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“Why did you do it?”
Kit glanced up from the jumble of camera lens and accessories spread out before her on Jade’s kind-of-too-small-for-the-mess table. Jade couldn’t exactly say why it didn’t bother her, especially since the detritus routinely meant the table was unavailable for its intended purpose, which was to eat food on.
Except, she did know. It was right there in the word, routinely. Kit had been over so often in the past few months that wide swaths of the apartment were now dedicated to the clutter she brought with her. Most of the time whatever items Kit had brought along for the weekend or stretch of days made the trip back with her. But there were enough things left behind so that Jade could touch something in nearly every spot of her apartment that actually belonged to Kit.
And she loved it.
Gonna have to do something about that soon, she mused to herself, while she watched Kit ponder her question.
“You’re going to have to be more specific. Why did I do what?” she asked, tipping her chin back down as she attempted to twist an apparatus apart. The tip of her tongue slipped out as she applied more force; the objects refused to budge.
Jade tried not to let it distract her though the tips of her ears flushed anyway when she remembered the nature of her inquiry. She briefly considered dropping it or pivoting but a mixture of curiosity and intention had her staying the course.
“Why did you pose for those pictures?” she clarified, as casually as she could manage. She mentally braced herself for the barrage of teasing that was bound to accompany any answer Kit gave. Unless, of course, Kit answered with “what pictures?” in which case Jade would consider walking out into the harbor and dunking herself beneath the winter tides to cool off.
To her surprise, and relief, neither option came to fruition. Instead, Kit gave the pieces in her hand a final fruitless tug before setting them on the table. She sat back and blew out a short breath, pushing strands of hair out of her face.
“Oh. Well. It’s uh, kind of a long, funny, weird story?” Kit rubbed at her chin. “I was having a fight with my mom about something stupid.”
“That sounds pretty on brand for you two,” Jade interjected wryly. Kit rolled her eyes good-naturedly.
“Yeah, well, that’s not the weird part. The weird part is—ok wait. So, we had this fight because one of my classmates asked me to be part of this showcase at school and mom was all like ‘it’s not appropriate, you have to think about the family reputation, blah, blah.’ Which was ridiculous, it was for class, how fucking racy did she think it was gonna be? But anyway, she basically said I might as well pose for a porn magazine because at least they’d pay me well. So, I was like, fine I will.”
Jade nodded—that was more or less along the lines of what she had been expecting. She supposed the funny part was that after twenty years Sorsha hadn’t seemed to have learned that the quickest way to get Kit to do something was to insinuate you didn’t want her to do something. But what was the weird part?
“I texted Jerry, you remember Jerry, my dad’s agent? I figured he was probably skeevy enough to know about how you do that, because I wasn’t just going to like go and show up or whatever. And he started telling me, ‘oh, you should go to this magazine, that’s the one your mom was in when she was younger. It’d be a whole thing, I bet they’d jump at the chance.”
Jade blinked. That sounded like –
“Wait. Do you mean—”
“Yeah! My mother was in a porn magazine. When she was nineteen!”
Far in the back corner of Jade’s mind, tucked away with a host of other short-lived interests she had outgrown, was the memory of the teeny, tiny, small, insignificant, barely noticeable crush she had once had for Sorsha Tanthalos. Certainly nowhere near as intense or lingering as the one she had for Kit, but enough to have her stomach flip flopping in remembrance.
Don’t ask what magazine, she warned herself. Don’t even wonder.
Instead, she asked, “Did you tell Airk?”
“Yeah. He thought it was hilarious. Until I told him that he probably has the magazine in his collection.”
Side stepping that, Jade tried to judge Kit’s mood. “So. Were you … mad at Sorsha? For doing it?”
“For posing? No, who cares? I was pissed because it was yet another do as I say, not as I do, which was just so fucking typical of mom.”
“I mean, not that it’s an excuse but maybe she thought it was a mistake and didn’t want you to make the same one.”
“Yeah, my therapist said something like that. It’s fine, I’m not mad about it anymore. We actually ended up having a really good talk when she came over to apologize.”
Jade felt her eyebrows knit together. “Hang on. She apologized and you were cool, but you still went ahead with the pictures?” she asked, feeling like she was missing out on something important.
Kit laughed and moved from the table to sprawl alongside Jade on the couch, setting her head down into Jade’s lap.
“Yeah, so this is the weird part. While we were talking my mom started going on and on about this photographer who worked with this art magazine and if I wanted to, it could be something artistic and beautiful and affirming. And how what she regretted the most was how crass her pictures had been. How she had done it solely out of anger and not because she really wanted to. And it sounded really cool and great and really interesting and so I thought, yeah okay.”
