “Everyone’s got issues.”
Usually I didn’t mind working the late shift at Foto Folks. The mall closed at 9:00 p.m. in the off-holiday season and we stopped taking appointments and walk-ins at eight to make sure we were always finished by then. More people came in the evenings, which meant more clients, which meant more cash in pocket for me.
Tonight, though, I was restless. I hadn’t seen Alex since the night before, when he’d slept downstairs because he had to get up early for a meeting and didn’t want to wake me. My bed had been empty without him and I hadn’t slept well, anyway.
I’d woken to an early phone call from my mom—the annual birthday call. Sarah had already sent me an iTunes gift certificate. Cards from my brothers and dad had arrived in the mail over the past week, and I figured something would show up from my mom, too.
I wondered what Alex was planning.
Before I could find out, though, I had to get through one last hour of heavy makeup and fingertips to chins. Feather boas. I wondered if death by tiara was possible.
At last I was finished and had made a few nice tips, too. I raced home and followed the smell of garlic up the stairs to my apartment.
“You look good in my kitchen.” I hung my coat and hat on the hook as Alex appeared across the long living room. He wore the naked lady apron, though he wasn’t naked underneath it. Too bad.
“Happy Birthday.”
“Mmm, birthday kisses, the best kind.” We were schmoopy, we were mushy. We were the sort of couple I’d always wanted to be.
“How about birthday spankings?” Alex squeezed my ass.
“For you or for me?”
He laughed. “Your choice. It’s your birthday.”
“I’ll think about it.” I gave him a sly grin and let him rub up on me for a few more minutes.
“You got some packages, by the way. I put them on the chair.”
“Ooh, presents!” I found the boxes, one heavy one from Amazon.com and one much smaller with my mom’s return address on it.
I tore into the heavy one while Alex watched, and pulled out three hardcovers. It didn’t register at first, but then my eyes focused on the titles and I put the books back in the box and closed it.
“They’re from Patrick,” I said. “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the sequels.”
Alex looked at the box, now at my feet. “Good books.”
“He’s trying to butter me up. Also,” I said unkindly, “I already have those books, but they’re at his house. So he’s essentially just replacing what I already own because he hasn’t returned mine. He’ll send back a gift I gave him, but not something that belongs to me.”
My words dripped so much like acid they should’ve burned through the floor. Alex nudged the box with a toe. I frowned.
“Open the other one,” he said.
The box from my mother held a silver necklace. It was pretty, a Star of David with a heart in the center. I held it up to my throat and thought about if this was something I wanted to wear.
“Can you help me with the clasp?”
“Sure.” Alex went behind me and lifted my hair off my neck, then hooked the necklace in place.
It nestled just right in the hollow of my throat. I touched it. “How’s it look?”
“Pretty.”
I glanced up at him. “So…anything else for me to open?”
“Ah, my little greedy one.”
“That’s me.” No point in denying it. Anyone who says they don?
??t care about presents is full of crap.
“Dinner first,” he told me. “Presents after.”
I made a face, but dinner smelled too good to resist. He’d made lasagna, salad, garlic bread. He’d set my rickety table with a pretty cloth, flowers, my best china, which wasn’t expensive but nice. He’d even lit candles.
We talked and ate. We fed each other bites from our forks. We split a piece of Godiva Chocolate cheesecake. An hour passed, then half of another, and still we sat and ate and laughed without running out of things to say.
Alex’s eyes gleamed in the candlelight. “You have such a great smile.”
“All teeth.” I ran my tongue across them. “I spent a long time in braces.”
“I bet you looked cute.”
“Pffft. What about you? What were you like as a kid?”
His smile didn’t fade, but his gaze grew veiled. “I was an idiot as a kid.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
He shrugged and got up to clear plates. I didn’t pursue it. A month into a relationship isn’t all that long, no matter how long it felt. He’d avoided talk of his family before.
Together, we loaded the dishwasher and set the pans soaking in the sink. He blew a handful of bubbles at me. I tweaked his ass as I passed. And then, finally, he turned me around as I bent to shove some leftovers in the fridge, and kissed me.
“Ready for your present?”
“That wasn’t it?” I nibbled his chin.
“Nope.”
“You are grinning like a fool, Alex.”
He grinned even wider. “Come sit down.”
He led me by the hand to the couch and settled me on it. “Close your eyes.”
“Oh, this means it’s a good one.” I clapped and closed my eyes. I was grinning, too.
Getting presents is always so much better when they’re given by someone who knows how to do it just right. He teased me a little with the setup. Drew out the anticipation. And then, whispering, “Open your eyes,” Alex pressed something into my hands.
It was wrapped in pretty paper, tied with a ribbon and a bow. “Did you do this?”
“Yep.”
“You wrapped this?” I stroked the knife-sharp creases in the paper and the professionally tied ribbon. “Is there anything you don’t know how to do?”
“Open it.”
I started to ease off the fancy paper, not wanting to tear, but Alex shook his head with a sigh and forced my fingers to rip and shred. In moments it lay on the floor and a plain brown box sat in my lap. I lifted the tape holding the lid with my thumb and the cardboard popped open.