Slip of the Tongue Series: The Complete Boxed Set

by Hawkins, Jessica

  Nathan squints at me, at Finn, and a chill runs up my shins to my shoulders. He sticks his hand in his coat pocket. The collar is pulled up around his neck and makes his hair look almost black. If anyone’s going to speak up, it should be him. I already went out on a limb by inviting him and offering to change my plans. He made me promise to back off, to let him come to me.

  “Sadie?” Finn asks, holding a taxi door open for me. “Coming?”

  Nathan turns away. He might as well be a stranger.

  I tighten the sash of my coat and get in the car.

  FIFTEEN

  The cab’s backseat TV blares a weather update. Finn was right—they’re predicting rain. I turn it off, and we ride to Brooklyn in silence. I insist on paying for the trip, but he won’t let me.

  “I’ll add it to the bill,” he finally says the third time I shove cash at him. The taxi leaves us on a corner between two industrial buildings.

  Finn slumps his camera bag on the sidewalk and unpacks it.

  “We’re doing it here?” I ask. There’s a street sign, an overflowing garbage can, and a lot of chain-link fence.

  “Around the corner,” he says. “This block is pretty quiet on the weekend, at least by New York standards. Not bad for a city with over eight million people.”

  I wander down the sidewalk a little. There aren’t many people here for a reason. It’s ugly, gray slabs and bare trees. “I thought maybe we were going to a park or something,” I say.

  “Maybe if this were an engagement shoot.” He’s right behind me, and I jump. “AVEC is edgy. Modern. A park would be too traditional.”

  I sidestep a rotted Styrofoam container. “This is modern?”

  He aims the camera at me but doesn’t take a picture. “Let me do my job. If you don’t like the pictures, we’ll go to a park.”

  I sigh. “Deal.”

  “Come.” He walks over to a pitted concrete wall tagged with graffiti. I edge toward him, making no secret of my hesitation. He takes my shoulders and positions me in front of it, facing the street. With a knuckle under my chin, he lifts my head, angling it an inch right, a millimeter left. His eyebrows are drawn with concentration. There’s nothing romantic about his touch, but no matter where my head goes, I can’t take my eyes off his face.

  “Beautiful,” he murmurs.

  “We haven’t done anything yet.”

  He steps back. “Take off your coat.”

  I slip it off, but there’s nowhere to put it. “I—”

  “Ground. Toss it. Come on.”

  Reluctantly, trying not to move my head, I heave it a few feet away so it’s out of the shot. I send my scarf along with it. That’s what dry cleaners are for, I suppose.

  He’s already shooting, and I’m not even positioned yet. “Wait. Stop. What do you want me to do?”

  “Just stand there. Don’t smile.”

  Not smiling for a photo is harder than I realize. My face muscles twitch the more I try to keep still. I don’t know what the hell to do with my hands.

  He lowers the camera. “Forget about the photo. Just look at me.”

  I do. The sun is on top of us, and his eyes are stunningly green. “Good,” he says. “Just keep looking at me like that. Think about me.”

  “Just a second.” I close my eyes and picture Finn the first time I saw him in the hallway, his white shirt, his sweat-dampened hair. I open my eyes again. Instead of modeling, I pretend I’m there to study him. To watch Finn in his element. He takes a picture and adjusts a few dials. I’m lost. I went years without a camera until I got a smartphone. Nathan’d cocked his head when I’d mentioned that on our third date, perplexed. Or was it our fourth? We’d been at a Mexican restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen, two margaritas deep.

  “Freeze,” Nathan said out of nowhere from across the small, intimate table.

  “What—”

  “Un-uh. Don’t move an inch. Just stay as you are.” He took my picture. “I want one to show my dad. He doesn’t believe you’re the most beautiful girl in Manhattan.”

  “Nathan.” I rolled my eyes, secretly hoping he believed all the compliments he gave me. I would learn, over time, that he did. Every one.

  I didn’t find out until months later I had a guacamole smear on my cheek. When I’m being snobby about something like thread counts or coffee beans, Nathan whips out that picture, and we double over with laughter.

  “What were you just thinking about?” Finn asks.

