When Best Friends Kiss

The Floating - Part 1

At the start of September, Alex came bursting into the apartment, shouting, "They gave me an article! They gave me an article!"

I hit the space bar on my laptop to pause the anime I was watching and jumped up from the couch. "That's great!" It'd happened just as Alex predicted.

Alex jumped into my arms, grinning. "It's an article for the website, not print, but I can write about an LGBTQ topic." His lips met mine briefly. "This is my break."

"Congrats. I'm so proud of you," I said, returning the peck.

I was happy for him. Of course, I was. But it made me wonder why I was doing photography. Alex was passionate about writing and his job. I was just taking photos of baskets of sausage. But I wanted things to change. I wouldn't just sit around and allow things to stay as they were. That night, while Alex was in the shower, I headed to my favourite search engine to find some advice.

"Be proactive," an article said. "Offer suggestions."

The next day, I gathered courage as my supervisor, Karen, rattled off a list of the new products we were capturing.

"Let's start with the assorted chocolates first. They'll melt under the lights." She pushed her wire-framed glasses up her tall nose.

"Um..." I gripped my camera tighter. "Don't they make those sprays and stuff that coat foods so that doesn't happen?"

I wished I had bitten my tongue with the way Karen was looking at me. "We want our photos to be authentic." She was frowning like she couldn't believe I had the audacity. "The products need to be shown exactly as the customer would receive them."

"Right." The articles said don't apologize, just show that you're receptive to learning. "I understand."

"Let's get started."

After three months, part of me wondered why I wasn't being given more independence. She hovered a few meters away as I cut the raspberry truffle in half and balanced it atop the caramel. Be proactive. Wouldn't it look more appetizing if the caramel was pulled out a bit? I glanced back at Karen who was staring without a smile.

"Um... what if we take the caramel and pull it out?"

"Excuse me?"

"Like, kind of..." I motioned with my hands, "to show its gooeyness?" She had that expression again. "Like, it's texture." I was finally able to piece together understandable words. "So people can get a sense of the texture from the photos."

She said nothing but walked over to the table where I was crouched down. Her face looked especially harsh under the studio lights as she muttered so the other staff couldn't hear, "Liam, we have a way we do things here. It was all listed out in the packet you received at hiring. It's been working for us for 50 years."

My chest felt like it'd been punched.

"Your job is to take and edit photos. Leave anything else to the departments in charge of it."

"I understand," I croaked. Alex. At that moment, all I wanted was to be in Alex's arms.

"The chocolate is getting soft. Quickly take the photo."

When Alex arrived home that night, I hugged him a little tighter than usual. But I didn't have the guts to tell him what had happened. I didn't want to ruin our happy home.

***

"Are you sure you want to be here?" Alex asked, pausing outside the door to the gay bar.

"We drove here in the same car, I think it's a little too late to be asking that. Besides, you invited me." I smirked.

"I did, but now I'm wondering if you felt forced."