Chapter 6 I Needed to Know You
MATT
Later that week, in the dark room, I studied the negatives.
I couldn’t fully make out Grace’s expression in one picture so I enlarged it to make a print.
When the image began to appear, I realized right away that instead of looking into the camera lens, Grace was looking down at me, adoringly.
It made me smile the entire time I was in the lab that day.
I took the print after it dried and waited for Grace on the steps outside of Senior House.
I removed a cigarette from behind my ear and lit it as I waited.
A minute later, Grace walked up, carrying her large cello case. “You want me to carry that for you?” I asked as I got to my feet.
“No, sit down. You got another one of those?” She pointed to the cigarette and then sat next to me on the steps.
It was late in the day but still warm. I had a T-shirt, jeans, and no shoes on.
She was wearing a white V-neck and cut-off Levis.
The skin on her legs was tan and smooth.
She held two fingers to her lips, reminding me again that she wanted a cigarette.
“I only have this one, but I can share.” I handed it to her and then held up the photograph I had developed that day. “Our first photo together.” At the bottom I had used a grease pen on the blank photo paper. I had written “BFFs” on it so that when it developed, it stayed white.
She laughed. “Best friends forever? Already?”
“Wishful thinking.” I shot her a big toothy grin.
“I love it. I will cherish it always. Thank you, Matt.”
“Did you practice a lot today?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m beat and hungry.”
“Daria can probably warm you up some fish sticks if you want.”
Grace scrunched her nose up. “Why does she always eat those? It’s so nasty.”
“Probably because they’re cheap.”
“Speaking of . . . on Wednesdays there’s a diner that I go to that serves free pancakes if you wear your pajamas. You feel like breakfast for dinner?”
I laughed. “Sounds good.”
She stood and stomped on the cigarette. “Cool, let’s get our jammies on.”
I put on flannel pajama bottoms but kept my white T-shirt on.
I slipped on giant slippers that gave me Sasquatch feet and walked over to Grace’s room.
I pushed the cracked door open and inhaled sharply.
She was in her underwear and bra, her back toward me.
I swallowed hard and tried to will myself to turn around and walk out before she saw me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the round curve of her perfect ass.
She had on white cotton panties with tiny flowers and a little ruffle at the top.
The material rode up on one cheek. I felt an urge to drop to my knees and bite her there.
My heart picked up and my dick twitched as I held my breath. Fuck!
Without noticing me, she lifted a pink T-shirt nightgown over her head and pulled it on. She turned to reveal white polka dots and a Hello Kitty logo on the front. I couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across my face.
She froze when she saw me. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Just a second,” I lied.
She glanced down at the front of my pants. I didn’t follow her gaze; I just tried very inconspicuously to adjust myself enough so that she wouldn’t notice what was going on down below.
“Oh.” She looked further down at my slippers. “Dude, those are so rad.”
I laughed, feeling a bit relieved that I wasn’t caught. “How far is this place?”
“We have to take the subway—it’s in Brooklyn.” By that point she was on the floor, tying the shoelaces on her blue Converse.
As she walked toward the door, my hand naturally fell to the small of her back. She stopped and turned toward me, her face just inches from mine. “Do you wanna bring your camera? It’s a pretty picture-worthy place.”
“Good idea.”
I went to my room, grabbed my camera, and then met her downstairs, where she was standing with a guy and a girl, also in pajamas. “Matthias, this is Tatiana. She plays the strings with me. And this is Brandon, her boyfriend.”
I hadn’t expected company, but I was excited to meet Grace’s friends.
Reaching out, I shook Tatiana’s hand first. She was wearing red footy pajamas and a baseball cap.
Although pretty in general, she looked plain standing next to Grace.
Brandon was wearing a typical pair of gray college sweats.
Brandon was on the short side, with dark cropped hair and frameless glasses.
We exchanged grins at our outfits and headed out the door.
The diner was a ’50s-throwback type of place, with shiny red booths and little jukebox stations at every table. Grace scooted into the booth first and began flipping through the song pages. “I love these things.”
Tatiana and Brandon sat across from us, almost on each other’s laps. Tatiana reached into her bag and pulled out a flask. “Bailey’s and rum for our vanilla shakes. It’s to die for.”
Grace and I made appreciative ooh-ing sounds.
“How long have you two been together?” I asked.
