Page 68 of Nine

“Cocky son of a bitch, aren’t you,” I joke.

“You like that side. I know you do.”

“In bedroom play, yes. Outside in real life, no.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll start by holding back at dinner tonight then.”

Dinnertime has become an extremely fun event. He tells me all the nasty and vulgar things he wants to do to me while we eat, and then we time how long it takes me to get turned on. We beat record time last night at five minutes. It’s a new game we both enjoy.

“Wait! I didn’t say you needed to pull back. I was just pointing out the obvious.”

He nods proudly.

“See? You like that shit.”

“I might,” I tease.

Trig leans down and kisses me.

“I love to see you smile,” he says. “You’ve been doing a lot of that lately.”

“You should blame it on this stupid little thing called happiness. Who knew, right?”

“I think you just implied that I make you happy, and if so that means you also paid me a compliment.”

I roll my eyes.

“Stop. I give you compliments all the time.”

Trig laughs.

“Like what?”

“Like…stuff,” I say, struggling to come up with one exact comment.

“See?” Trig points at me.

We both start laughing. He shakes his head at me. The sun starts to beat down harder, so we walk over and sit down in the grass underneath a shady tree. I set the camera down on my lap.

“You never told me what got you into photography.”

“I took a few classes in high school. I liked it. It didn’t really feel like hard work when I did it. It actually relaxed me. That’s basically it. Initially I started doing parties for friends and then neighbors, and after a while, everybody was hiring me for something. The events got bigger and the money increased and I just kept on doing it.”

“Sometimes I wonder what I would have become under different circumstances. Most young girls get their first job at a fast food place or a department store in a mall. I’d like to think I might have worked at the M.A.C. makeup store or inside Macy’s at the perfume counter.”

“Or maybe you’d be a sexy little librarian at a public library.”

I laugh. “Have you ever seen me read? I mean, really.”

“No. I don’t read either, but if the librarian looked like you, I’d be in there every day reading thick-ass books just to check you out.”

“Aw. The stalker type.”

“Hell yeah. I would stalk the hell out of you.”

I grin. He smiles briefly and then he looks around.

“Okay that’s enough chit chat. You won’t learn anything by sitting on your ass, so let’s go. I see at least twenty kids around. Over there some woman is walking her dog. Across the way, I see cars moving fast on the road. These are what I want you to shoot. If you can catch a fantastic picture while it’s in motion, the rest is a piece of cake to learn. Editing will always be a pain, but it’s the actual art that matters. It’s the timing. It’s the very second you capture an event on the camera and what emotion was happening behind it.”

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