Slip of the Tongue (18 page)

“Where to?” I ask when we’re getting on the elevator.

“Williamsburg.”

“Brooklyn,” I mutter under my breath. Another convert. “Great.”

“You look nice, by the way,” he says. “Stunning, really.”

The doors open. I shield my eyes against the light spilling into the small lobby. “Thank you.” My lipstick feels as thick as my wool coat. “I know you’re supposed to overdo it for the camera.”

“They’ll turn out nicely.” He holds the door open. “After you.”

We exit onto the sidewalk. Nathan and Ginger are on a small patch of grass in front of the building. Ginger whines when she sees me, pulling on her leash until Nathan introduces her to a tree trunk. She forgets all about me. I can’t think of anything new to say to him. I’d invite him again because I want him there, but he might think I’m expecting him to drop everything for me.

“We’ll get a cab to save time,” Finn says from the curb. I can’t tell if he’s pretending not to notice Nathan.

Nathan squints at me, at Finn, and a chill runs up my shins to my shoulders. He sticks his hand in his coat pocket. The collar is pulled up around his neck and makes his hair look almost black. If anyone’s going to speak up, it should be him. I already went out on a limb by inviting him and offering to change my plans. He made me promise to back off, to let him come to me.

“Sadie?” Finn asks, holding a taxi door open for me. “Coming?”

Nathan turns away. He might as well be a stranger.

I tighten the sash of my coat and get in the car.

FIFTEEN

The cab’s backseat TV blares a weather update. Finn was right—they’re predicting rain. I turn it off, and we ride to Brooklyn in silence. I insist on paying for the trip, but he won’t let me.

“I’ll add it to the bill,” he finally says the third time I shove cash at him. The taxi leaves us on a corner between two industrial buildings.

Finn slumps his camera bag on the sidewalk and unpacks it.

“We’re doing it here?” I ask. There’s a street sign, an overflowing garbage can, and a lot of chain-link fence.

“Around the corner,” he says. “This block is pretty quiet on the weekend, at least by New York standards. Not bad for a city with over eight million people.”

I wander down the sidewalk a little. There aren’t many people here for a reason. It’s ugly, gray slabs and bare trees. “I thought maybe we were going to a park or something,” I say.

“Maybe if this were an engagement shoot.” He’s right behind me, and I jump. “
AVEC
is edgy. Modern. A park would be too traditional.”

I sidestep a rotted Styrofoam container. “This is modern?”

He aims the camera at me but doesn’t take a picture. “Let me do my job. If you don’t like the pictures, we’ll go to a park.”

I sigh. “Deal.”

“Come.” He walks over to a pitted concrete wall tagged with graffiti. I edge toward him, making no secret of my hesitation. He takes my shoulders and positions me in front of it, facing the street. With a knuckle under my chin, he lifts my head, angling it an inch right, a millimeter left. His eyebrows are drawn with concentration. There’s nothing romantic about his touch, but no matter where my head goes, I can’t take my eyes off his face.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs.

“We haven’t done anything yet.”

He steps back. “Take off your coat.”

I slip it off, but there’s nowhere to put it. “I—”

“Ground. Toss it. Come on.”

Reluctantly, trying not to move my head, I heave it a few feet away so it’s out of the shot. I send my scarf along with it. That’s what dry cleaners are for, I suppose.

He’s already shooting, and I’m not even positioned yet. “Wait. Stop. What do you want me to do?”

“Just stand there. Don’t smile.”

Not smiling for a photo is harder than I realize. My face muscles twitch the more I try to keep still. I don’t know what the hell to do with my hands.

He lowers the camera. “Forget about the photo. Just look at me.”

I do. The sun is on top of us, and his eyes are stunningly green. “Good,” he says. “Just keep looking at me like that. Think about me.”

“Just a second.” I close my eyes and picture Finn the first time I saw him in the hallway, his white shirt, his sweat-dampened hair. I open my eyes again. Instead of modeling, I pretend I’m there to study him. To watch Finn in his element. He takes a picture and adjusts a few dials. I’m lost. I went years without a camera until I got a smartphone. Nathan’d cocked his head when I’d mentioned that on our third date, perplexed. Or was it our fourth? We’d been at a Mexican restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen, two margaritas deep.

