The 14th I love her. Everything. The way she smells. Tastes. Feels. Jesus . The way she feels. The first time. It was an early-morning thing. I was coming out of the bathroom. Jess was in the hall. We were both still half-asleep. I don't know why she was sleeping over--she wasn't babysitting, we were way past that, I can't remember, it wasn't that unusual, she's always been at our place a lot. She put her hands on my shoulders and backed me into the bathroom, kicked closed the door. The whole thing lasted about fifteen seconds. You took advantage of my morning wood, I say, later, months later, when I've regained my ability to speak. Lucky boy, she says. Lucky boy . We're lying in my bed this time, a map of the world pinned to the wall above us, a million other places we could exist. I'm rubbing the lace on her bra, trying to take things slow, so she knows that I can. The lace is scratchy against my thumb. Doesn't this bug you? I ask. Not really. You get used to it. I kiss her, there, beneath the lace, so now it's scratching my cheek. She puts her hand on my belt buckle, gives a little tug, and I can't help it, I moan just thinking about what's next. Your parents would be mad if they knew, Jess says. They expect more from me. More than this? She laughs. Her lips are gorgeous. Her teeth white and perfect. Perfect. She undoes the top button of my fly. And Eric, she says. He'd be very mad. My jaw tightens, back teeth clenched. Yeah, I say. Whatever. She undoes another button. And whatever you do, you can't tell Eli. Because he'd tell Eric. For sure. I know, I say. I'm not stupid. I know Eli. Jess lifts her head off the pillow, opens my mouth with hers, slips her tongue inside, long black hair sweeping my face, the smell of summer in winter. I like it with you, she says. She works the last button loose and slides her hand inside my jeans. With you I don't have to be a porn star. With you, I can just be myself. Her hand. Jesus, I love her hand. The 21st Mia and Frankie are well into an impromptu photo shoot when Frankie asks her if Michael, her husband of nineteen years, is the first guy she really loved. Mia tells the girl no. Without lowering her camera, she tells her how the first boy had been trembling when he whispered he loved her on the stone bridge that crossed Black Bear Creek. "Actually?" Frankie says. "Trembling?" "Like a leaf in a storm. We were young. Fifteen." He'd walked her home for weeks before he worked up the nerve to hold her hand. Mia rotates the ring on her lens, snaps the girl sharply into focus. A beauty. A lioness. Broad shoulders, amber eyes, beautiful lips, crazy, springy hair--the deepest shade of red. Behind her a wall of old north-facing windows, winter creeping in around the puttied edges. What Mia doesn't tell Frankie about the night on the bridge is how that first I love you collapsed her life before into a trinket. How one beat back her heart had been a quiet thing, hung in her chest like an un-struck gong. Instead, she dips her camera so she and the girl are eye to eye. "Hot chocolate?" she says. "A cup of coffee?" "Nah." Frankie flips her phone over on the settee. "I'm good." The blue rectangle shines bright on the purple velvet, the fabric dark as a bruise in the low northern light that floods the front of the studio and lets Mia shoot without a flash. Frankie puffs a stray curl away from her face. Over the last couple of years she's grown out her hair and found some magic product to tame it. Today, her curls lie long and loose, only a hint of wild, and there's a new gleam at her nostril--the nose ring she hasn't told her parents about. It's the reason she came to the studio, to show Mia first and build up the courage to go home. Mia's already reassured her that the new piercing looks good--and it does--and sure, her parents might be upset, but they'll get used to it. Although honestly, Mia's not certain they will. "So." Frankie glances up from her phone. "What happened with the trembler?" Mia tells her how she loved the boy back, so unguardedly, so completely, so willingly, and the tragedy of him being a fundamentalist Christian who didn't believe in premarital sex. How intense it all was, the two of them falling deeper and deeper into a frustrating fumble of love. "God," Frankie says, "that sounds horrible." "It was." Mia is surprised by the camera's tremor. She presses the body more firmly against her brow; old-fashioned, she knows, but she rarely uses the screen. "After three years," she says, "all I wanted to do was, well, you know, fuck." " Mia! " It is their best moment together, and Mia has caught it, the girl leaning so joyously toward her, laughing, her body draped over her knees, the ring in her nose a gold glint in the soft grey of the studio windows. And then, after she's sitting straight again, she asks so shyly, "Well, did you?" "No," Mia says. "We broke up. He was pure when he left me. Both of us pure and broken-hearted and terribly, terribly horny." "That's a sad story." Frankie's shoulders lift as she laughs. "The saddest part," Mia says, "was afterwards we could not find a way to be friends." Frankie stares off out the window at the sternness of a Canadian winter. In her hand, her phone tumbles, darkened screen flipping to dusty-pink case. "How about you?" Mia asks. "You met anyone special?" The girl casts a long stare into the camera. Light framing light, she lets Mia in, the shutter clicks, a flicker of black, and Frankie snaps back bright at the centre. She brushes her nose, and her auburn mane quivers. "No," she says. "Not really." Excerpted from We All Love the Beautiful Girls by Joanne Proulx All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