“Three weeks,” Brandon said, before leaning in to kiss Tatiana. I noticed that Grace watched them with intense interest.
I instinctively rested my hand on Grace’s bare thigh where her nightgown had ridden up.
She didn’t push me away but didn’t respond either.
When I moved my hand higher, she gestured to let her out of the booth.
She got up and danced toward the bathroom, singing along to James Brown’s “Please, Please, Please.”
“So, Brandon, what are you studying?”
“Music, but more on the recording and business side of things. You?”
“Photography.”
He pointed to the camera on the table. “I guess I should have figured that out.”
“It seems like you and Grace have been inseparable the last couple of days,” Tatiana said.
“She’s literally the only person I know here. I just moved to New York.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said with humor.
“Well, who wouldn’t want to be around her?”
“True.”
Once Grace returned, we filled up on pancakes and Bailey’s-spiked vanilla shakes while Grace sang along to every ’50s song she knew. Meanwhile, I studied her every movement, her little habits.
“You smell your food before you eat it,” I said with a laugh.
“What? No.” Her eyebrows squished together.
Tatiana laughed as well. “Yeah, she does. Just for a split second.”
“No, I don’t,” Grace protested.
“Trust me, it’s cute.” I winked at her.
“It’s embarrassing. I’ve done it since I was a toddler.”
I messed up the back of her hair. “I said it’s cute.”
She looked up at me, cheeks pink, and smiled.
On our way out of the diner, Tatiana and Brandon said their good-byes and then headed to a movie theater in the opposite direction.
“Your friends are nice,” I said.
“Yeah. They were all over each other tonight, huh? Good for them, I guess.”
“Wait, I have an idea before we get on the subway. I have color film in here,” I said, pointing to the camera around my neck.
“I want to try something.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her up a flight of concrete stairs to the subway overpass.
The traffic was fast on the street below us.
I led Grace to stand on one side of the overpass while I rigged my camera to the railing on the other side, using the strap.
Traffic lights shone behind her, silhouetting her.
The bottom of her pink nightgown fluttered delicately in the wind.
“I’m gonna set the timer and run over and stand with you.
Just look right at the camera and don’t move.
The shutter speed is really slow so the exposure is going to be long. Try to keep as still as you can.”
“What are you going for?” she asked as she watched me adjust the settings.
“The traffic lights will be out of focus behind us because they’re moving, but if we stay really still, we’ll be clear, along with the buildings in the background.
It should look really cool. The timer is ten seconds long; you’ll hear it ticking faster and faster until the shutter opens, and then that’s when we have to be really still. ”
“Okay, I’m ready.” Her legs were slightly parted, like she was about to start a jazz dance routine.
I pressed the button and ran to stand next to her.
Without looking over, I grabbed her hand in mine and focused on the camera lens.
As the timer sped up, I could sense that she was looking at me.
Right at the last second, I looked at her.
The shutter opened and I said, without moving my mouth, “Kee stil.” She giggled but continued staring up at me with wide eyes, watery from the wind.
Three seconds doesn’t seem like a long time, but when you’re gazing into someone’s eyes, it’s long enough to make a silent promise.
When the shutter closed, she let out a huge breath and started laughing. “That felt like forever.”
“Did it?” I said, still staring down at her. I could have looked at her like that all night.
On our way back to Senior House from the subway, we shared half a joint. “Did you have a lot of boyfriends in high school?”
“No. I didn’t have much time. I had to get a job right when I turned sixteen so I could get a car to drive my siblings to school.”
“Where’d you work?”
“The H?agen-Dazs in the mall.”
“Yum.”
“Well, at first it sucked because I gained, like, ten pounds, and then I got really sick after eating too much rum raisin. I couldn’t stomach the stuff after that.
I worked there for three years until I graduated from high school.
I still have a really big right bicep from scooping ice cream. I’m all lopsided.”
She made a muscle and held her arm up to me. I squeezed her tiny arm between my fingers before she pulled out of my grip. “Jerk.”
“Spaghetti arms.”
“I’m buff. Let me see yours.”
I made a muscle. Her small, delicate hand couldn’t even squeeze my arm. “Dude, that’s pretty impressive. What do you do?”
“I have one of those pull-up bars. That’s all I do, really. And I surfed a lot in L.A.”
“Do you miss it?”