“Oh. I don’t have a code or that face verification thing.”
When he doesn’t respond, I take a peek to my right and he’s just staring at me. “Are you serious?” he asks. “If anyone steals your phone you’re fucked.”
“If someone wants my phone that badly, then I figure they have the means to hack it anyway. Just open the damn text messages.”
He rolls his eyes, but does as I ask. “Uh… there’s a text here that says they will meet you by the pier in thirty minutes.”
“Perfect. We’ll be a little early, but I like to scope out places to take some different shots beforehand anyway.”
He puts the phone in the cupholder. “So, you just find random people on the internet, and they pay you to take photos of them.”
“Pretty much,” I tell him and shrug my shoulders.
“Isn’t that a little dangerous? You don’t even know these people.”
“How else am I supposed to build a clientele? I haven’t had a problem so far. I try to vet them before I meet up with them. It’s surprisingly easy to catch the scammers.”
“Mhmm. And what about this couple? The name Candy doesn’t exactly scream normal. It seems like it’s a stripper name.”
I scoff. “First of all, plenty of people have the name Candy. Second, what the fuck do you know about strippers? You’re a baby. Strippers shouldn’t even be on your radar. And thirdly, to answer your original question, I didn’t have time tovet this couple, but the woman seemed nice enough through her texts last night.”
“I’m technically an adult and I’ve actually been to a strip club where a girl's name was Candy. There’s no way it’s her real name. I would bet money on it. I would bet money on the fact that we’re probably going to get murdered today,” he says with a straight face.
I pull up to a parking spot near the pier and roll my eyes at him. “We aren’t getting murdered. I sent Penny and your mom the location, so they know where we’re at, plus the name of the couple we’re meeting. We’ll be just fine.” I pop open my door and reach for the lever to the trunk. “Let’s go, smartass.”
We grab my backpack, which has my camera and six different lenses, plus a sunshade, tripod, and the sandwiches, and we head down to the beach. The sun is out in full force so it will be helpful to have Kyle pack everything around.
With the little extra time we have, I walk us under the pier and then to the boardwalk to scope out some spots before we find a place in the sand to sit and eat our food. I pull out my mirrorless camera, a gift from my mom, and fiddle with the settings before putting my fifty-millimeter lens on it.
“So how did you get into photography?” Kyle asks, eyeing the camera while taking a huge bite of his club sandwich.
I hesitate for a second but then say, “I uh… well my mom was a photographer, and I was her shadow, I guess. I just kind of picked it up.”
He stays silent for a beat but nods, seemingly content with my answer. “Cool,” he says and drops the subject.
His sandwich is gone before I can pull mine out of the bag and take a bite, but he waits patiently while I work on the first half.
“Where are these people? They’re already late,” he says a few minutes later, looking at the time on his phone.
I look at time as well and he’s right, they’re ten minutes behind.
I wrap up the other half of my sandwich and then shoot a text to Candy.
We wait for the next fifteen minutes, and I almost call it quits until I hear, “Hey, hey, hey, chica!” The voice is attached to a bottle blonde who’s stumbling towards us in a hot pink, skin-tight tube dress, and matching platform heels. A Latino male, who looks to be at least fifteen years her senior, is following behind in an open Hawaiian shirt, white linen pants, and brown loafers.
“Oh shit,” I hear Kyle say from beside me. “He looks like he GTLs,” he whispers.
I look at him like he’s crazy. “What the fuck is GTL?”
“Gym, tan, laundry?”
My eyes widen as I look back at the couple. He’s right. The guy looks like he totally GTLs.
“We’re here!” she screeches, throwing her hands in the air like she’s at the club.
I turn on my professional mode and reach my hand out to shake hers. “I’m Jordan and this is Kyle, my assistant for the day.”
She throws her arms around me, pressing her sizable breasts into my chest, and rocks me back and forth in an uncomfortable hug. “You are just so cute,” she squeals.
