“Yeah, I wantyouto look at it.”
I didn’t understand his intentions at all, but I wanted this tragedy to end quickly. I followed his orders, my brow furrowing a lot more than it probably should have been.
“I’m going to count down from three. When I reach ‘one,’ I’d like you to look right at the lens.”
My frown deepened. “Okay?”
“Three… two… one!”
As I was told to do, I looked up. His camera shutter clicked. The flash blinded me, leaving only a white streak in my vision for a few seconds before his outline slowly reappeared.
He lowered his camera and stared at the small screen on the back. His mouth, now illuminated by the screen, slowly turned into a smile. “I think we’ve already got it.”
“That’s fantastic,” the columnist said, stepping into the light, not even questioning how improbable it was to get the perfect shot on the first try. She rushed past me. “Shall we then move to a more comfortable space for the interview?”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I blurted out. “I want to see the picture first. You agreed not to print anything I didn’t sign off on.”
The columnist stopped in her tracks and inhaled deeply. “Of course,” she said through clenched teeth as she turned around to Theo, swinging her arms so wide that, for a second, it looked like she was about to throw her notepad at me if I asked for even one more shot.
Placing the picture on the floor, I rushed toward Theo too.
“Let me just…” He stepped into the darkness as if trying to escape us both.
“Sure,” the columnist announced, turning to me as if she was instructed to ward me off, so he could run with the file to the printing press. “Let’s give him a minute.”
“It won’t take that long,” Theo yelled from the far side of the gallery. He pushed the curtain aside, finally letting some daylight back in. The sky behind the windows was overcast, but it was still bright enough to see what was going on.
He crouched down, removed the memory card from his camera, pulled a silver laptop out of his equipment bag, and opened it. The card ended up in a built-in slot, and his camera around his shoulder. After clicking a few times on the trackpad, he jumped up and rushed back to us.
“It’s not the final edit, but that’s the gist of it.” He turned the laptop around to reveal a black-and-white close-up of my face. The frown I had made when I questioned his idea was clearly visible. Surprisingly, though, it didn’t make me look old or grumpy; it made me look solemn. I gave off serious dad vibes that I didn’t even know I had. The true kicker of the portrait, though, was the picture I had held in my hand. The canvas itself wasn’t visible, but my pupils reflected the tornado as if Theo had caught me staring at the monstrosity in real life.
Damn. Who would’ve thought?He was the first person to ever take a picture of me that I genuinely liked. He didn’t hide the age that bothered me in every other photograph of me—because I only ever saw it in pictures, never in the mirror—he embraced it. It was breathtaking. The guy in the photo looked like the still-fuckable man I wanted to see myself as; he looked like the serious photographer people said I was. This was how I actually saw myself but could never capture in a self-portrait.
“I can also show you the colored version, but I think this fits your style better, Brian.”
“Yes, let’s see it in color.” The columnist motioned her hands toward him, and Theo immediately obliged, turning his laptop around so he could click the necessary buttons.
“It has to be in black and white,” I said without even needing to consider the other option. “That’s what his vision was, and I approve it.”
“Well,that’swhat I like to hear,” the columnist said, clapping her hands together to mark the end of this short but strenuous part of the journey.
Theo looked up from his laptop. Our eyes met, and we held each other’s gaze for a second too long.
“Good job,” I managed to say.
“Thanks.” He still held my gaze, the corners of his mouth slightly lifted. “Glad to hear you like it.”
I should have asked him for his contact info or at least his last name, so I could look him up online later. If the columnist hadn’t been standing right behind us, tapping her foot as she waited for me to move on so she could meet her deadline, I might’ve had the courage to do that. Instead, I broke our eye contact with an approving nod and turned around.
That’s just the guy I was: not afraid to take pictures of a tornado only a hundred feet away, but too scared to ask for someone’s number.
Three hours later,I flopped onto my bed. The sun had set, turning the windows into a black canvas that now reflected parts of my bedroom. The orange light from my nightstand cast long shadows across the little ridges of the wood-chip ceiling, making it look as if the entire roof were streaked with holes that could never keep out the rain pelting the house.
Theo’s face was still lingering in my mind. I hadn’t seen the guy before and likely never would again, but it would be foolish not to admit that I was more than interested in him. How did he manage to take a picture on the first try when I couldn’t manage it even after a hundred? I looked so freaking sexy in it that he must have actually wanted to see me like that. You can’t portray what you can’t see. And it was fair to say that no straight guy would ever look at another man that way.
During the never-ending interview, he stuck around and took more pictures that they will either send me for approval or not. I wish I could’ve taken a picture of him instead, one that I could stare at now to mourn the fact that every single time I met someone interesting—not that it happened that often—I couldn’t get over myself enough to ask for their number. Ten years ago—no, come to think of it, it’s almost been twenty years since I turned twenty—it came so easily to me. All the people I met in college, all the guys I made out with at the parties. I could throw out a few sentences and be making out a few moments later. Now, all I could do was browse the apps, exchange short-lipped messages with blank profiles, and not really look at whoever came over as long as they had a decent dick and shoved it into me wherever they liked.
Maybe I’d just gotten too old for love. In just a few months, I would turn forty, and I was still single, ever since my last boyfriend, Nolan, and I broke up after nine years. Maybe if I had known how different the dating scene was now, I would have tried harder to make it work with him—although that would have been unfair to Nolan, since he wanted to move across the world, and I wanted to keep the life I knew. It certainly wasn’t his fault that everyone now only wants to come, drop a load, and leave, never to be seen again.
