His breath is like a thousand tiny lightning bolts connecting with my skin. I guide his head up so that his face is level withmine.
“I, um, I like you too. Alot.”
For a moment he just stares, and then he dips his head down to draw me into a deep, slowkiss.
“I’ll be right back,” he murmurs, after lifting his mouth frommine.
He gets up and heads out of the room, pausing to smile at me over his shoulder before he slips out of view. I hear the bathroom door shut. When he doesn’t return in the next few moments, I get up and wander out of the room. I left in the dark last time and didn’t get to take a look around theapartment.
It’s a decent sized place for one person. Aaron told me he worked as a corporate photographer for a bit between finishing photography school and starting the advertising program, so I guess that’s how he affords to live on his own. I walk into the living area and my attention is immediately drawn to the half dozen photos hanging on thewalls.
From the buildings in the background, they all look to have been taken somewhere in Europe. Aaron’s never mentioned travelling before, but I can tell right away that the photos were taken by him. The one closest to me shows a teenage girl leaning against the back railing of a streetcar, wind whipping the bright orange scarf around her neck into the air like a flame. Her eyes stare straight into the camera, pinning me in theirgaze.
I feel like I know her. The infectious invincibility of youth, the suffocating confusion of adolescence, the insatiable craving formoreof absolutely everything: all of it is present in the way she holds her chin propped in her hand, standing completely still as the people around her form a blurred scramble of shapes clamouring onto the tram. I want to stand beside her and tell her that I felt it too, that I understand, and that one day therewillbemore.
That’s how I know this is Aaron’s work. When he took my photos, he didn’t just capture what I looked like. He captured what I thought. He got inside my head and saw parts of me I didn’t even seemyself.
The other photos are all of people as well: two little boys with a soccer ball, an old woman with weather-beaten skin and glittering eyes, a bride with an enormous wedding dress and heavy makeup stepping into a car, staring at Aaron’s camera with frantic desperation in her face. I peer at each one, feeling all of their emotions as myown.
When Aaron still doesn’t reappear from the bathroom, I keep poking around the apartment. I chuckle to myself when I open his fridge and survey the contents: just a carton of milk and some kind of leftovers. Typical bachelor. There’s a closet in the entryway and I pull the door open, expecting to find a beanie collection I can make fun of himfor.
“Christina?” I hear Aaroncall.
As I take in what’s lining the walls of the closest, I can’t even find my voice toanswer.
