Vanilla. Megan Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ and Scott took picture after picture.

      “Good,” he said finally with another look at his camera. “That’s it. We’re done.”

      Back at the studio, Jack and I hugged goodbye. We exchanged numbers and promised to keep in touch. Scott made sure we both took postcards for his upcoming gallery show, which would, he promised, feature some of the pictures he’d taken today.

      “I’ll be there,” I promised.

      “You’d better,” Scott said and kissed me firmly on the mouth, then the cheek, and hugged me close to whisper in my ear, “I don’t see you often enough. You okay? What’s going on?”

      I shook my head. “Nothing.”

      He gave me a suspicious look. “Uh-huh.”

      I wasn’t going to tell him about Esteban, especially now that I’d been so unceremoniously dumped. “Really. I promise. I’ll see you at the gallery show.”

      “You’d better see me before that,” he told me, and I said I would, though I think we both knew it wasn’t likely.

      He gestured to me just before I left. “Look at this before you go.”

      He showed me the rest of the shots he’d taken. Even without editing, they were stunning. Anyone who didn’t know that Jack and I had been strangers at the start of the day would’ve thought we’d been lovers forever.

      “You’re beautiful,” Scott said, slow-clicking through a series of images. “Look at you.”

      I looked.

      I saw what he meant. Lines and curves and shadow. Tits and ass and lips and hair. There was beauty there, all right. But it was like looking at a picture of someone else. I was a stranger to myself. That woman in the photos was someone adored and cherished and worshipped, and that was no longer me.

7

      Funny how best friends just know when something’s wrong. I hadn’t talked to Alicia in weeks beyond a few texts, but that didn’t matter. The second I saw her number on my screen I answered, and within minutes we were laughing as much as we always had.

      “So, what’s new, what’s going on with you? Feels like I haven’t talked to you forever,” she said finally. “I got a Connex invite to Scott’s gallery show. I guess you’re going to be in it? Sexy pictures. Woo woo.”

      “If you’re into that sort of thing,” I said archly, as though Alicia hadn’t been my best friend forever and hadn’t gone with me on a late-night run to the hardware store to pick up laundry rope and carabiner clips for a booty call. “Weird he invited you, though.”

      “He probably invited everyone in the area, one of those blanket invitations. I can’t be there, unfortunately. I thought about it,” Alicia said. “My mom would love it if I came home. Can’t get the time off. Bummer.”

      “Well, shit,” I said. “That sucks.”

      “I know, I miss youuuuu,” she cooed. “When are you coming to Texas?”

      “It’s hot in Texas,” I told her.

      “The men are hot in Texas,” Alicia said. “You totally need to move out here with me. We can be roomies!”

      I’d lived with her already for a few months just after college. That our friendship had survived it was more a testimony to how nice and patient and forgiving Alicia is than anything else. Some people are not meant to live full-time with other human beings, and I’m one of them.

      “You know I can’t do that,” I said. “Where would I find a job as good as the one I have?”

      She sighed. “True. Lucky bitch. But you could come visit me, Elise. It would be fun. And I miss the hell out of your face. You get vacation time, don’t you?”

      “Sure. Oodles of it. Alex is a big fan of vacation.”

      We chatted a bit longer about when would be the best time for me to come out—not in the summer, I told her. Not until after William’s Bar Mitzvah, anyway, and in the fall, the days in Texas wouldn’t be so brutal. “I’m a wilting flower, you know.”

      “Oh, you,” she said with a laugh. “It’s not so bad. You stay inside, that’s all. Yay! I can’t wait! And neither can Jimmy.”

      I paused. “Who’s Jimmy?”

      “Guy I want you to meet.” I pictured her blinking innocently. “You’ll like him.”

      Alicia knew what I liked, so it was a good bet she was right. Still, the thought of it, of meeting some random dude she was trying to set me up with...hot cowboy or not, I wasn’t into it. “Alicia...”

      “It’s been ages,” she said immediately. That was the good and bad thing about besties. They always know what you’re trying to say even when you don’t say it. “Forget about him.”

      “I can’t.” I owned it at once. No sense in pretending otherwise, not with her. This girl had held my hair after too many shots of tequila. She’d given me her last tampon. She’d been there all through that delirious agony that had been my last real relationship, and she’d been there after, too.

      “Then get over him,” she said without hesitating. “He’s not worth it, Elise.”

      “I know he’s not.”

      “And you can’t help it anyway.” She sighed, sounding disgusted, but not with me. “Yeah, I know.”

      “I know you know.”

      Alicia’d had her own doomed love affair. She referred to him as Mr. Darcy the way I called mine George. Not their real names. Literary references, a code of sorts we’d invented in college to refer to boyfriends. Hers to Pride and Prejudice. Mine to Of Mice and Men.

      “Have you heard from Darcy?” I asked.

      Alicia snorted. “Yes. Of course. Every few months, like a herpes outbreak.”

      “Oh, gross.”

      She laughed. “We had a real go-around the last time, a couple weeks ago. He had the nerve to ask me if I wanted to Facetime with him—”

      “No,” I interrupted. “Seriously? What the fuck?”

      “Right? He said he was, and I quote, ‘curious,’ about my life.” Alicia was silent for a second then sounded both angry and sad. “I told him I had no desire to have any kind of conversation with him anymore. I said it hurt too much to talk to him like we were casual acquaintances who’d barely meant anything to each other. He told me he didn’t mean to hurt me, but it wasn’t fair of me to get angry with him for making, and I quote again, a ‘good faith effort at reaching out.’”

      I groaned. “Clueless.”

      “Moron,” she agreed, sounding more sad than angry this time. “I told him that I was sure he didn’t mean to hurt me, but neither does a door СКАЧАТЬ