In Summertime Saga

Jenny had changed the sheets.

White sheets, fresh, pulled tight. The bed was made with a precision Jenny never applied to anything else in her life. The ring light was on its stand in the corner, already lit, the circle of LEDs throwing flat white across the center of the mattress. Her laptop was open on the desk with the camera angled toward the bed. And on the bed, laid out flat like evidence, was a matching lingerie set. Burgundy. Lace bralette and a thong that was mostly straps.

"You're staring at the sheets," Jenny said behind me.

"You made your bed."

"I make my bed."

"You have never made your bed."

"I made it today. Are we doing this or are you going to audit my housekeeping?"

I turned around. She was in the hallway in a bathrobe, arms crossed, the robe belted tight. Her hair was down and she'd done her makeup, the cam makeup, heavier than what she wore around the house. Eyes lined, lashes thick, lips pink and careful.

Debbie's door was closed down the hall. The light under it was off. The house was quiet.

"Lighting first," I said. "Your ring light is good for the cam angle but it flattens everything. You've got a desk lamp?"

"On the desk."

I went to the desk and adjusted the lamp, angled it toward the bed from the left side. Warm bulb. It would throw softer light from a different direction than the ring light and give her face some dimension instead of the flat even glow that every cam girl on the internet used because they didn't know better. I tilted it until the light hit the pillow at about forty-five degrees and the shadows fell where I wanted them.

Jenny watched me from the doorway.

"You actually know what you're doing," she said. It came out surprised and a little annoyed, like she'd been hoping I was faking it.

"I told you I did."

"Everybody says they know what they're doing." She came into the room and closed the door. The lock clicked. "Go sit over there while I change."

I sat on the chair at her desk with my back to the bed. Behind me, the bathrobe dropped. I heard it hit the floor, soft, and then the small sounds of elastic and fabric and Jenny getting dressed in underwear worth more than my weekly pizza income. I stared at the laptop screen, which was dark, and the webcam light, which was off, and thought about lighting angles.

"Okay."

I turned around. She was standing at the foot of the bed in the burgundy set. The bralette pushed her breasts together and up, the lace pattern leaving shadows on her skin where the fabric was thin. The thong sat low on her hips and the straps curved over the bones and the whole thing was designed to make you look at the places where the fabric wasn't. Her stomach was flat and the warm lamp threw light across it and the little muscles in her abdomen were visible because Jenny did crunches in her bedroom at night. I knew this because I could hear them through the wall. She had one hand on her hip and her chin was tilted up, the cam angle, the angle she'd practiced in front of the laptop until it was automatic.

She looked good. She knew she looked good. It was in her posture, the weight shifted, the shoulders back.

"Where do you want me," she said.

"On the bed. Sit first. Cross your legs toward the ring light, lean back on your hands."

She sat. Crossed her legs. Leaned back. Her breasts shifted in the bralette and the lace stretched and the warm lamp threw a shadow along her collarbone that the ring light alone never would have created. The two lights together turned her skin golden on one side and white on the other and the burgundy lace sat between them like someone had art-directed the whole thing. I had.

I picked up her phone. She'd handed it to me before I came in, unlocked, camera app open. I framed the shot. She looked good but she looked like a cam girl posing for a selfie, which was fine for Sluttygram but wasn't what we were making.

"Relax your left shoulder. It's up near your ear."

She adjusted. The shoulder dropped. The line from her neck to her arm smoothed out and her whole upper body loosened by a degree.

"Chin left."

She turned. Too far. "Less. Stop. Right there."

I took four shots. Checked them. The lighting was doing what I wanted. She looked expensive. She looked like someone had paid to photograph her and that was the whole point.

"These are good," I said. "Better than good."

"Show me."

I walked over and held the phone out. She leaned forward to look, and her bralette shifted and I saw straight down the front of it and I didn't look because I was a professional and also because I looked and it was a lot and I went back to my position.

"Oh," she said. She scrolled through the four shots. Her mouth opened slightly. She swiped back and forth between the first and third. "These are actually, like, real."

"That's the point."

"No, I mean. These look like I paid someone."

"You are paying me. Ten percent."

She looked up from the phone and her grey eyes were bright and she was running the math again, the subscriber projections, the engagement rates, what these photos would do to her numbers. Jenny's whole face changed when money was real. Her eyes sharpened and her mouth got tight and she looked like she actually knew what she was doing.

"More," she said. "Different poses."

We shot for a while. She moved through positions, some she knew and some I directed. On her back, knees up, looking over her shoulder. Sitting on her heels with her hands on her thighs. Standing by the headboard with one arm up. At first she was posing, practiced and controlled, the angles she'd learned from taking her own photos for years. Her phone face. Her cam body. She was performing for an audience she couldn't see and the shots were good but they were Sluttygram good.

"Look at me," I said. "Not the lens."

She did and the photo was different. Her eyes in the other shots were working a camera. This one she was looking at a person. At me. Her grey eyes on my face instead of the black circle of the phone's camera and the difference showed in the shot.

I took the shot and her eyes stayed on my face for a beat after and then she went back to the pose.

