“Uh…” His words sent a tingle up my neck. “No.”
“Outrageous,” Theo teased in an exaggeratedly playful voice. “So much for safety first.”
For a moment, we just stood there, listening to the rain patter against the building.
“You know I’m just messing with you, right?” he added. “You’d have to treat me to dinner first, anyway, before I let you have me like that again.”
“That’s… good to know,” I replied, staring a hole into the air between us. The ease with which he said it made me forget for a moment why we were standing in a dark tower during a storm in the first place. The sound of the rain pattering against the walls grounded me again.Photography.That’s why we were here. “Shall we head upstairs before we miss our chance to take some good pictures?”
Without waiting for his reply, I set my left foot on the first step. I expected a snarky comment doubling down on everything being a joke, but Theo just silently followed me.
Our footsteps competed to see whose echo could reverberate the loudest through the clock tower. Walking in a circle for two minutes made me feel like I was becoming part of the ticking time itself. It left me breathless.
At the end of the staircase, we found another wooden door. I shone my flashlight against it and released the metal handle from its lock. The door swung open with a squeak louder than the rumbling outside.
The room behind it housed the clock, one of the features that defined our town’s skyline. Each wall contained a massive clock face, all four doubling as windows. The heavy rain pounded against them, suggesting that it might be difficult to get a clear shot from up here. A metal apparatus stretched from the ceiling to the floor in the middle of the room. Rods connected all four clock faces to ensure they showed the same time, but despite its impressive build, there was enough space around the apparatus to move freely. Even a small bench in the far corner offered some comfort to those who survived all the steps it took to get up here.
I propped the flashlight against the wall and aimed it up into the dome above us. Reflections off the metal up there amplified the effect, giving us something resembling a ceiling light. I took off my backpack, set it on the ground, and shed my jacket, hanging it on a nail in the wall that likely wasn’t meant as a hook but served well enough as one. Theo followed my example, throwing his jacket over the railing that shielded the apparatus from technically uneducated peasants like us. He lifted his arms, the hem of his dark blue wool sweater sliding up and pulling the black shirt he wore underneath with it, accidentally revealing his bare stomach and chest to me. His defined muscles and the faint dark hairs spreading across his skin, all leading toward a line in the middle that drew my eyes to his belly button, captured my attention entirely until his shirt slipped back down. I turned away, pretending I hadn’t seen anything.
“Now that I’m seeing the windows up close, I’m not sure we’ll get lucky,” I said, trying to shake off the image of what I had just seen as I wandered toward the clock face on my right. The waterclung to the glass, as if it were trying to mimic an aquarium on the outside.
“Apparently…” Theo said, stopping his sentence right there without any further explanation.
He scanned the clock face on the far side of me, moving his head up and down as he took in every single number as if they harbored some secret. After ten seconds, he let out a winning cheer. He pushed against the number six, and as if by magic, a panel clicked open, revealing a small hole directly below. It was just big enough to fit a lens through—exactly what we needed.
“Preparation is key, isn’t it?” He chuckled. “There should be one in each of them.” He jumped to the clock face on his right, searching for it, while I turned to the window behind me.
Lo and behold, there was a small handle in the same spot that allowed me to create a small opening. I leaned down and glanced through it. Despite the heavy rain, I could see surprisingly far without the glass in the way.
“Let’s get cooking before the storm passes,” I said, rushing to my backpack.
Two minutes later, we had set up our cameras, mine facing north and his facing south, to make the most of the situation.
“Would you mind if I took a look at how you framed yours?” Theo asked without taking his eyes off his viewfinder.
“Not at all.” I knelt on the floor and checked my frame again. I had positioned the town in the lower half with the lights of the streetlamps and houses glowing like stars. The upper half was filled with the nearly pitch-black sky.
Theo rushed over. I shifted to the side, keeping my finger on the shutter button. Before I could fully move out of his way, he came close, brushing his chest against my back as he brought his eye to the viewfinder. His legs fenced me in, offering some innocent warmth between friends while he checked the frame.
“It’s a good idea to split the picture in half,” Theo uttered, his breath creating a warm breeze compared to the cool air coming in through the small opening. “Do you think I could get away with zooming in on a detail? Or would that ruin my chances of getting a good shot of a lightning bolt?”
I raised my head to look at him, and in that moment, he lifted his head from the viewfinder and glanced down at me.
“As always,” I answered his question, “that depends on what you want to achieve.”
“Can you take a look at my image?”
“Sure,rookie,” I said, mimicking the way he had spoken to me at the wedding.
“Now we’re talking.” He got up and made his way over to his camera, adjusting the frame again with the knowledge he had gathered from looking through my lens.
I followed him, waiting patiently until he was done. The parts of my back that had just pressed into him suddenly felt much colder.
“Have a look,” he said, scooting to the side an inch, not enough for me to look through his viewfinder without pressing myself against him.
If I didn’t know any better—and I did; the way he positioned himself allowed him to keep his view close to what the camera was seeing—I would think he did this on purpose to get close to me.
A little hesitant, I scooted close, but once my left eye neared the camera, it was clear that I had no other choice but to brush up against him like we had a minute before.
