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“How long have you been doing this?” he asks out of nowhere.
“For a little over an hour.” I chuckle. “Don’t you remember the last hour?”
“Not this.” He points to his abs. “Drawing, painting, taking pictures—the art stuff.”
“Hmm…” I twist my mouth, adding a thin line of detail to the composition. “Not sure. I’ve been drawing pictures in my mind and seeing the world differently than reality long before conveying the images to paper. But I never defined it as art back then.” I laugh. “My mother called it daydreaming. She was right. I was constantly wandering in the made-up world in my own head. But to answer your question, it likely started the moment my…sitter took me to a museum. She helped me focus my imagination to the page, using art as a medium. She was a musician and saw things a little differently, too.”
“So, you were born an artist.”
“Unfortunately,” I say, adding a small scarlet detail near his collarbone. “It’s not exactly a blessing.”
“I don’t know about that.” Foster’s index finger lightly traces over the dried connecting swirls and circles near his waistline. “I admire your creativity.”
“You’re one of the few.” Lifting my brush from his skin, I sit back on my heels, observing the product. “I think it’s done.”
“Yeah? How does it look?”
“Hang on.” Shuffling backward off the bed, I move the art supplies to the floor and then retrieve my camera from its nearby case. “Do you mind if I shoot you?”
His mouth gapes in mock shock. “You aren’t going to post these online, are you?”
“Absolutely not. I plan to use them for blackmail later in life.”
He narrows his gaze in warning.
“Why don’t you take off your shorts?” I bite my lower lip, amused. “It will make the pictures more valuable.”
Foster shakes his head. “Take the pictures, you hedonist. I’m keeping my shorts on.”
“You’re no fun.” I raise the camera and focus on his chest through the lens. “You look fabulous, darling.”
“Oh, shut up,” he retorts sarcastically. “Just do it before I change my mind.”
Clicking the shutter, I capture the painting on his skin—the weaving of science, humanity, and imagination—from a number of angles. Foster lies still on the bed as I snap him from the side, over his body, and head-on when he sits up at my request. When more than enough shots have been taken, I take a step back for one last look through the shots to ensure it’s all been collected on digital film.
“Can you lie back down?” I ask, stepping up onto the bed. “I want to get a few more from this position.”
“Sure,” he complies, easily resting both hands behind his head. “I think you like it on top.”
“All girls do. They’re just too afraid to admit it.”
“But not you?”
“Have you met me?”
“We’ve been acquainted.”
With a foot placed on each side of his waist, I take a few more images of his torso, focusing on the area at his neck where the paint ends and Foster begins. Then, without any thought, like my hands are guiding my subconscious mind, the lens travels along the length of his face, focusing on the fine details of his features. It finds the crease between his chin and his mouth, the indentation at the center of his upper lip, the often underrated area where his hairline meets his cheekbones, and the softness of his ears. My camera encapsulates them all.
“Can you take off your glasses?” I ask, still behind the lens.
“I thought the paint was lower?”
“Humor me.”
He obliges, revealing his deep blue orbs, soft and open. Zooming in, I observe their sensitivity, vulnerability, and the layers of his humanity often shielded by the reflective glass barrier. There’s lightness, darkness, hunger, and—dare I even say—fear lurking within them as the sound of the clicking shutter memorizes their shape and unspoken story.
“Got it?” he asks.
