She rushes the words out, but I take a beat to study her. “Do what?”
“The photo.”
“We are. I told you I’d post the next one.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She folds a knee under herself and faces me. “For so long, I’ve been going through the motions. But I’ve felt like a new person the past couple days. Reinvigorated, or maybe just invigorated for the first time.”
I lean my elbows on my knees and massage my face, frustrated. Because I know what she’s going to say, and it’ll be everything I want to hear.
Iwant her in front of my camera again.
I’vebeen sleeping for the last year, and she’s the only thing that’s made me feel awake.
“I want you to take my picture again,” she says. “That’s why I’m here.”
I can’t say no to her, and I can’t tell her that what I need in order to say yes isher. Completely, unequivocally, with no chance of her returning to her boyfriend or anyone else. I need her to be mine before I go down this path again. Halston has to get there on her own, though. I can’t, I won’t, make her choose me like I tried to with Sadie.
“Did I say something wrong?” she asks.
I look forward. A stoplight changes from red to green. A man steps off the curb, narrowly avoids getting hit by a taxi, and darts through traffic anyway. Are any of us really awake? Are we making decisions about our lives, or just letting things happen to us? Is that why we like art, why Halston needs it, because without it, we’d never feel anything out of the ordinary?
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” she asks. “If it’s about Rich . . . he won’t care. He won’t even know.”
“That’s not why. The affair I had, the husband found out. He hit me.”
“Rich wouldn’t never—”
“It didn’t even hurt, not compared to watching her leave with him.” I can’t look at Halston or I’ll give in. “Iwantedher, and Iwantyou. Iwantto photograph you. That’s the problem. When I found the journal, I thought about it for days, and now all I can think about is you. I might be, I don’t know, obsessed.”
She doesn’t respond. I don’t blame her. We sit that way a while. Even as skateboards wheel across concrete and down railings, as a woman loudly laments about work into a cell phone, as car horns blare, through all of it, I can hear her breathing.
“Your lunch break is over,” I say. I have no idea if it is, but it’s been at least an hour since she left her office. “I’ll put up the other photos tonight or tomorrow.”
“Tonight,” she says. “Please? Please.”
She gets up but doesn’t move right away. I stare at the ground until she leaves. I know when she does because she takes her body warmth with her, and it’s just now I realize how cold I am. I look up, and that’s when I see it. Today’s version of the red bra and hidden tattoo.
Her sheer tights have a thin, solid line running down the middle of the back. It starts somewhere under her skirt and ends inside her sweet, schoolgirl, buckled-up Mary Janes. Maybe the stripe extends along the arches of her feet, to her toes. It wasn’t on the front of the tights; I would’ve noticed when she walked up.
I can’t help wondering if she wore them for me . . . and I almost missed them.
9
Iwant to photograph you.
I thought about your journal for days.
All I can think about is you.
I unlock the door to Rich’s Tribeca apartment. Finn’s definition of obsession has been on repeat in my head since lunch. I’ve clung to many things in my life for comfort, but never a person. And I’ve never had anyone cling to me, or ask about my feelings out of simple curiosity, or tell me I’m talented.
And then there’s Rich.
“Dinner in an hour,” Rich says when I walk into the kitchen. He’s fresh from a run, seated on a stool at the island. With his eyes glued to his phone and his ear buds in, I’m not sure how he knows I’m here.
I dump my things on the counter. “Great,” I mutter. “I was just wondering the best way to waste a few hours of my life.”
