My sister volunteered me for a modeling job while I was standing in her kitchen holding a stubborn jar of pasta sauce, and the woman behind the camera looked at me with such sudden concentration that I forgot what I had been saying.
Chapter 1
Nora Callahan had burst through Olivia’s front door without knocking, dropped a camera bag onto a dining chair, and announced that her entire portfolio project was ruined.
“My model canceled.”
Olivia barely looked up from her laptop.
“That sounds like a you problem.”
“He canceled forty-eight hours before the shoot. I already paid for the studio, borrowed the clothes, and scheduled the lighting equipment.”
“What kind of model?”
“Male. Tall. Comfortable enough in front of a camera not to look like he’s being held hostage.”
Olivia finally looked up.
Then she looked past Nora.
At me.
She pointed.
“Use Theo.”
I glanced behind me.
There was nobody there.
Nora did the same thing.
Then we both realized Olivia meant me.
At thirty, I had been blamed by my younger sister for plenty of things, but resembling a fashion model was new.
I had just come from the gym and was wearing gray joggers and a fitted black T-shirt. Nora looked me over once, not flirtatiously, but with the clinical focus of someone examining a piece of furniture she was considering buying.
“Theo.”
“That is still my name.”
She stepped closer.
“Turn sideways.”
I stared at Olivia.
She smiled sweetly.
“Congratulations. You’ve been discovered.”
“I am a physical therapist.”
“Models can have day jobs.”
“I have patients tomorrow morning.”
Nora raised both hands.
“One test. Forty-five minutes.”
“You originally said you needed someone for an entire project.”
“I am trying not to frighten the emergency talent.”
Olivia laughed.
“I want ten percent.”
“You discovered your own brother,” Nora said.
“I recognize value.”
I should have refused.
I had known Nora for almost three years as Olivia’s best friend. She was the woman who arrived at my sister’s house at ten at night carrying Thai food. The woman who turned board games into federal litigation. The woman who sometimes appeared after modeling jobs looking polished enough to belong on a billboard.
But that afternoon, when she lifted her camera, she changed.
The frantic energy vanished.
Her voice became calm.
“Stand there.”
I obeyed.
“Don’t pose.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You are standing like someone is about to accuse you of tax fraud.”
“That might be because you’ve spent fifteen minutes analyzing my shoulders.”
Nora smiled behind the camera.
“Good. Keep that expression.”
The shutter clicked.
Then again.
She adjusted my position by inches, told me where to shift my weight, and repeatedly ordered me to stop “trying to look like a model.”
Every time I deliberately arranged my face, she lowered the camera.
“Stop performing.”
“I thought that was the point.”
“No. The point is for the photograph to look like you aren’t performing.”
“That seems dishonest.”
“Welcome to photography.”
The first time I became genuinely annoyed with her, she took three pictures in rapid succession.
“There.”
“What?”
“That.”
She turned the screen toward me.
The man in the photograph looked nothing like the stiff idiot I had imagined. He looked relaxed, confident, and slightly amused.
It was undeniably me.
Just not a version I had ever seen.
Nora glanced between me and the screen.
“You’re irritatingly usable.”
“That’s the nicest insult I’ve received this year.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
Olivia abandoned us after twenty minutes.
That should have made everything less awkward.
Instead, I became aware of Nora in a way I hadn’t been before.
Without my sister talking over us, every instruction seemed more direct. Nora asked me to look beside the camera, then into the lens, then toward her.
When she approached to adjust my shirt collar, she stopped before touching me.
“Can I?”
The question surprised me.
I nodded.
Her fingers briefly straightened the fabric near my shoulder.
Then she stepped back.
It was completely professional.
That was why I noticed it.
Nora noticed me noticing.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t give me that mysterious older-brother look.”
“This is my face.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
By the end of the forty-five minutes, she was sitting on Olivia’s dining table scrolling through photographs.
The jokes gradually stopped.
I leaned beside her.
“Bad?”
“No.”
She enlarged one image.
Then another.
“These are better than what I planned.”
That caught my attention.
“Because of me?”
She looked up.
“Let’s not ruin this by letting you develop confidence.”
Then, more quietly, she added, “Partly.”
The original project, she explained, had been meant as a simple fashion series.
Now she wanted something more connected.
Different locations.
Different clothing.
Images that looked like fragments of the same story.
“A story about what?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“That sounds reassuring.”
She ignored me.
“How attached are you to having free evenings this week?”
That was the exact moment I should have remembered she was simply my sister’s friend, and I was simply helping her solve a problem. Instead, I looked at the excitement she was trying to hide and realized I wanted to see what she could create if I stayed involved.
“How many evenings?”
“Potentially several.”
“That sounds intentionally vague.”
“Creatively flexible.”
I laughed.
Nora immediately lifted the camera and took another photograph.
“See?” she said. “That’s why I need you.”
I agreed before thinking too hard about what else that sentence might mean.
