Beneath The Skin(73)

When our eyes meet, he grins brightly.

I lean against the wall and cross my arms, smiling mutedly back at him, not wanting to break their process.

“Ready!” calls out an actor who looks like a male fairy with a warped, thorny crown made of bramble.

Brant snaps back into focus, game face on, and he raises his camera, readying the next shot. There is something so sexy about watching him work. I love seeing the focus in his eyes. I love the way his arms flex and move when he raises or lowers the camera. Even just the expert way his fingers manipulate his equipment, pressing buttons, snapping and unsnapping little toggles and switches, rotating and focusing and twisting things into perfection.

It’s the care he takes with everything. It’s the attention he gives.

It’s the fierce blue of his eyes and the way his forehead creases with concentration.

He licks his lips. He aims.

Flash.

That’s precisely the imagery that inspires me to take him to the Westwood Light and show him the other side of my weekly routine for the first time. I’m not sure what kept me from bringing him, other than my incessant need to hide the things I most cherish from the world, like I’m afraid that bringing it into light will ruin it all or taint it somehow. I should have known better where Brant’s concerned. Who knew he’d be so damn good with kids? The second I introduce him to them, he’s right there among them at the short, circular table making doodles on construction paper with every color in the crayon box while they excitedly watch. I was able to procure them some new paints, which two of the girls use to follow along in painting a car similar to the one Brant is drawing. Two of the kids proceed to drive around the room in imaginary Ferraris, gifting us with a chorus of engine hums and vroom-vrooms.

I can’t stop staring at Brant. How can someone change so much in such a short amount of time? Perhaps he hasn’t changed at all, but rather I was looking at him in all the wrong lights. I never saw myself as a particularly judgmental person, but maybe I am.

Maybe I judged Brant too quickly.

It should be noted that he doesn’t stay over at my loft very often. But it’s one Monday morning when we wake up together in my bed that he asks the unexpected question.

I blink. “A whole weekend?”

“Not just any weekend,” he points out. “Halloween weekend.”

Three half-finished papier-mâché ravens stare down at us from the ceiling where they hang by wire. I study one of them, the closest one, and remember the bird costume I wore the last time I ever bothered with festivities. I was twelve. My dad was sober that Halloween.

“Did you have plans or something?”

I look over at him. “What?”

“You went away for a sec. Your eyes. You went into some kind of thought train or somethin’.”

I shrug. I’m not sure I’m ready to meet Brant’s parents. Or maybe it’s that I’m not ready for them to meet me. I don’t know what kind of home life I expect him to come from, but I can’t imagine it’s anything like mine. I bet he woke up to pancakes every Saturday morning.

“There, you did it again.”

I smirk and chuckle away his whining. “Fine,” I tell him, maybe just to shut him up. “Halloween weekend with your family. Wait. Where is your family?”

“About an hour that way,” he answers with a lazy point toward the window. “I’ll take you. I grew up in a suburb on the edge of town. We can head out after our classes next Friday.”

“Next Friday,” I agree, staring at my ravens again and biting my lip.

“Oooh, now I get it.”

I squint at him. “Huh?”

“It’s the End Of Year thingy. You’re worried about it. You still haven’t submitted, have you?”

I sit up, hugging my knees to my chest. “It’s not quite that.”

He brushes against my side, then rests his chin on my shoulder. “Wanna tell Brant? Brant can make ya feel all better.” He kisses my neck lightly. “I can take it all away, whatever it is.” He kisses just behind my ear, casting goose bumps down my neck and side. “Just tell me whose ass I gotta kick. And I’ll do it, provided he’s not seven feet tall. I mean, I could probably take him, but like, y’know, uh …”

“I don’t need you to kick any ass. I need you to … kiss an ass.”

“Kiss?”

“My ass.” I turn my face, my nose tapping into his, and I smirk smugly at him. “Kiss my ass, Brant.”

He quirks an eyebrow. “You’re into that?”

I pounce on him, inspiring a grunt of surprise that quickly turns into a moan when my lips crush into his.