Page 20 of Undeniably Perfect

I throw on sweats and grab my bag in the locker room. It’s late, almost midnight now, but I’m determined to go home. Our stellar game led our coach to only require a morning conditioning and practice tomorrow. I actually have a night off, which means I’ll make my parents’ weekly Saturday dinner, something I haven’t done in a while.

My mind is filled with thoughts of playoffs as I enter my apartment. I’m surprised to find Tabitha is still awake and busy at a laptop.

“Hey,” I say as I lean on the counter of my breakfast bar and look at the photos on her screen. “You got a new computer.”

“Yep. I had to get some stuff today. I had a client session.”

I realize that I really don’t know Tabitha well and she’s been staying in my apartment. I mean, I’d be an ass for not having offered it up, and I strangely feel at home with her, but I also am suddenly interested in getting to know this woman sitting in one of my bar stools.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I demand.

She looks up and slants her head to the side.

“Uh…ummm…penguins give each other back massages as foreplay.”

The shaking in my belly boils over and I lean down, slapping my hand on the counter as I begin to laugh.

“I definitely didn’t know that,” I manage after a minute. “I meant something about you.”

“Oh. Well, I’m really not that interesting.”

“There is no way that a woman who can spew out a fact like that is anything less than interesting.”

She shrugs. “I had an internship with National Geographic in college and I got to go on an expedition trip to Antarctica. I spent a whole afternoon sitting at a chinstrap penguin colony and taking photos. It was amazing. I took a bunch of a penguin massaging another penguin”—she imitates a karate chop motion—“and I thought it was so cool. I showed it to a guide, and he laughed and said it was just a mating ritual. So, yeah, I totally photographed penguin porn.”

I take a seat next to her. “That may be the most fascinating thing I’ve ever heard.”

She blushes. “It’s not that interesting.”

“Where else have you been?”

She closes the lid of her laptop and looks at me. “Not many places, maybe a dozen states, Canada, Mexico, and Costa Rica. What about you?”

“Anywhere you can see stars,” I say.

“What?”

I laugh. “My dad works for NASA and our family vacations always surrounded a stargazing activity. We went to Iceland to see the Aurora Borealis. We did a cross-country trip in an RV one year and stopped at a bunch of national parks. Canada to see the Northern Lights again. We’ve been to Hawaii and Puerto Rico. I’ve been to all fifty states, but that’s mostly because of playing ball. And I’ve been to some Caribbean islands and Mexico on vacation.”

“Wow! That’s a lot of travel. My grandparents didn’t make a lot of money, so we didn’t travel a lot. We only went to places where we could drive. I haven’t even been on the other side of the U.S.,” she admits.

“Really?”

She nods. “I always wanted to go to California, but I’ve just never had the opportunity.”

“How’d you get into photography?”

She’s quiet for a moment before she launches into her story. “When I was about nine, my grandmother took me to a garage sale. She used to go to them all the time. I’m not sure anything in their house isn’t previously owned. Anyhow, I had ten dollars from my birthday. I saw this old camera, and I was fascinated with it. The lady wanted twenty dollars, but when she saw me looking at it the entire time my grandmother was browsing, she offered it to me for ten. And that was my first camera. It was an old Nikon that required film, but I loved it. I took photos of everything. Then in high school, I got a job for the summer. I saved up and bought a new one. I took photography as a class after that. I entered a photograph in a state contest and won a scholarship to a local college. So, I went and studied photography and interned at some really cool places and then opened my own business and the rest, as they say, is history.”

“And you have a brother?”

“Yep, Brixton. He’s five years older than me. He’s the smart one. He got a full-ride scholarship to college and then med school. He’s a pediatrician who travels to third world countries to provide medical care. He’s always traveling. I keep meaning to go visit him, but things have been…sort of crazy in my life for the last few years.”

She pauses and I want to pry but I sense whatever it is that she’s not saying is serious. I decide she needs to trust me before she can tell me. So, I change the topic.

“So, how was your first ball game? I meant to ask.”

Her face lights up at my question. “It was really cool. Your mom tried explaining it all to me. I think I got about half of what she said, but the hot dogs and beer were good.”

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