But she kept doing it. Every few frames, her eyes would drift from the lens to my face. Just for a second. Testing. Checking if I was still looking. I was always still looking. That was the job. But the job and the wanting were getting harder to keep in separate hands.

"Sit on the edge of the bed. Legs apart. Elbows on your knees."

She sat. Legs apart. The thong straps pulled tight across her hips and the burgundy lace between her thighs was the one point in the frame that the eye went to first. She leaned forward on her elbows and her breasts pressed together and her hair fell forward and the warm lamp caught the swell of them above the lace and I took the shot and my mouth was dry.

"Good. Now lean back. Hands behind you."

She leaned back and the pose opened her up, stomach stretched, ribs visible below the bralette, the line from her throat to the waistband of the thong one long unbroken curve. She was watching my face while I framed her and her lips were parted and the ring light put a tiny white circle in each of her grey eyes.

"I want to change," she said. "I've got other sets."

"Go ahead."

She reached behind her back for the bralette clasp and I turned toward the desk again, same as before, and she said "you don't have to turn around every time. I'm a cam girl. I undress in front of an audience every night."

"I'm not your audience. I'm crew."

"Then act like crew and stop turning around like it's prom night."

I turned back. She had the bralette off. She was standing with her back partially to me, reaching for a different set from a pile on the dresser, and her back was bare and the lamp caught the dip of her spine and the lines where the bralette straps had been sitting, faint pink marks on her skin. Just changing. A woman between outfits in her own room.

But she was facing the mirror on the dresser. She could see me watching her in the glass.

She unhooked the thong and stepped out of it and she was naked in the warm light and the curve of her ass and the line of her waist and the side of one breast in the mirror's reflection and my cock twitched in my jeans and I didn't adjust because she would have seen the movement.

The new set was black. Simpler. She put it on facing away from me, pulling the straps up her hips slow, and turned around. The black lace was thinner than the burgundy. Her nipples were hard through the fabric and the bralette barely covered what it was designed to cover.

She got on the bed and didn't wait for direction. Lay back, propped on her elbows, her dark hair fanning across the white sheets, and looked directly at me.

The phone was in my hand but I hadn't raised it.

"Like that," I said. "Hold that."

I shot. Her eyes were on me. On me, not the lens. She knew exactly where the camera was and she wasn't looking at it.

She shifted. Rolled onto her side, head propped on her hand. The black lace cut across her hip and her waist dipped and the lamp shadow ran along the curve from her ribs to her thigh. She hooked one finger in the thong strap and pulled it away from her skin, slow, and let it snap back against her hip. The sound was small and sharp in the warm room.

"Like this?"

My jaw was tight. My mouth was dry. Her grey eyes were on my face and her lips were parted. She was arching her back more than the angle needed. Her nipples were hard through the black lace and her chest was rising faster than it had been ten minutes ago and my cock was half-hard in my jeans and the desk lamp wasn't kind to anyone's secrets.

"Exactly like that."

I took the shot. My hand was steady because I'd held steady through worse. In my past life I'd had women look at me like that and I'd known what to do. Close the distance. Put my hands on them. Let the night go where it was going. I knew the sequence. She was lying on white sheets in black lace looking at me and the warm light was turning her skin gold and there was a flush climbing up from below her collarbones, slow and pink. My cock was straining against my zipper and I didn't move.

I lowered the phone.

"That's enough for today."

Jenny stayed on the bed. She didn't sit up. She stayed propped on her side with her finger near the strap and her eyes on me and the flush on her chest.

"Is it?"

Her voice had dropped. Lower than the cam voice. Lower than her regular voice. A woman in her bedroom asking if I was going to do what she could see I wanted to do.

The ring light hummed. My pulse was in my ears. The rise and fall of her chest in the bralette and the flush climbing up her neck and I wanted to put the phone down and cross to the bed and put my hand on her hip where the strap was. Her skin would be warm. She would let me.

I picked up the phone. "The first set is better than anything on your page right now. We'll sort through them tomorrow."

I walked to the door. Turned the lock. Opened it. Stepped into the hallway and closed it behind me and leaned against the wall next to the bathroom door and breathed.

The hallway was dark. The house was quiet. My heart was going fast and my jeans were painful and my hands, which had been steady for the entire shoot, were shaking.

Jenny's bed creaked through the door. She was getting up. The ring light clicked off. Footsteps on the carpet, then her bathroom door closing, then water running.

I stayed against the wall. My cock was hard and my hands were shaking and I'd just walked out on a woman who'd been lying in black lace asking me to stay. I'd walked out because the longer game was better than tonight and I knew that, but the knowing wasn't doing much for the rest of me standing in a dark hallway.

You don't fuck the cam girl on the first shoot. You let the walking away do the work. Jenny doesn't hear no. She hears it from me and she doesn't know what to do with it and that's the whole play.

The water turned off. Her door opened. Light from the bedroom spilled into the hallway for a second. Then it closed again, dark.

I pushed off the wall and went to my room. My hands had stopped shaking. My jeans were still a problem. I lay on my bed in the dark and stared at the ceiling and the fan was turning slow and I could still smell vanilla from her room on my shirt.

My cock didn't care about the play.

I rolled over and pressed my face into the pillow and thought about pizza delivery routes until I calmed down. It took a while.