“Huh.” Jade shuffled the information around and the picture that formed alternated between sweet, caring, and yeah, kind of weird.
“What made you ask?”
Even though Jade had been expecting the question, had been brooding on an answer ever since the proposition had first pulled up a chair in her brain and settled in several weeks prior, she froze with indecision. Was this a terrible idea? Maybe it was a terrible idea. Maybe she should think on it for a little bit longer.
If she thought about it any longer, she might actually explode.
“I was just wondering if… about how you … felt about it,” Jade began, and really regretted not having written out the entire concept ahead of time.
Kit squinted up. “About there being naked pictures of me?” she sussed. It was hard to tell if it was confusion coloring Kit’s tone or something else. But it wasn’t reproachment or anything like it, so Jade thought it safe to continue.
“About me having naked pictures of you,” she amended.
Confusion morphed into amusement and Kit reached up to bop the end of Jade’s nose. “Uh, well you were kinda the intended audience, even if it was wishful thinking at the time, so I feel pretty good about it?”
Jade felt a flush begin crawling up her neck towards her cheeks and still she pressed forward.
“Right, sure. But I mean …do you … is it …do you think it makes things a little … uneven? Between us?” she asked, trying to get the request to simply fall out of her mouth. The words, however, clung to the inside of her throat like determined mountain climbers.
Kit smirked and gave an exaggerated waggle of her eyebrows. “Well if you ever want to even the score so to speak, I am 100% on board.”
A relieved exhaled whooshed out of Jade as a little thrill went up her spine. “Okay, great. How about now?”
Kit’s eyes went suddenly wide, like a cartoon that had an anvil fall on its head. “Huh?”
Jade’s nerves fell away faster than they ever had on any field hockey pitch. Emboldened, she gave her own coy smile and stood up, gentle dislodging Kit from her lap.
“We don’t have anything else going on today, right?”
Walking backwards, she kept her eyes on Kit as she headed toward her bedroom—their bedroom. Maybe they hadn’t made it official or anything, but who were they kidding?
Kit continued to stare, half sat up on the couch. The only things moving were her eyes as they followed Jade’s progress across the room. Jade paused at the bedroom door.
“Don’t forget your camera.”
She slipped into the room with what she hoped was a graceful movement, immensely glad when the door hid the fact that she very nearly tripped over the shoes Kit had left laying out. When she reached the edge of the bed, she turned and cocked an ear toward the living room for any sign that Kit was following her.
There was silence for a few seconds, then a thump, and very quickly after, a crash.
“I’m okay!” came Kit’s voice, followed by the patter of footsteps. The door pushed open again and Kit peeked in, camera in hand and her own cheeks pinked.
“What happened?” Jade asked, as she sat back on the bed.
“I knocked a chair over,” Kit answered, shutting the door behind her. “You’re sure about this?” she questioned.
“Yes.”
“And it’s not like some guilt thing? Because it’s really not a problem for me.”
“It’s not a guilt thing. Though, these definitely are not ending up in a magazine,” Jade warned, without any heat behind it.
Kit still shook her head vehemently. “No, of course not. I would never.”
“I know. I trust you.”
“So. How uh… how do you want to do this?”
“You’re the photographer, right? Talk me through it.”
Kit fiddled with the camera trigger. “Yeah, okay. Um. Well, I want to make sure you’re comfortable first.”
Jade gave a soft laugh. “I mean, that’s kind of impossible around you,” she admitted.
Kit’s brows furrowed and Jade could all but feel the concern radiating off of her in one strong wave. “Wait, what? Why?”
Jade tipped her head to one side as she gazed over at the person who had caught and held her attention from the very first moment she had laid eyes on her.
“Dunno. It’s just that whenever I’m near you, it’s like …there’s a live wire running under my skin.” She reached up and toyed with the second button of her shirt as she tried to describe the sensation of being in Kit’s presence. Of having those brilliant blue eyes on her. The way Kit lingered, even when she wasn’t there.
Again, the words caught in her throat, but with the way Kit was watching every minute movement of Jade’s fingers, she found it easier to push them out. “And when you look at me, yeah like that, I can feel the sparks.” Jade bit her bottom lip and saw Kit swallow. “It’s always been like that.”
A dazed look came over Kit and her lips curved. “I think I know exactly what you mean.”
Jade pulled a leg onto the bed with her, folding it beneath her other thigh. “So. How do we start?”
