And then, I smiled. When she climbed in through my window, which is more convenient than the door, I smiled. It had been a week since I had seen her, but it seemed like a lot longer. I felt like I had forgotten some easiness that had probably been established in our previous contact, so I found myself reacquainting myself with her physically. Girls make me retarded.

I held her for a few moments longer than normal. She held back so it wasn’t awkward. Her hair was short from recently shaving her dreadlocks off, and I enjoyed running my hands over her head. I’m sure she enjoyed it too.

After re-associating ourselves with each other, I gave her the tour of my new house. “She loves it,” I thought. “She thinks I’m so awesome and acknowledges the relation between the size of my house and the size of my penis,” I thought.

“My bed is kind of stiff, but it’s still comfortable,” I half complained, half gleamed. She was wearing a beautiful long, brown, flowery dress that buttoned by her hip, which was visible due to a matching brown top that was cut short. She lied down on her back and stretched out, bathing in the sunlight pouring out of my window. “I need to get blinds,” I thought, as I noted, in detail, her mid drift. It’s a beautiful belly. She would argue, but she’d be wrong. I immediately acknowledged the opportunity to take the picture that I had always fantasized taking. “I’m going to take a picture of you,” I said without asking permission. I think photography makes me sexy.

I grabbed my sleek digital camera with interchangeable lenses (which is also an extension of my penis) and I turned it on. She laughed, embarrassed. I don’t think she wanted me to take her picture, but she was too polite to say no, or maybe she didn’t think we were at the stage where she would feel comfortable telling me what to do. I propped her leg up so that I could see a little bit of her thigh and her dress lazily and conveniently flapped open showing its entirety. She is beautiful. I snapped a couple of shots.

“I’m going to look so ugly,” she said. But she didn’t. I’m a photographer. I know. I showed her the pictures. “My leg is huge!” In the picture it was huge, but it was supposed to be. I thought she liked it, but I wasn’t sure. I tripped over a few explanations about wide-angle lenses to try and change her immediate opinion, but quickly gave up and opted to wrap my arms around her waist instead. I didn’t want to make my normal photographer folly of taking a great picture at a great time and only remember taking a picture instead of experiencing the moment. So I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her. I smiled.

Hindsight is 20/20 and now I can see the signs that were telling me that she was going to dump me in an hour. She held on tight when I held her, but she was reluctant to kiss me. She did seem a little uncomfortable too, but I thought it was an awkwardness that I had forgotten about in the week that we had been apart, or perhaps the week before that. I guess it was awkwardness more inductive of someone who knows that they are going to have to dump someone in an hour. Maybe she didn’t want me to take her picture for that reason. Maybe she didn’t like the picture for that reason, also.

In any case, after I came home and reflected on the previous fifteen minutes of dumping, I picked up my camera, having forgotten that I had taken her picture, and scrolled through the memory. There it was. It struck me as one of the most beautiful pictures that I had ever taken. Normally when I would have chanced upon a photograph that held sentimental value within the subject, there would be a familiar stabbing pain in my chest. You know, like knives? But it was an exceptionally beautiful picture with a beautiful subject to match. So beautiful that I can look at it and love it without having to immediately put it away to ease the stabbing pains. It is the picture that I’ve always wanted to take. I let out a long sigh, stuck my head in my hands, and shed one tear out of my right eye. That’s all anyone gets – one tear to encompass the girl, her photo, and their beauty. Then I frowned.

By: Josh Gilpatrick