Oh god, so many questions. How can I know it’s too many questions but ask them all anyway?
“I don’t have anything specific in mind.” Jordi lifts her camera out of her bag and takes off the lens cap. “I like not having anything I’m after.”
Then it happens before I can react: she points the camera at me and snaps a few photos.
“Agh!” I fold my arms across my chest, and that feels awkward, so I tuck them behind my back, and then I worry my hips look big in this dress, so I just let my arms hang straight down. Now I feel like I have monkey arms.
“Sorry,” Jordi says. “But this is why I don’t ask.”
“Because I have monkey arms?” I ask, except that’s a term I came up with in my head and not aloud, so Jordi’s confused look is more than fair.
“Because no one looks like herself when she knows she’s being photographed,” Jordi says. “But before you knew, you did. And you don’t have monkey arms.” She holds out her arms to her sides. “My arms are way longer than yours.”
“But you’re taller!” I step closer to her and hold out my arms. “No, yours are way longer.”
We’re standing face to face, inches apart, and Jordi automatically knew what monkey arms were. My face feels warm, and my lips are suddenly something I feel very aware of. I’ve known of the general feeling of wanting to kiss someone, but I’ve never felt the specific wanting to kiss someone right in this very moment before.
Click.
Jordi smiles at me. “Got you.”
“When you take a picture, can you tell what a person is thinking?” I ask. “Does it show in the photograph?”
“Why?” Jordi asks. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing,” I say. I say it more quickly than I’ve said anything in my life. Speed can be very suspicious, I realize.
“Too bad.” Jordi turns from me and continues down the sidewalk. I try to predict when she’ll hold up her camera as I turn those two words over and over in my head. I think some graffiti on the curb might interest her, but it doesn’t. Too bad. I don’t even notice a patch of flowers emerging from dry grass, but Jordi does. Too bad. I think the sunset might be a cliché, but Jordi’s camera clicks while it’s pointed at the horizon.
Too bad.
“You’re quiet,” she says.
“So are you,” I point out.
“I don’t count,” she says.
“I didn’t know if quiet people knew they were quiet,” I say. “The way loud people know they’re loud. People sometimes think I have no idea, but it’s not that I don’t know, I just can’t help it? Words come out of my mouth all the time.”
Jordi turns onto Los Feliz Boulevard. “I never assume someone doesn’t know herself.”
“Oh my god, no, I didn’t mean that I thought you didn’t, I—”
“Abby,” she says. “Chill. I meant that I know that you know you’re loud. Louder than me, at least.”
“You’ll have to say chill a lot,” I say. “If we keep hanging out. Because I am bad at it and I’ll need reminders.”
Jordi takes a photograph of the tagged billboard over the Chevron gas station. The graffiti artist’s work looks crisper and better designed than the supermarket ad it’s covering.
“That’ll be a good shot,” I say. “Not like the others won’t be. I’m sure you’re really talented. Well, maybe not the ones of me, but that’s not your fault. You can only do so much.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks me.
“N—nothing.” I lose track of how to stand normally again. “I’m not a model.”
“Are you asking me to stop taking your picture?” Jordi asks. Her voice is a little softer. “If you want me to stop, I will. I didn’t mean to make you feel weird.”
“I always feel weird,” I say.
She grins as a breeze pours in around us and her wavy hair flies out around her. “Me too.”
“You can keep taking my picture,” I say.
And she does.
CHAPTER 8
Jax picks me up on Saturday afternoon so we can go to Pie’n Burger in Pasadena. Getting there requires the freeway, but since it’s the weekend, traffic is light and Jax vrooms his car easily to our destination. Today he has music blasting slightly beyond what I’d call listenable. I’m not sure what I’d have guessed his taste would be, but I would not have picked indie folk guys whistling and hand-clapping.
“Can we turn this down?” I ask. “I can barely hear you.”
“Man,” he says. “This shit’s my jam. But fine.”
“So I sort of went out with Jordi last night,” I say. “I mean, not really. Not like a date.”
“Nice,” Jax says. “Didja hook up?”
“I said it wasn’t like a date.”
“You can hook up on not a date,” he says. “You can pretty much hook up anywhere.”
“Maybe if you’re you,” I say. “She wanted to take pictures in our neighborhood, since she’s this amazingly talented photographer. So I went with her.”
“So she’s like an artsy type,” he says. “That’s what you’re into?”
“I don’t know what I’m into,” I say. “I like her, specifically.”
“Why?” he asks. “Remember, you have to have real reasons. I can use your rule against you.”
“How is that using it against me? Because … she’s smart in this really calm and thoughtful way. And she takes photography seriously like it means the world to her. And …” I picture her and smile. “She’ll be super quiet and then say something kind of funny and sly.”
I’m not sure I’ve ever thought much less spoken the word sly before.
“And hot,” he says.
“Well, yeah.” I think about Jordi standing perfectly still and snapping picture after picture, and about being the one to see it all happen. “Did you ever come up with an answer for why you like Gaby?”
“Of course I did,” he says as he parks the car next to the restaurant. “Come on, let’s do this.”
“And?” I ask as we walk inside. “So?”
Pie’n Burger is an old-fashioned diner that’s been
