Not After Everything

by Michelle Levy

  I didn’t think Jordyn could look like she hated me more than she did with the jacket thing, but I was wrong. If she were able to make my head explode from one simple look, I would be blissfully out of my misery.

  Jordyn makes a gross throaty noise but she doesn’t decline or question his request. She glares at me the entire way to the kitchen. Before I can overthink it, I find myself following.

  Jordyn shoves me into the cabinet to get me out of her way. She retrieves the iron from the nearby closet. Then she slams the iron onto the ironing board and throws the cord at me. I catch it, much to her disappointment, and I search around until I locate the nearest outlet.

  The moments until the iron is hot are spent in awkward, silent hostility. I’m afraid to look at her. Occasionally Henry grunts or makes an excited noise in between clicks from the next room.

  I see Jordyn shuffle closer to the iron in my peripheral vision so I finally look up. She gives me a look that says, Well?

  Apparently the iron is ready. I turn toward the studio to get the rest of my clothes, but her voice stops me. “You didn’t think to get your stuff while you sat here staring at the floor for the last five minutes?”

  “I just . . . I . . .”

  “Oh. I forgot I’m dealing with a football player.” She turns back toward the iron.

  As soon as my shirt is unbuttoned, I playfully throw it at the back of her head, hoping I might snap her out of her bad mood. She grabs blindly, somehow managing to catch the shirt before it falls to the floor. Then she turns to glare at me, but when she sees my state of undress, her cheeks and ears turn the faintest shade of pink, and as she attempts to lay my shirt the proper way on the ironing board, the material slips through her fingers. Her discomposure is killing me and I’m trying so hard not to laugh. At least she doesn’t seem to be pissed at me anymore.

  After retrieving the rest of my stuff, I get uncomfortably close to her so I can see what she’s doing. I’m sure I’ll be expected to take it from here.

  “Do you mind?” She elbows at me not meaning to make contact, but she hits me in the stomach, which I flex. (What? It’s instinct.) Her ears flare red again when she realizes I’m still shirtless. Her whole body stiffens and I have to bite my cheek to keep from laughing. But I am kind of regretting not putting on another shirt now. I mean, she does have a hot iron in her hands, and my bare chest might make an awfully tempting target.

  I take a few steps back and clear my throat. “You gonna show me how to do this, or do you just want to play maid today?”

  She sets the iron on its end and gestures for me to take it, meeting my eyes with the best “fuck you” glare I’ve ever seen.

  I pick it up and await instructions.

  “Oh, please. You really expect me to believe you’ve never ironed before?” she says.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “It was implied.”

  “I told Henry I suck at it. And that’s true.” I set down the iron and go to get my evidence.

  She quickly picks up the iron and places it on its end, looking at me exasperatedly as I hold up a white shirt to show her the triangular scorch mark on the back near the left armpit.

  She slowly shakes her head at me.

  “So you see why I might be a little gun-shy?” I say.

  “Well, maybe if you didn’t set the iron on the fabric and walk off, you wouldn’t have a stupid-looking burn on your armpit. And you obviously don’t learn from your mistakes.” She glances at the iron she just picked up.

  And now I feel like an idiot.

  I scoot past her back to the ironing board and accidentally brush against her, taking absolutely no pleasure this time when my nakedness makes her bristle. It’s just not fun anymore. When I finish, I make a show of setting the iron on its end.

  “You’re not finished.” Jordyn grabs my arm. I tense, partially because I’m uncomfortable having her touch me while I’m still half naked . . . but mostly because I’m . . . not.

  “You really think I’m ready to tackle buttons?” I gesture at my white shirt for emphasis, hoping she didn’t sense my temporary lapse in judgment.

  “Oh my god. You’re such a guy. It’s not rocket science. Here.” She pushes me out of the way and picks up the iron. Then she gently brushes the pointy tip between the buttons. The clacking of iron hitting plastic makes me nervous.

  “Won’t the buttons melt?” I don’t think she understands just how much I can’t afford a new shirt.

