Page 8 of Naughty Nicky

“I get that. I mean when I was traveling, I spent so much time editing the photos I took. It made so much of what I was doing seem more fake. I lost the realness, I guess.”

I look back at her as she says it, and again, she has a sadness on her face. One that she tends to hide when she knows I am looking at her. One I would photograph because that sadness seems like the real Penelope not this fake one who puts on a smile all the time.

Not that I want to know more about her, but people fascinate me. They always have. I’ve liked standing on the sidelines and just people watching. Seeing the hundreds of emotions that cross people’s faces, seeing the loss or happiness or struggle that hits people when they think others aren’t looking.

I stop at the open door to my studio and hold out an arm, gesturing for her to walk in. “It’s kind of messy, wasn’t really expecting company.”

A look of awe takes over her face as she crosses the threshold. I have a few of my favorite portraits hung up on the walls. The rest are all either stacked in frames on a table pushed against the side of the wall or leaning against the walls.

I watch her as she carefully looks through the photographs, her face changing from excitement to sadness to pensiveness as she takes each one in.

I grab one of my cameras off the table and quickly snap a photo of her, then another. Penelope is beautiful in so manyways, something I never noticed about her when we were just kids, but now that she is an adult, I can see things I never would have seen before. And the joy that is on her face right now as she takes in my art is something I feel compelled to capture.

She doesn’t notice me taking her photos, and I’m glad for that. I don’t want her thinking of me as some kind of creep. It’s just in my blood to take photos of people. I do it more often than not.

“I love this one.”

I freeze and quickly set the camera down before making my way over to her to see the photograph she is looking at. It’s a picture of a homeless man on the streets of New York. He is probably somewhere in his late fifties, wrinkles giving his face stories of a life long-lived.

“That’s Jimmy,” I tell her. “He was homeless for fifteen years, but you would never be able to tell.”

And you can’t from the way his smile takes up the photo. The man is happy no matter what.

“Wow. I never would have guessed. I mean, most photos I see of the homeless are all depressing but this one…it just has so much light to it.”

I nod. “He was a character. He would always bring a smile to my face when I saw him. He was constantly cracking jokes and telling stories about his life. He was a great man.”

“What happened to him?”

“Cancer. He died last year after not being able to get the medical treatment he needed. Not that he wanted it. He always said that God would take him when the time was right. He believed it was God’s decision that he was homeless too. He was a man of God, and he was happy with his life. He never regretted anything that happened to him. He was a good man.”

“That’s so sad,” she says. “He seems so happy.”

“That he was.”

She frowns as she sets the framed photo down and moves through the room. She stops when she gets to the corner where I have an easel set up and canvases stacked in the corner too.

“You paint?”

I shrug. “Somewhat. Kind of a new hobby of mine.”

“Are you blushing?” She smiles at me. “A new hobby! How exciting!”

She goes to round the corner of the easel, and I grab her arm, pulling her back.

“You don’t want me to see?”

I shake my head. “Like I said it’s a new hobby.” I also don’t want her to see that that new hobby includes nude paintings.

She pries my hand off her arm. “Oh, come on. It can’t be that bad.”

Before I can stop her, she is rounding the easel and taking in the self-portrait I was in the middle of painting. I can feel my cheeks turning red, something that rarely happens to me. But I know what is on that easel. A pinned picture of me in the top corner that I took standing in the mirror. Me flexing my abs to get the Adonis look I was going for to paint the picture of myself.

I watch as her eyes go directly to it and bug out, a blush taking over her own cheeks as she takes in the photograph of my very naked form.

“I…ugh…I mean, you look great.”

I grab the canvas off the easel and set it down on the floor facing the wall. I don’t even know what to say to her, as she got a full-frontal view of my body and my cock.

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