Everywhere, Nicholas worked the magic of capturing light and shadow, sunshine and smiles so that these luminous times would never fade from her memory. As if they ever could. He let her in the darkroom at the camera shop after school so she could see the magic work. He bought her a camera of her own and taught her to use it, whispering instructions in her ear as he positioned her body in the perfect stance.
"Keep your elbows tucked into your side but not too close. Relax and let the tension melt out of your arms. Keep your knees slightly flexed, legs apart for steadiness, one foot forward but with your weight distributed evenly on both."
"Is this photography or ballet?"
"Art," he whispered in her ear, sending shivers swirling through her.
But she did not have his power. She could see the beauty, but she could not capture it. It seemed she was chasing the rainbow's end. And he held it right on the tip of his fingers.
"Do you see this captivating girl with eyes like smokey skies? Do you see how she smiles for me so that it seems you can look into the corners of her soul?"
The picture he had handed her was of herself, leaning against the pillars of the Jefferson Memorial, wearing a flower-decked bonnet he had bought her at an antique shop. She shook her head, as if to deny the face that glowed with happiness was hers. "Your camera flatters her. She's not so beautiful as you made her look."
"The camera only sees what I let it see."
Her training with the camera preceded more erratically than her other apprenticeship. If it seemed she had no aptitude for photography, she could not say that about kissing. If she never touched a shutter release again-- "Press gently," Nicholas said, "Never poke or jab." --it would not bother her one bit.
But that was not true of Nicholas' kisses.
With each one, she wanted more, deeper, longer, sweeter, until it had to stop before her heart did. Like a wizard, Nicholas sent little charges through the tips of his fingers as they pressed into her hair behind her ears when their lips first touched. The charges tingled down her neck until they reached major arteries then sizzled through her veins, making them live wires. He seemed to know just when the mingling of touch and mouth and tongue were becoming too much for her and amid the chaos, he was the one who could pull back. He was the one who would stop to rest, forehead against forehead, eyes closed, until her spasmodic breathing had achieved normalcy.
Then he was the one to start kissing again, not mouths this time, but ears and cheeks and tip of nose, chin and neck and collarbone. And he was the one who set the rules... no kissing on the bed, no unfastening buttons, no asking for more when the partner said stop. He apparently knew his limits. She wished she knew hers. Never once had she been the one to say stop.
In bed, their blanket wall had been breached the night following her exams when she had snuck her hand underneath to twine her fingers with his. She had thought he was asleep, but he groaned as if he were in pain when her skin touched his skin. Static electricity, she guessed, though she had not felt the shock. Without speaking, he folded his fingers around the back of her hand and his thumb stroked the juncture where her thumb met her palm.
The next night the blanket wall was not built at all. Instead she slept under the sheets and the tartan coverlet, and he on top, wearing his terry robe knotted closed like armor and using their former barrier to keep his ankles and toes warm. With this arrangement, she could snuggle up beside him. And sometimes they would reach morning nestled so close that she could sneak a kiss before he awoke and realized that they were on the bed and she was breaking the rules.
If her new life posed any jeopardy to her school career, it was in the daydreams that Nicholas' restraint forced on her. She supposed he waited for some signal, and daily, she pondered what it was and how to give it. Such thinking could strike her during geometry and she would totally lose the point of some theorem, or during World History and whole decades could drop from the march of time.