  “Only if you set the iron on them and walk away.” She bugs her eyes out at me, and I laugh.

  When I finish the blue shirt, I pull it over my shoulders and quickly button it, feeling a huge sense of relief that I’m no longer half naked—I should have just grabbed another shirt to begin with.

  I think Jordyn will leave me to finish the other shirt alone, but instead she pulls herself up onto the counter and watches me. She obviously doesn’t trust me not to start a fire or something.

  But I must do okay, because she doesn’t intervene. She doesn’t even make any comments about what a moron I am. When I finish that shirt and go to hang it back on the hanger, she’s examining the suit and the tie.

  “I think you’re done. This looks okay. Actually, it looks like it’s never been worn.”

  “Just the one time,” I say, mostly to myself. But she hears. And she gets it.

  “Don’t go thinking we’re friends or anything. And don’t think I’m not still pissed at you. Because I’m pretty sure I’ll resent you forever for the jacket.” She hops off the counter and heads back to man her station.

  I smile watching her walk away.

  • • •

  Henry positions me in my newly pressed blue shirt against a plain white backdrop, then against the black one. Then he has me change into the suit. The pants are only a little too big on me now. Not enough that anyone but me will notice.

  As I replace the blue shirt with the white one, Henry chuckles, pointing to the iron burn on the back near my armpit. “And that’s with help?”

  “No, that’s from before. I told you I wasn’t very good at it,” I say, pulling the tie around my neck. I’ve never been particularly good at tying a tie either.

  “Looks like you need some help again,” Henry says.

  Oh, god, please don’t make Jordyn help me with this. But it’s Henry who walks over and pulls the tie out of my hands. He places it around his neck, quickly and expertly ties it, and loops it back over my head.

  “Didn’t your old man ever teach you how to properly tie a damn tie?”

  “He’s not really a tie kind of guy,” I say.

  “Do I look like a tie kind of guy to you?”

  I smile. “Good point.”

  When he finishes, he fixes my collar and brushes my shirt across my shoulders. And I can’t look at him for a sec. Jordyn has no idea how good she has it. What I wouldn’t have given for my mom to have left my dad to find a guy like Henry who could teach me to do things like tie a goddamn necktie.

  “Jordyn! Can you set up the big fan out here?” Henry bellows.

  “I can do it,” I offer.

  “We’re trying to get you not to sweat through that suit.”

  Jordyn is back through the curtain and pulling the big fan across the room in no time. It’s on wheels, so I don’t feel so bad.

  “Thanks, kiddo. The lights are already fighting the AC. It’s gonna be unbearable this afternoon.”

  Jordyn plugs in the fan and turns it on.

  “Okay, Tyler Blackwell, let’s get you situated.” Henry pats a podium-type thing. Or is it a column? Whatever it is, it’s black. The backdrop is dark gray and there’s a circle of lighter gray in the center thanks to Henry’s keen eye for lighting.

  He has me lean one elbow on the colopodium. I do as told, but I feel like such a douchebag. Especially because J
ordyn’s watching.

  Henry snaps and snaps and snaps whether I’m ready or not. I vow that I will never make fun of models again. Okay, in all fairness, I probably will, but I’ll admit that their job’s not as easy as it seems.

  “Well, Hank, it looks like you actually made a good investment for once,” Jordyn teases Henry.

  “You shut up over there.” Henry chuckles.

  “I’m just saying not all of your purchases are well thought out.”

  “Hank?” I ask.

  “She knows it drives me crazy.” Henry shakes his head. His smile not only reaches his eyes, but it reaches across the expanse of the room. I can actually feel it from where I stand.

  Jordyn’s smile is as big as his.

  And all of a sudden it kind of kills me knowing that I will never, ever have that—the kind of unconditional love only a parent can give—ever again.

  “There you go, GQ,” Henry says. “Give me that model pout.”

  When we finish with this setup, Henry tells me to change back into my normal clothes. Then he takes a few more shots of me in my gray T-shirt. He has me sit on a metal stool in the center of a backdrop the color of faded, weathered wood.

