At one point, she stops and slowly spins around, as if lost. “It’s like being in the sky,” she tells me with excitement in her voice. “It’s easy to forget that the sky isn’t flat, that the stars are actually light years apart. But it doesn’t feel cold or distant at all when rendered this way. It feels intimate.”
I lift my hand and gently sweep some hair out of her eyes. She pauses and looks at me, our eyes meeting, and it’s as if every atom in my body is thrumming with electricity. There’s something about her, some indefinable thing, that supersedes her lovely face and sexy-as-hell body and even her top-notch brain. It’s strange, because even at the height of my relationship with Raven, I could list logically all the reasons I enjoyed being with her—namely sex and shared interests—and loving her was more of a sustained choice than a feeling. But with Devi, it’s more than a choice or a feeling—it’s fact, just as much a universal fact as gravity, or the speed of light.
Because with Devi, it’s different. It’s like there’s something beyond the quantifiable, easy-to-name reasons she affects me. My pull to her is something above the sexual, above the intellectual, and maybe even above the emotional, and all of a sudden, I feel myself at the edge of a vast abyss. My stomach drops as I continue looking into those dark gold eyes, because what I feel for Devi is a thousand times stronger than anything I’ve ever felt, even after three years with Raven, and I’m scared. I’m scared by the intensity of my own feelings, and I’m scared that she doesn’t feel the same way. I’m scared that this speed of light feeling is going to blast a hole right through me, and I’ll be left gutted in a way that Raven never could have gutted me.
It’s this fear that makes me swallow and look away. “Do you want more wine?” I ask Devi, even though I know she’s barely touched the wine she already has.
“No, I’m good.” She puts a hand on my wrist. “Logan, this is more than I could have ever expected. This is the best fake date I’ve ever been on.”
Her words prick into me like needles.
Fake date.
Right. Because now we’re on location. But then why can’t it also be real? Why can’t something be real and planned? Real and recorded? Why can’t it be both?
I can’t help myself, I say the words pressing against the inside of my lips begging to be let out. “It’s not a fake date, Devi. Yes, we’re recording what happens later, but it’s real.” I plead with her with my eyes. “I want us...I mean—I want there to be an us. I want to take you on actual dates. I want this to be a real date.”
Her lips are parted ever so slightly, and they tremble now as she searches for a response, and oh my God, I am going to devour her mouth if I watch it any longer. With a quick glance around us, I grab her hand and pull her in between two of the zodiac canvases, and suddenly the noise dims a little and we are by ourselves, sandwiched between canvas and exposed brick. I lead her a little farther around the outer edge of the exhibit, until we’re near the back of the gallery space. Here, the narrow gaps between the canvases are covered with a cluster of gauzy fabric panels and the comparative dearth of lights in this corner gives an extra shroud of shadows. In other words, though only a few inches of fabric, canvas and paint separate us from the other people in the gallery, it won’t be easy to be seen, unless somebody took the trouble to look at the six-inch gap between the floor and the bottom of the canvas, but I honestly doubt that will happen.
Once we’re sufficiently hidden, I take her cup of wine and set it down a nearby ledge with mine, and drop my bag to the floor. Devi looks like she’s used this interval to compose herself somewhat.
“It can’t be a real date if we’re filming it,” she says, her chin rising slightly. “This is amazing, Logan, don’t get me wrong. No man has ever done anything like this with me. But once we turn on the camera, it’s different. You have to see that. Even if it’s not solely performative, it can’t be completely genuine.”
I’m already shaking my head. “I don’t think there has to be barrier between art and life. I don’t think capturing a moment makes it any less authentic.”
She gives me a sad smile. “But when that moment’s being captured to make money? When that moment is being made for sale? How can that not retroactively affect the moment itself?”
A tiny voice inside of me wonders if she has a point, but I push it aside. I want to prove to her that we can have it all—the realness and the camera—and that all it takes is a shift in perspective. After all, wasn’t that what she was trying to explain to me about The Hanged Man? Perspective?
I step closer to her. “Will you let me try to convince you?”
“Convince me of what?”
I lean forward and brace myself against the wall with my forearms, caging her between the wall and me. “Let me turn on the camera,” I say, using the tip of my nose to trace the line of her jaw. She shudders and goose bumps erupt everywhere on her skin. “Let me film us doing our thing tonight and show you how real it can be.”
“I’m not saying I don’t want to film,” she says. I take her earlobe between my teeth and she lets out a soft groan. “I just…”
“I know what you’re saying,” I breathe into her ear. “And what I’m saying is I want you to be open to the idea of it feeling real. I want you to forget about the camera while I’m touching you.”