  “What?” I blink and beat my eyelids like a strobe. Reality creeps back in. “I don’t know,” I lie. “Nothing in particular. Why?”

  “Try to go back to that place. You weren’t smiling, but you looked . . . happy. It was perfect.”

  It’s too late. The moment has passed. Perfect. Is there such a thing? I never believed there was until I met Nathan. My childhood was definitely flawed. My parents missed my fifteenth birthday because they lost track of time at a casino. As I blew out the candle on the cupcake my brother brought over, I wished for new parents. Perfect ones. It wasn’t the only time I made that wish.

  “I’m just following your direction,” I tell Finn.

  “Then you’re a natural.” He comes up and hands me the camera. On the playback screen, my eyes are slightly narrowed, my lips slack. I’m rosy-cheeked from the cold. He picks up my coat and pulls it around my shoulders. “Let’s move. This shade of gray is washing you out a little.”

  I follow him, carefully cradling his machinery. I’m not sure if I like the photo. There’s too much emotion for it to be professional. I decide not to point that out just yet.

  He stops in front of a red-brick wall. “This’ll work,” he says. “How do you feel?”

  My breath fogs, but I’m not shivering. “Good.”

  He rubs his hands up and down my biceps before kneading my shoulders. The strength in his long fingers is undeniable, even through the wool of my coat. Again, there’s nothing sexual about it, but my body warms, and not just from his hands. It’s nice to be worried about. Taken care of, even if it only lasts a couple seconds.

  “Ready?” Finn slips my coat off and puts it down. “Lean against the wall.”

  He takes the camera back and retreats without watching where he’s going. A couple in matching puffy coats almost mows him down. He doesn’t notice, snapping a picture, studying it, then coming back to me. He motions me off the wall and pulls my hair forward over my shoulders. He runs a few strands through his fingers, lays them against my dress. My scalp tingles, and the feel of him spreads down my neck, leaves my fingertips buzzing. A sensation between my legs makes me suck in a breath.

  At that, he looks up. The wrinkles between his brows are deep. For a split second, he looks as though he’s forgotten we’re here to work. He wets his bottom lip. There’s heat in his eyes. I’ve seen it before, this intensity, the almost-pained frown on his face, though I can’t place exactly when he’s looked at me this way.

  “Hello again,” I whisper.

  His expression eases. “Hi.”

  “You said that when we met. Why?”

  “I told you,” he says. “I thought you were another neighbor.”

  “Someone else in the building looks like me?”

  He lifts my chin until the back of my head touches the brick. My throat is exposed. He leaves me there to take a picture that can’t be anywhere near professional. I right myself, and he doesn’t stop me, just studies my face. “Your eyes are mesmerizing right now. It’s like you’re wearing color contacts.”

  “How do you know I’m not?”

  He tilts his head. “You can smile now.”

  During the next ten minutes, he’s all business. He gets close, squats, backs up, stands. He says things like “bend that leg” and “cross your arms” and “let’s try it without lipstick.”

  It takes me a good few minutes to remove the grease from my lips.

  He watches, laughing. “You look like you made out with a clown.” He asks for my cosmetic bag and dabs liquid foundat
ion around my mouth with a sponge, his touch alone keeping me warm. I have nowhere to look but at him. His lips are bright pink like the tip of his nose. They’re parted, the bottom one begging to be nibbled. I wonder how cold his face and hands must be.

  Finn leaves me there and moves to the middle of the street. He wants my coat on, then off, then over my shoulders. He’s visibly perturbed when he has to move for cars and takes it all very seriously. I like watching him work, knowing he’s studying me through his lens.

  With a strike of lightning, he lowers his camera. We both look at the sky. A heavy, gray mass has gathered in the distance. “Shit. Let’s go back,” he says finally, packing up his things.

  I quickly dress in my coat and scarf before requesting an Uber. Now that the session is over, I shudder a few times in a row, as if my body’s been holding it off. My cheeks ache. I roll my neck.

  “You were great,” he says. “We definitely got something.”

  I’m not so sure. I worry the pictures are too out there for the workplace. “Maybe we can try a few normal shots to be safe.”

  He laughs from where he’s crouched. “You don’t trust me one bit, do you?”