  “I really can’t thank you enough for this, Henry.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. We gotta go look at the results first.” He pops out the memory card and tells me to have Jordyn load it and let us know when it’s ready.

  I do this on my way to take my stuff back out to my car. She doesn’t look up from her computer or say a word as she snatches the memory card from my hand and plugs it in. When I return, she’s on the phone rearranging the schedule for tomorrow. I peek around the screen, checking if my photos are loaded yet. She swats at me like I’m an annoying fly, but I manage to see the screen anyway. It’s just her precious scheduling system, so I head back to where Henry is and wait.

  Unfortunately the door chimes and we’ll have to wait till after the session to see if Henry was able to capture anything other than my inner douchiness.

  The next clients are a new family: young mother, young father, and very little baby. They tell Henry that they want to do something really arty, like, with them all tastefully naked. Henry shoots me a look that they don’t see and I’m forced to cough in order to cover a laugh.

  The wife asks that the “girl” help them, instead of me. She’s uncomfortable being naked with another man in the room. I guess Henry doesn’t count.

  Jordyn still doesn’t look up at me when I tell her what’s going on with the family. I expect her to laugh with me when I explain about the tasteful nakedness. But she’s all business.

  As I waste time checking Instagram—like I care that Justin Ramos had an orgasmic shake at Smashburger or that Gwynnie Yang posted another duck-face pic—I feel the pull of Jordyn’s computer taunting me with the evidence of my humiliation. I can just peek, right? Or, better yet, I could erase the ones that make me look like a complete tool. There’s no way Henry kept count of all the pictures he took. He’ll never know.

  I listen carefully for footsteps as I inch toward Jordyn’s side of the circular counter and bump the mouse. The screensaver vanishes. Then I understand that Jordyn’s not avoiding me because she’s embarrassed. It’s because she’s back on the jacket. The screen is on eBay—she’s found something similar but not exactly like hers. The auction ends next Saturday at midnight. She’s put in a bid for $150 and another person has just outbid her by one dollar. One of those. The “buy it now” price is $600. I wonder how much she paid for the ruined one. I feel the leather again; so smooth until you reach the white slut, then it’s rough and cracked. I scrape at it with a fingernail, but it’s useless. It’s fucked.

  I think I hear shuffling right on the other side of the curtain and I freeze, trying to remember how to put the screensaver—alternating photos of Jordyn’s mom, Henry, and Jordyn on vacation—back up so she doesn’t see me snooping. Then I hear Henry ask Jordyn to move something, and her voice answers from the other side of the room. I hurry and write down the details of the auction so I can find it, then I click on a few things until I figure out the screensaver, and breathe a sigh of relief when Jordyn’s mom’s face nuzzled into the side of Henry’s neck pops up.

  When the Tasteful-Nakeds finish, Henry informs me that we’ll have to wait till next time to check out my photos. They have family game night over at Jordyn’s dad’s place.

  Well, I have no reason to be jealous, because I get to go home and play “How Drunk Are You?” with my dad. We have family game night every night.

  TEN

  On Thursday, when I exit the gym after last period, I’m faced with a horde of cheerleaders. They’re in the hall, spewing insults at a pitch I’m convinced only other teenage girls can hear well enough to decipher.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “Sheila was too good for you anyway!”

  “Asshole!”

  And various other, more imaginative insults fly at me while I stand there, blocking the gym exit for those who had the misfortune of following me out of the locker rooms.

  I stare past Sheila’s friends, trying to wait it out without making the situation any worse. The reactions on the faces of passersby are fairly amusing, ranging from uncomfortable to annoyed to absolutely horrified for me. Truth is, I’m enjoying how completely normal it all feels. It takes every ounce of self-control not to smile.

  “What the—” Sheila pushes her way through the mayhem. “What the hell are you guys doing? Have you lost your freaking minds?”

  “We were helping,” Julia, a junior who loves it when people call her mini-Sheila, says.

