Page 10 of Picture Us

“Your place or mine?” she winked.

Rose giggled. But her joy quickly turned to a groan as she thought about the hundreds of photos sitting on her SD Cards.

Plus, she wasn’t really in the mood to nurse Shannon to bed.

Shannon groaned back at her. “You want to go home by yourself?”

“Would that be terrible?” Rose questioned, trying to catch Shannon’s clearly disappointed gaze.

With a shrug, Shan cleared her throat. “Nah, that’s cool. I should get some stuff done early, anyway.”

Rose nodded. “Thanks, I just have a lot of work to get finished, and I don’t want to be a bore.”

They said their goodbyes, and Rose hopped into her cab. There was no world in which she was taking the hour-long train at 2 am back to Bushwick. She’d rather pay the exorbitant ride-share fees and get home in twenty minutes.

“Hi, how are you?” Rose greeted the driver as she buckled her seatbelt and took a deep breath. She waved to Shan who stood on the sidewalk, scrolling her phone.

Am I a dick?Rose couldn’t help but wonder as the car sped away toward the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. She tried to clear her head as she watched the streetlights pass.

But all she could think about was how she had to see Drew again tomorrow morning to go over the project.

Before her mind could get too carried away, the car came to a stop in front of her building.

“Thank you!” She said as she hopped out of the car and bounded up the stairs to her apartment. She quickly tipped the driver and pushed her phone into her pocket.

After the endless day she’d had, her apartment was a sight for sore eyes. Leaning against the door as she took her shoes off, Rose let her head lightly tap the cool metal. She was beyond exhausted.

Grabbing a pint of ice cream from the freezer, she plopped down on her couch and queued When Harry Met Sally on her TV. She set the movie to restart and cracked open her laptop, settling in for a long night of work.

But the photos could wait just a minute. She never missed the opening scene. As the older couple appeared on screen, telling their love story, Rose began muttering the words under her breath.

Her eyes were glued to the screen as Meg Ryan’s crappy yellow car rolled up to Harry as he made out with her college sweetheart. She smiled along as the meet-cute ensued.

After the first twenty minutes, Rose finally took a look at the images of Ellen and Finley’s engagement on her desktop.

She couldn’t help but smile at her beautiful friends. But as she scrolled through the image, she groaned. “How are they in almost every shot?”

Sure enough as Rose paged through the photos, Drew appeared in almost every single one. Rose knew this meant hours of work shopping them out to make the images perfect.

I have to see them in the morning, so I have to fix at least a few of these.

Rose got to work correcting the images, tracing out Drew’s tall figure. She drew around their slight curves, usually hidden by the fit of their clothes. Somehow, Drew’s shirts still fit perfectly around their strained biceps despite being looser on the rest of their body.

Her eyes worked their way down from Drew’s shoulder to their biceps to their forearms. A deep line carved from Drew’s elbow to their wrist where the muscles were more defined from years of holding up a camera.

Rose gulped down the tingling that rose in her throat. She rolled her eyes at herself, annoyed at her body’s response to Drew’s.

They’re an asshole. That’s not hot.

Shaking her head, Rose moved on to the next picture. She hoped to find something less salacious but instead found Drew getting down into a deep squat to capture the couple as they walked down the long aisle of roses.

Maybe it is…

Rose slammed her laptop closed and clicked pause on Nora Ephron’s masterpiece. Her head turned slightly toward her messy bed. It had been a minute since she and Shannon hooked up; maybe her body was just desperate for touch.

She stood faster than she meant to and nearly jogged to her plush mattress and pristine white sheets.

Sliding open the drawer of her antique nightstand, Rose grabbed her trusty rabbit toy and pulled off her thong. As she gripped the lace in her hands, she could tell that she had been excited for a while; her pleasure had stained the panties.

---