  “No, I do. I do,” I say too fast. “I so appreciate you doing this.”

  The Uber arrives at the curb. Finn hoists his camera bag over his shoulder and gets the door. “Weather permitting, we can take a few simple photos by the plants near our building,” he says. “Just to ease your doubts about me.”

  We slide into the backseat and say hello to the driver.

  “It’s not that I doubt—”

  “I’m teasing you.” He puts an arm around my shoulders and pulls me in. “Cold?”

  I should back away. Once I have it, though, his warmth is impossible to reject and feels as necessary as taking a breath. “A little.”

  He squeezes me to him. Moves his hand up and down my bicep. “You’re shivering.”

  The driver looks at us in the rearview mirror. “You guys are a cute couple.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  Finn arches an eyebrow, pleased—because she thinks we’re together, or because I didn’t correct her? I don’t even want to correct her. I’ve missed the look she’s giving us, the one a woman makes when she’s more envious than jealous. I get it all the time with Nathan. That feeling, coupled with the heater blasting from the front seat, leaves me slightly woozy.

  We’re just like actors in a movie, I tell myself. After a few minutes, the urgency to get warm lessens, and the door opens to another less pressing, but still basic need. Because that’s how my arousal feels—essential. The more it’s ignored, the fiercer it grows. I snuggle into his side. All it takes is his hand on my upper thigh to invite an assault of graphic fantasies. Finn shoving me down on the backseat because he can’t control himself anymore. Thrusting his fingers under the hem of my dress to find me ready for him. The lower half of my body aches with sudden demands.

  “Some of those photos were for me,” he whispers into my ear. He couldn’t have chosen a worse moment to tease me. My legs are jelly-like. “Does that make you mad?”

  I check to see if the driver is paying attention. She must know I’m married. How can something so vital and concrete in my life be hidden? “What if I say yes?” I ask.

  “I’ll delete them. If you’re sure it doesn’t . . . turn you on.”

  I try not to pant. “Why would it?”

  “Imagining me looking at them later.”

  I turn my head. Our mouths are a breath apart. One more inch and they’ll touch. Again. Those lips are the color of sunburnt rock but whisper soft. I can’t stop the image of him looking at me, my exposed, white throat on his computer, his dick in a firm fist. It should disgust me. It makes my panties damp instead.

  “No response necessary,” he says as the car pulls up to the curb. “I can read it on your face.”

  He gets out like nothing’s changed, taking my elbow to help me from the seat. “Let’s try over there,” Finn suggests. A pair of trees in front of our building create a golden-brown canopy.

  The chill in the air is electric. He can’t miss the threat of rain, but he gets his camera out anyway. This time, he doesn’t position or touch me. He just takes a few close-ups.

  “We didn’t even need to leave the premises,” I joke.

  Hiding behind the lens, he says, “Stop trying to destroy my creative vision.”

  “Does that help you—you know? When you’re looking at them later, by yourself in the dark—are you thinking, ‘Oh, God, this one is so artistic’?”

  He scolds me with a lifted brow. “Are you teasing me?”

  The smile on my face is forced for the camera, so he can’t tell by my expression. “I—”

  “I’m a grown man, not a teenager in my parents’ basement,” he says. Click. “I don’t get myself off in the dark unless I’m in bed.” More concerned with his work, he doesn’t make eye contact. “And the answer is no. I couldn’t give a fuck about the composition so long as I’m looking at you.”

  I flush hot. He’s not being subtle. I’m not exactly discreet, either. Flirting with him feels good, though, like salve on a burn. “Let me at least put on some lipstick, then.”

  “No. I like you without it.”

  I’m about to say this isn’t about what he likes, lipstick is more professional, but I’m cut off by a rumble of thunder. Without warning, raindrops drum the top of my head. “I think that’s our cue.”

  He doesn’t move. “Stay there.”

  “My hair—”

  “So what?” he asks. “We got what we needed. Don’t smile.”

  The rain falls harder, skipping right from drizzling to pouring. One minute it’s on top of me, and the next it’s sideways. He takes more pictures.

