“Let me know if you see a shot you really want,” Ada said as they walked back into the fairgrounds.
She’d told him the same thing yesterday, so he guessed that this was just her process.
He looked around the fairgrounds but had a hard time imagining immortalizing what he saw on film. After a day and a half, the grass in front of the stage looked a little worse for wear, and so did most of the concertgoers. They’d gotten enough pictures that Alonzo wasn’t worried about the visual essay, but he didn’t want to tell Ada that, just in case she saw something that moved her.
They squinted up at the stage. There were a few roadies setting up for the next act. Alonzo and Ada had missed the first few performances of the day making love. If he’d had his way, they’d have missed the entire final day of the festival, but Ada had dragged him back into the shower to get ready. Alonzo had tried his damnedest to change her mind, and he’d almost convinced her. She’d been whispering soft curses into his ear as he lifted her butt onto the bathroom counter when the housekeeper had knocked loudly on the door.
They’d rushed into their clothes, laughing and cursing and tripping over one another. Alonzo had helped Ada pack her bags to check out, and before he knew it, they were back at the festival. Stone-cold sober and in the cold light of day, the fair looked different to Alonzo, not nearly as beautiful as he’d thought last night.
“We could get another motel room,” he whispered into Ada’s ear.
“Hush,” she said, shoving him with her shoulder. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, an adorable smile playing at her lips.
He wanted a picture of that, he realized. That’s what had changed. The festival was what it was, but Ada was the point of it all. “Lemme see your camera.”
The camera in question was slung over her neck, nestled between her breasts, accentuating the hard points of her nipples — or maybe that was just where his attention seemed to drift naturally. Either way, she was a vision in a tank top and a pair of tight jean shorts that looked painted onto her legs.
“I don’t let anyone touch my camera,” she said in a clipped voice.
“What?”
“You heard me,” she said. “No one touches my camera but me.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and turned to her. “Do I need to remind you,” he lowered his voice to a whisper here, “that I was nuts deep inside you barely an hour ago? My tongue has seen parts of you my eyes haven’t.”
Ada crossed her own arms over her chest, unfortunately covering those perfect nipples. “There’s no need to whisper. A woman’s pleasure is not taboo. And a man who knows how to use his tongue,” her voice rose here, which made Alonzo’s face heat even as the smile on his face widened. “That’s not a thing to be ashamed of unless you’re trying to convince me to do a thing I just told you I will not be doing.”
“Ada.”
“Alonzo?”
They stared at one another for a long, tense moment before he sighed and dropped his arms. “I just wanted to take a picture.”
“Then you should have brought a camera.”
“Of you,” he said with a sigh and rolled eyes.
“What?”
“I just wanted to take a picture of you, Ada.”
“Well, why the hell would you want to do that?”
Alonzo shook his head and turned back toward the stage. “Because.”
“Because is not an answer. Did nobody ever tell you that?” She grabbed his arm and turned him back around to face her.
He put his hands on his hips. “I think this might be another reason you don’t have a man.”
“Obviously,” she scoffed. “Now explain yourself.”
“You really don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“You!” he yelled. “How in the world does a woman like you not get that you are it? You are amazing and beautiful and frustrating. From the minute we met, you’ve been giving me nothing but aggravation, but still, you’re all I can think about. You are a pain in the ass, but I think I’d see red if you were out in the world being a pain in somebody else’s ass, Ada. How do you not get that?”
Ada’s hands had fallen down to hang limply at her side while Alonzo unloaded a shocking amount of emotion on her. Emotion that didn’t make sense to his brain, considering how little time they’d known each other, but felt perfectly reasonable in his gut.
So he kept going. “I’ve barely known you two full days, but I sure as hell know that two damn days ain’t enough. There’s probably a whole bunch of brothas all over the East Bay — hell, why not the state. I bet there’s a whole gang of men in every county in California wondering what you’re doing right now. And maybe in a few months, I’ll be the one in Alameda.”
“You barely know me,” she said with a halfhearted shake of her head. She crossed her arms again, trying to look unaffected, but then dropped them immediately.
Alonzo wasn’t done yet. Since he’d already started telling her too much, it seemed best to just keep going. “I know I don’t know you, Ada. But I want to know you. I want to get to know you. That’s what I can’t believe you don’t get. I can’t believe you thought anyone could spend a few hours with you, let alone days, and not be completely enamored by you. You might not feel the same, and that’s okay, but I wanted a picture of you right now, just in case. If this is the last day I ever see you, you’re the kinda person I want to remember. You’re worth remembering.”
She blinked up at him, and if not for the small flare of her nostrils as she inhaled deeply, he might have thought she’d been completely unaffected by everything he’d said. But she wasn’t.
“What makes you think you’re gon’ get rid of me that easily, Alonzo Reid?” she whispered fiercely.
Those few words in her husky voice blew him away. Alonzo was on cloud ten because cloud nine wasn’t high enough.
As the crowd’s rippling excitement steamed around them, he and Ada watched one another. “I didn’t say I was trying to get rid of you.”
“Sure sounded like it,” she accused.
“Everything I said, and that’s what you heard?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Her smile made Alonzo’s heart stutter. She shrugged the camera strap over her head and turned it around in her hands. “Don’t move,” she commanded as she turned and then backed into him, molding her body against his. “I gotta get the angle right.”
Alonzo wrapped his arm around her instinctually. “Nowhere to go. Nowhere else I’d rather be,” he whispered into her peach and cocoa butter-scented neck.