“Freeze,” Nathan said out of nowhere from across the small, intimate table.

“What—”

“Un-uh. Don’t move an inch. Just stay as you are.” He took my picture. “I want one to show my dad. He doesn’t believe you’re the most beautiful girl in Manhattan.”

“Nathan.” I rolled my eyes, secretly hoping he believed all the compliments he gave me. I would learn, over time, that he did. Every one.

I didn’t find out until months later I had a guacamole smear on my cheek. When I’m being snobby about something like thread counts or coffee beans, Nathan whips out that picture, and we double over with laughter.

“What were you just thinking about?” Finn asks.

“What?” I blink and beat my eyelids like a strobe. Reality creeps back in. “I don’t know,” I lie. “Nothing in particular. Why?”

“Try to go back to that place. You weren’t smiling, but you looked . . . happy. It was perfect.”

It’s too late. The moment has passed.
Perfect
. Is there such a thing? I never believed there was until I met Nathan. My childhood was definitely flawed. My parents missed my fifteenth birthday because they lost track of time at a casino. As I blew out the candle on the cupcake my brother brought over, I wished for new parents. Perfect ones. It wasn’t the only time I made that wish.

“I’m just following your direction,” I tell Finn.

“Then you’re a natural.” He comes up and hands me the camera. On the playback screen, my eyes are slightly narrowed, my lips slack. I’m rosy-cheeked from the cold. He picks up my coat and pulls it around my shoulders. “Let’s move. This shade of gray is washing you out a little.”

I follow him, carefully cradling his machinery. I’m not sure if I like the photo. There’s too much emotion for it to be professional. I decide not to point that out just yet.

He stops in front of a red-brick wall. “This’ll work,” he says. “How do you feel?”

My breath fogs, but I’m not shivering. “Good.”

He rubs his hands up and down my biceps before kneading my shoulders. The strength in his long fingers is undeniable, even through the wool of my coat. Again, there’s nothing sexual about it, but my body warms, and not just from his hands. It’s nice to be worried about. Taken care of, even if it only lasts a couple seconds.

“Ready?” Finn slips my coat off and puts it down. “Lean against the wall.”

He takes the camera back and retreats without watching where he’s going. A couple in matching puffy coats almost mow him down. He doesn’t notice, snapping a picture, studying it, then coming back to me. He motions me off the wall and pulls my hair forward over my shoulders. He runs a few strands through his fingers, lays them against my dress. My scalp tingles, and the feel of him spreads down my neck, leaves my fingertips buzzing. A sensation between my legs makes me suck in a breath.

At that, he looks up. The wrinkles between his brows are deep. For a split second, he looks as though he’s forgotten we’re here to work. He wets his bottom lip. There’s heat in his eyes. I’ve seen it before, this intensity, the almost-pained frown on his face, though I can’t place exactly when he’s looked at me this way.

“Hello again,” I whisper.

His expression eases. “Hi.”

“You said that when we met. Why?”

“I told you,” he says. “I thought you were another neighbor.”

“Someone else in the building looks like me?”

He lifts my chin until the back of my head touches the brick. My throat is exposed. He leaves me there to take a picture that can’t be anywhere near professional. I right myself, and he doesn’t stop me, just studies my face. “Your eyes are mesmerizing right now. It’s like you’re wearing color contacts.”

“How do you know I’m not?”

He tilts his head. “You can smile now.”

During the next ten minutes, he’s all business. He gets close, squats, backs up, stands. He says things like “bend that leg” and “cross your arms” and “let’s try it without lipstick.”

It takes me a good few minutes to remove the grease from my lips.

He watches, laughing. “You look like you made out with a clown.” He asks for my cosmetic bag and dabs liquid foundation around my mouth with a sponge, his touch alone keeping me warm. I have nowhere to look but at him. His lips are bright pink like the tip of his nose. They’re parted, the bottom one begging to be nibbled. I wonder how cold his face and hands must be.

Finn leaves me there and moves to the middle of the street. He wants my coat on, then off, then over my shoulders. He’s visibly perturbed when he has to move for cars and takes it all very seriously. I like watching him work, knowing he’s studying me through his lens.

With a strike of lightning, he lowers his camera. We both look at the sky. A heavy, gray mass has gathered in the distance. “Shit. Let’s go back,” he says finally, packing up his things.

