Tryst

Los Angeles

It's been brewing- Helene knows that. It had already boiled over the once, but Bologna was months ago. Felt like another lifetime. The next morning had been cuddly and sweet. Harry'd fed her, not literally.

"Can't let a lady go away hungry, can I?" So he'd ordered room service, and he had given her a bite off his omelette, so he had literally fed her she supposed.

"No." She'd smiled at him, after she slid her lips off the fork.

And then she had tried to follow his lead. He had something complicated going on, winding down, she wasn't sure, and they had all of Asia and Australia to get through not to mention  South and North America. So, if they had got away with it once, the mixing business with pleasure, maybe they should leave well enough alone.

Though it was hard when he looked so fit. He always looked fit

Helene had been entirely distracted, she reminded herself, by all the sights and sounds and flavors of all the new places, that Harry made sure the crew had some time to go out, including her, so that she only thought about him sometimes.

Usually at the end of a night, when they had large hotel rooms and were off the bus, or in the shower, sometimes at the craft services table. It was hard not to think of him when food was involved. Harry even picked the menu.

There were a lot of words that suited Harry, kind, handsome, talented, goofy, but her favorite was intentional. He was intentional that night, and in their business relationship, so she assumed he was intentionally not fucking her on every continent they visited. She'd be up for it, though she had tried not to make that woefully obvious.

She thought about him more, and as more, than she knew she should, though. And her photos had started to reflect that, that's where she found it to be obvious. He was still silly in some, or one of the gang in many. But sometimes, he was the sexy millionaire in the hairdresser's chair, or the man undressing, and often the rockstar exuding sexual magnetism under the lights. She was sure when he scanned through her photos, which he loved to do, he could see the new view she had taken of him through her lens. She found herself shooting him like she would a lover.

Lots of upward angles, a bit more skin. More of that effortless thing that made him so compelling, so sexy. Helene had been so close to it now that she could not ignore it. Not at all. She wanted to bathe in it. So she photographed through her new eyes, new aperture, and he couldn't miss it. 

He had started to choose more of the photos she knew conveyed her desire, or the ones that said something about her impending nostalgia. Him leaving stage recently, for instance. Her sadness increasing as they get closer to the end, the North American leg looming. Helene would be so excited to sleep in her own bed, in her city, but then she will be away from these people who feel like family - maybe forever.

So, she stops caring about being obvious, and she communicates in the best way she knows how, through photos. More of the ones she sends him are sexy, show how attractive he is to her. Helene laughs out loud when he posts the one of him that she snapped after he won a ping pong match in the altogether. It looked like he was naked and triumphant, a World Cup goal maker, who had whipped his shirt off and had wet shorts clinging to high thighs.

She took that one for herself. He was joyful, and ridiculous and well made. She couldn't help it. But it was so good, so funny and effortlessly compelling, she sent it to him, and he included it while he embraced living his solitary dream. In the body of evidence that he sold out Madison Square Garden by himself twice.

She kept chancing it then. When she sent him possibilities. Photos that suggested the face he made on that fucked out morning, or of him in a sheer shirt, where the focus was squarely on his semi-obscured ink. Upward shots where all you could see was his beauty. He picked some, or he commented on them, with a check, but not a post.