“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-Daz 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?”
“The surfing, mainly.”
She paused. “Shit, what time is it?”