I quickly dress in my coat and scarf before requesting an Uber. Now that the session is over, I shudder a few times in a row, as if my body’s been holding it off. My cheeks ache. I roll my neck.

“You were great,” he says. “We definitely got something.”

I’m not so sure. I worry the pictures are too out there for the workplace. “Maybe we can try a few normal shots to be safe.”

He laughs from where he’s crouched. “You don’t trust me one bit, do you?”

“No, I do. I do,” I say too fast. “I so appreciate you doing this.”

The Uber arrives at the curb. Finn hoists his camera bag over his shoulder and gets the door. “Weather permitting, we can take a few simple photos by the plants near our building,” he says. “Just to ease your doubts about me.”

We slide into the backseat and say hello to the driver.

“It’s not that I doubt—”

“I’m teasing you.” He puts an arm around my shoulders and pulls me in. “Cold?”

I should back away. Once I have it, though, his warmth is impossible to reject and feels as necessary as taking a breath. “A little.”

He squeezes me to him. Moves his hand up and down my bicep. “You’re shivering.”

The driver looks at us in the rearview mirror. “You guys are a cute couple.”

“Thanks,” I say.

Finn arches an eyebrow, pleased—because she thinks we’re together, or because I didn’t correct her? I don’t even want to correct her. I’ve missed the look she’s giving us, the one a woman makes when she’s more envious than jealous. I get it all the time with Nathan. That feeling, coupled with the heater blasting from the front seat, leaves me slightly woozy.

We’re just like actors in a movie, I tell myself. After a few minutes, the urgency to get warm lessens, and the door opens to another less pressing, but still basic need. Because that’s how my arousal feels—essential. The more it’s ignored, the fiercer it grows. I snuggle into his side. All it takes is his hand on my upper thigh to invite an assault of graphic fantasies. Finn shoving me down on the backseat because he can’t control himself anymore. Thrusting his fingers under the hem of my dress to find me ready for him. The lower half of my body aches with sudden demands.

“Some of those photos were for me,” he whispers into my ear. He couldn’t have chosen a worse moment to tease me. My legs are jelly-like. “Does that make you mad?”

I check to see if the driver is paying attention. She must know I’m married. How can something so vital and concrete in my life be hidden? “What if I say yes?” I ask.

“I’ll delete them. If you’re sure it doesn’t . . . turn you on.”

I try not to pant. “Why would it?”

“Imagining me looking at them later.”

I turn my head. Our mouths are a breath apart. One more inch and they’ll touch. Again. Those lips are the color of sunburnt rock but whisper soft. I can’t stop the image of him looking at me, my exposed, white throat on his computer, his dick in a firm fist. It should disgust me. It makes my panties damp instead.

“No response necessary,” he says as the car pulls up to the curb. “I can read it on your face.”

He gets out like nothing’s changed, taking my elbow to help me from the seat. “Let’s try over there,” Finn suggests. A pair of trees in front of our building create a golden-brown canopy.

The chill in the air is electric. He can’t miss the threat of rain, but he gets his camera out anyway. This time, he doesn’t position or touch me. He just takes a few close-ups.

“We didn’t even need to leave the premises,” I joke.

Hiding behind the lens, he says, “Stop trying to destroy my creative vision.”

“Does that help you—
you know
? When you’re looking at them later, by yourself in the dark—are you thinking, ‘Oh, God, this one is so
artistic
’?”

He scolds me with a lifted brow. “Are you teasing me?”

The smile on my face is forced for the camera, so he can’t tell by my expression. “I—”

“I’m a grown man, not a teenager in my parents’ basement,” he says.
Click
. “I don’t get myself off in the dark unless I’m in bed.” More concerned with his work, he doesn’t make eye contact. “And the answer is no. I couldn’t give a fuck about the composition so long as I’m looking at you.”

I flush hot. He’s not being subtle. I’m not exactly discreet, either. Flirting with him feels good, though, like salve on a burn. “Let me at least put on some lipstick, then.”

“No. I like you without it.”

I’m about to say this isn’t about what he likes, lipstick is more professional, but I’m cut off by a rumble of thunder. Without warning, raindrops drum the top of my head. “I think that’s our cue.”