  “How exactly is this helping?” Sheila turns on the others. “What’s the matter with you? His mother died. Have a little compassion. Jesus.”

  “He can’t use that excuse forever.” Julia pouts.

  “Seriously? It’s his mom, not an excuse!”

  Julia’s posture withers under the intensity of Sheila’s glare.

  “Okay, people, move it along,” Sheila says. “Show’s over.”

  I step out of the gym so the rest of my classmates can finally get around me. “Thanks,” I say.

  “I didn’t tell them to do that.” She nods toward the girls, now waiting in a clump down the hall.

  “I know.”

  “Just so we’re clear.”

  “Crystal.”

  We stand there a minute. It’s awkward as hell. I can’t look at her for more than a fraction of a second at a time.

  “Look,” Sheila sighs, “it’s not like a few days ago I wasn’t saying all the things they were just saying. I mean, the way you strung me along was pretty shitty.”

  “You’re absolutely right.” I lean back against the wall, then take a deep breath and push on. “It’s just . . . After my mom, things between us started to feel so . . . strained. I know you wanted to help, but you didn’t really know how to help me, and I could tell it frustrated the hell out of you. And—I don’t know. It made me pull away. I was sure you were going to break up with me as soon as it was, like, socially acceptable. I should have ended it then. Given you some space, or your freedom or whatever. But then there were times where we were like the old us, and I thought maybe we’d get through it. Then school started. And then I’m pretty sure you only stayed with me, and would still be with me, if I hadn’t ended it, just so you could milk the tragedy-boy angle.” She makes a face and I say quickly, “Don’t deny you didn’t love the extra attention, because—”

  “How can you even say that, Tyler? Jesus. And you started off so well. But then you had to go and turn into the dick you’ve been lately. I’m pretty sure you only stayed with me because I’d have sex with you. And now that you’re getting it from that goth skank, you—”

  “For your information, I am having sex with someone, mind-blowing acrobatic sex, but that has nothing
to do with breaking up with you, it’s just a bonus. And it’s not that goth chick. Is that why you destroyed her jacket? Because, what the fuck, Sheila? Who even does that?”

  “Whatever. I should have let the girls berate you. But you know, you go ahead and keep hiding behind your tragedy. It’s obviously worked very well for you this far.” She flips around and struts off toward the rest of the herd, all giggling, practically stamping their feet and snorting with glee.

  God, I’m glad to be done with her and all her bullshit.

  • • •

  Almost immediately after I enter the studio that night, practically in unison with the door chime, Henry bellows for me.

  “I got a last-minute gig,” he says as I make my way through the curtain. “I need your help, like, thirty minutes ago. Almost thought about calling Jordyn in, but she’s working at the animal shelter tonight and she’d kill me if I made her miss it.”

  I picture Jordyn wearing her goth getup while holding kittens and almost laugh.

  “Didja hear me? Jordyn show you how to handle all the paperwork stuff?”

  “Don’t worry, Henry. It’s under control,” I say with a reassuring smile.

  “Good. Now get over here and help me with this, would you?” He pats the table sitting in the middle of a setup.

  We move the table aside and then I straighten up his mess—the man is a walking tornado; gum wrappers, toothpicks, anything that aids a person who’s recently quit smoking, plus various lens caps and cords—and I head back up to the counter just as the client arrives.

  A woman with one of the most unfortunate faces I’ve ever seen—eyes too close together, nose too long, serious lack of a chin, and the kind of buckteeth I didn’t know still existed after the advent of orthodontics—enters with her equally ugly son who must be around seven or so. Actually, the ugly son bounces in. The kid is either suffering from severe ADHD or he’s just done a line of coke.

  The woman is wearing pink, and I mean pink, lipstick on her buckteeth in addition to her lips. I’m about to inform her of this until she points her bony witch finger at me. “We will be doing four changes of clothes. And each change will require new backgrounds and props. Now, take me to see the props. I’ll let you know what works for me.”