By ten a.m., Kia had wasted four hours pretending to calculate costs and answer DMs at Sullivan’s kitchen island. She straightened. Her shoulders were stiff. Her hands were stiff. She slid off the stool. She should do a live stream. There were a dozen filters that would make her look fresh and relaxed.
“Fuck it.” She shoved her phone in her back pocket.
It must be nice to be Sullivan and do everything by hand or by mind. No social media. No pictures on the Mirepoix website. She wasn’t just a legacy owner; she was a slice of life before smartphones.
And Sullivan was at work. She wouldn’t be back until after midnight. Kia went upstairs and retrieved her old digital camera from a duffel bag under the bed. She checked the memory card. Still room for about a hundred photos. There’d been a time before cloud storage when you had to choose which photos to keep. You had to know what mattered. Her father rhapsodized about that time almost as much as he rhapsodized about the serendipity of life.
She wandered back downstairs and took several pictures of Sullivan’s kitchen, trying to capture the details that made it real. Then she wandered over to the two large nudes hung beside the fireplace. She studied them. Slightly larger than a real person. The paint strokes angular and rough and yet the whole picture was rounded, the rough edges somehow creating a smooth whole. She popped in her earbuds. Sibelius poured into her ears.
Then she set the digital camera on a bookshelf across the room from the paintings and pulled off her Kia Gourmazing T-shirt. She unbuttoned her jeans. Sullivan’s hands would be steady and certain as they unbuttoned her jeans, but Kia didnotget to think about Sullivan’s hands, which she would never feel unclasping her bra, never feel smoothing over her breasts or dipping inside—she didn’t get to think that way.
She stripped naked, set the timer for thirty-second bursts, and walked in front of the painting. Then she moved the camera and sat in the curve of the love seat, the velveteen fabric caressing her body. She tried not to pose, just to exist without reference to the camera.
Kullervocrescendoed in her earbuds.
Had Sullivan walked around the house naked before Kia moved in? Had she felt the soft upholstery against her bare thighs? Had a person gone down on her as she gripped the arm of the love seat?
Kia had told herself that she didn’t care that she and Gretchen only ever had sex a few times a year, and it was always disappointing. Lots of things were disappointing: broken timing belts and rain at a fair. She had been busy working on her art and her brand. But what would it be like to be naked on this couch with Sullivan on top of her, their legs intertwined, the constraints of the sofa teasing them with what they couldn’t quite have? What would itbe like if—
“Kia!” Sullivan’s voice broke through the fifth movement.
Kia’s earbuds jumped out of her ears as her brain exploded withWhat, why, how?
“You’re supposed to be at work.” Kia leapt up, which only made her feel more naked.
“I forgot the sage for the butternut squash risotto.” Sullivan wore her chef’s coat and clutched a bunch of sage. “And you’re supposed to be clothed in the house, although we didn’t explicitly say that because…” Sullivan looked around as though she’d seen something more distressing. “Are you with someone?”
“Of course not.”
Sullivan stood right next to the chair on which Kia had thrown her inside-out clothing.
“Whyare you naked in my living room?”
“It’sourliving room, and how could you forget sage in the butternut squash risotto?”
Sullivan stared at Kia’s face with the intensity of someone trying not to look down, and then she did, and she blushed a lovely pink, like rose petals on a wedding cake. She glued her eyes to the floor. She shook her head as if to say,How did I get myself into this?
“I was taking pictures.”
“For Kia Gourmazing?” Sullivan looked up.
“No, for me. So when I’m ninety I can look at how hot I was.”And to remember I was real.
This time when Sullivan’s eyes found Kia’s body, they lingered. Did Sullivan want her to feel her gaze like a touch? If they were lovers, Sullivan would touch her there and there and there. She could not be turned on in Sullivan’s living room. She should tell Sullivan to look away. She should cover her breasts and pubes with her hands and make a grab at her clothing. But shewas already naked, and already turned on, and Sullivan looked more amused than distraught, so Kia pulled her shoulders back to accentuate her breasts and sashayed across the room. Sullivan didn’t like her like that, but that didn’t mean Kia wasn’t hot. She’d eaten enough tursnickens to give her curves she hadn’t had when they were in school. What queer woman wouldn’t want to look? She brushed past Sullivan and picked up her clothing.
“You’ve seen naked women before.” Kia gave Sullivan an innocent look. “Pretend we’re in the locker room.”
“I’ve never changed in a locker room.”
Sullivan had never changed in a locker room?
“Even I’ve changed in a locker room.”
“I like exercising outdoors. Locker rooms smell funny, and it’s weird that you can’t even show your nipples through your shirt, but then you’re going to get naked with a bunch of people you don’t know.”
“Is it better if you know them?”
They were actually having this conversation. With Kia naked and Sullivan clutching sage. Then they were both laughing.