“Right. Let me just check a few settings.” Kit lifted the camera to her face. Jade chuckled when she drew it back down almost immediately, frowning.
“The lens cap is on,” she pointed out.
Narrowing her eyes with faux indignation, Kit snapped the plastic cover off and tossed it over her shoulder. “Listen, art is a process, okay?”
“Of course,” Jade laughed, her chin lifting. She heard the click of the camera firing and shook her head. “I haven’t even done anything yet,” she objected.
“I love the way you look when you laugh,” Kit explained as she drifted closer. “I mean, I always love the way you look but when you laugh—” she paused, adjusting something on the camera before lifting it to her face again. “When you laugh, you’re like, ethereal. It takes my breath away.”
The sweet words had the effect of melting some of the bravado Jade had been drawing around herself like a mantle. Her belly warmed and tightened in a way that surprised her. She had always thought she’d find that kind of language cheesy and off-putting but, it turned out that like almost everything with Kit, she didn’t mind it one bit.
Still, the blushing damsel wasn’t quite the character she was trying to project. “Did your photographer try to seduce you, too?” she tried to tease as she slid the button free, hoping it looked as smooth as she had practiced.
Click. “Nah, she was like a million years old. She told me to pretend the camera was someone I wanted to see me like this.”
Jade slipped another button free and the sides of the already loose shirt began to hang slightly. Her mind went immediately to Kit’s response to her earlier question. Well, you were kinda the intended audience. “And did you?” she heard herself ask.
Kit peeked up over the camera, just the corner of her grin visible from behind it. “What do you think?”
Without any further prodding, Jade recalled the pictures in the magazine, the one she hadn’t looked at again since that first time, though it was carefully and almost reverently tucked away for the day when maybe it wouldn’t quite feel like she was holding lava in her hands. But the images themselves had been brightly and vividly etched into her memory. Especially the way Kit had gazed out from the pages, as if she had been looking directly at Jade.
Closing her eyes and letting out a long, slow breath, Jade undid another button and let the shirt fall back over her shoulders.
“Seems easy enough,” she murmured, and then waited for the click.
When it didn’t come, she started to open her eyes and heard Kit’s soft exhale of “wow” before she saw her simply standing in place, camera down by her chin.
A heady rush of satisfaction coursed through Jade at the reaction. “It’s not like you’ve never seen me in a bra before,” she poked, going for flirtatious as she brushed some of her curls back over her shoulder.
“Not that one,” Kit pointed out in a voice that instantly wiped away any remnants of indecision Jade had had when she had ordered the barely there mix of thin black straps and mesh.
Although—
“Do you want to see the rest?”
Kit made a sound somewhere between a whimper and an exhale. “I’m going to die.”
“Is that a no?”
“I’ll risk it.” Click.
Jade let her eyes stay on Kit as she let her hands fall to her waist and freed the button of her jeans. Click. Drew the zipper down slowly. Click. Tucked her thumbs into the sides and, with her heart suddenly pounding in her ears, pushed the denim down over her hips. Click. Past her thighs. Click. Drew her legs up to pull the fabric over her knees. Click, click, click.
When she finally felt her toes slip free and had tossed the jeans to the floor, she heard one more click followed immediately by a clunk and suddenly there was Kit, directly above her, crowding down to crush their lips together until Jade’s head spun. Kit’s hands trailed and stroked over every inch of exposed skin, setting every spark her eyes had stoked ablaze in an instant.
“What about the pictures?” Jade gasped when her mouth had a moment of freedom.
Kit shook her head. “Picture time is done,” she declared, before bending to kiss her again.
Jade felt the brush of Kit’s fingers against her inner thigh and thought yeah, picture time is done.
As Kit slumped against her and the white receded from her vision, Jade tilted her head back against the pillow and tried to catch her breath.
“I can’t feel my toes,” she announced.
She felt Kit shift beside her. “They’re still there,” she confirmed, a moment later.
“Oh good.”
There was a warm pressure against her chest and beneath her chin as Kit settled her head down, strands of her hair sticking slightly to the sweat that covered Jade.
“This is hands down the best photoshoot I’ve ever been a part of,” Kit stated.
Jade laughed, warm all over with joy. “Happy to help,” she replied, drawing in another satisfied inhalation. A single thought popped into the forefront of her brain. “Kit?”
“Hmmm?”
“Did you check that there was film in the camera?”
Pause. “Fuck.”
Laughing again, Jade rolled over and pinned Kit to the mattress. “That’s okay. We can do it again. I have it in red, too.”