  “Your camera’s going to get ruined—”

  “Try not to react to the rain.” He gets close to my face. Moves some strands of hair that’ve stuck to my cheek. “I know it’s hard. Just let it happen to you.”

  I stand very still, my hands awkwardly stuck at my sides. I could never do something like this for a living. Not modeling, and not the photography side of it. I feel ridiculous, but Finn’s snapping away as though he’s struck gold.

  “You look—Jesus, Sadie. Fucking gorgeous.” The adoration in his eyes soothes the chill in my bones. I forget that I’m wearing expensive-as-fuck shoes in a mess of wet leaves and that my Chloé handbag is on the ground, getting soaked.

  “Really?” I ask.

  He looks affronted. “Are you kidding? You’re confident. Sexy. I wish you could see yourself through my lens.”

  I am confident. It’s only these last few months that’ve made me forget it. Finn doesn’t hide what he wants. He doesn’t play games. With him, I remember how it feels to be seen. Worshipped. I close my eyes and tilt my head up to the rain.

  “You’re killing me,” he mutters. “Always killing me. Turn around.”

  I trust Finn more now that my skin feels like my own again, so I do as he says and face the street.

  “Now look back at me.”

  I turn my head, touching my chin to my shoulder. My mascara must be smeared. Rain trickles under the neckline of my dress, gathering in the underwire of my bra. “Like this?”

  “This one look is enough to make a man come undone. To make a man forget his own name.” He shakes his head. “You’re telling me that’s not art? That doesn’t make you feel something?”

  I pinch my bottom lip between my teeth. Finn’s attention makes me feel a great deal of things. His craving is written on his face. It gives me back the power I lost months ago when Nathan stopped looking at me the way Finn is right now.

  Thunder cracks between us like a whip. We both jump. “We should go in,” he says, as if it’s just occurred to him.

  I gather my things as he snatches his camera bag off the ground, then holds the building door open and motions me to move faster. My heels sink into the soil, slowing me down.

  He laughs loud
enough for me to hear over the storm. “Just take them off,” he calls.

  I remove my nude pumps, cradle them in my arms, and run with bare feet through the grass to him. Inside, a man exits the elevator with an umbrella in hand. Finn sprints ahead to catch the doors.

  Finn scrubs his hands in his hair. “You must be freezing,” he says as we ride up to the sixth floor.

  I scrunch my nose. “I am.”

  “It’ll be worth it. You won’t even recognize yourself.”

  “I’m sure my boss will love that,” I say sardonically.

  His laugh is deep and throaty. “I’m talking about those last few. They’re not suitable for work.”

  My dress sticks to me everywhere. Until the doors open, the small space holds a noticeable charge, even though we’re out of the storm’s grasp. We walk briskly down the hall, dripping onto the threadbare carpet. He jingles his keys in his pocket until we reach his apartment. “This is the first time I’m grateful for my busted heater.” He unlocks the door, and we hurry inside. Warmth envelops us. I dump my purse and shoes in the entryway by his camera bag, and he hangs up my coat and scarf. “They should dry quickly,” he says as he disappears down the hall.

  It isn’t until I’m halfway into the living room that I stop and realize where I’m standing. Why did I come in here? There’s a heater, a shower, and a change of clothes waiting for me across the hall—but not much else.

  Finn returns and holds out a towel. I use it to squeeze excess water from my hair. “Finn—”

  He whips the sheet off the couch. A cloud of dust motes twinkles in the yellowed-gray afternoon light. “Sit,” he says. “We’ll take a look at what we got.”

  My body is loosening with the heat. I dry my collarbone and chest with the towel. “I should probably go home,” I say. “Get out of these clothes.”

  “Probably.” Neither of us makes a move. He removes his camera from around his neck and sets it carefully on his new coffee table. “I’ll make us a warm drink.”

  SIXTEEN

  Locked in the hallway bathroom of Finn’s apartment, I stare at the screen of my phone. There’s nothing there worth looking at. The coffee aroma drifting my way makes me simultaneously shiver and salivate. Though my clothes are getting dry, I’m chilled from the inside, as if my bloodstream carries chunks of ice. Stay here, where it’s warm and inviting? Or go home to an empty apartment? I send Nathan a text.