What a Girl Wants by Lindsey Kelk Read Free Book Online Page A

his. ‘So … I was taking photos in Hawaii. For a magazine.’
    ‘You were taking photos?’ he asked, finally leaving his penis alone. ‘Like a photographer?’
    ‘Just like a photographer,’ I nodded and looked at my hands. How did I keep this as brief as possible? ‘I didn’t just decide to go to Hawaii. I went to take pictures of this man for
Gloss
magazine. He owns a fancy department store in New York and he’s retiring so they were doing a feature.’
    ‘And you were the photographer?’ Charlie crossed his arms, making his biceps pop. ‘
You
took the pictures?’
    ‘I took the pictures,’ I said, not looking at his arms at all. ‘I was the photographer.’
    ‘But you’re not a photographer,’ he pointed out. ‘You’re a creative director at an ad agency.’
    ‘Technically, I’m more of a photographer than a creative director right now,’ I replied. ‘You know I was always interested in photography.’
    ‘Do I?’
    ‘Anyway, they really like the photos – the magazine, and Al, the guy I was taking the photos of. So now he wants me to go to Milan and take some more photos for a project he’s working on. I guess it’s a career retrospective or something?’
    ‘Woah.’ Charlie breathed out, sitting down on the edge of the sofa. ‘That’s bloody amazing. Mental but amazing.’
    ‘I can see how you would get to mental,’ I said, wiggling one big toe and then the other. ‘But I really love taking photos and it turns out I’m good at it.’
    ‘Are you going to go?’ he asked. ‘To Milan?’
    I scrunched up my face and shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Do you want to go?’
    ‘I want a cup of tea,’ I answered, standing up and walking straight into the kitchen. I knew his flat as well as I knew him and before he had even followed me, I had two cups on the counter, his instant boil kettle bubbling away.
    ‘You always want a cup of tea,’ Charlie said, opening the fridge and taking out the milk. ‘But do you really want to do it? This photo thing?’
    ‘I honestly don’t know.’ I couldn’t look at him while I spoke. Why was this so hard? I placed a teabag in each cup and felt my eyes prickle with the tears of an awkward conversation.
    ‘When do you have to make a decision?’ he asked. This was why he was a great account manager, always on the details. ‘When would you have to go? Do you know how long you’d be away?’
    ‘Soon,’ I said, splashing my moo juice onto the kitchen top. ‘And I’d be away for a little bit.’
    ‘And how long is a little bit?’ He put the milk back in the fridge and took his tea. ‘Three days? Four?’
    I stirred my tea with a teaspoon that didn’t match any of his other cutlery and watched the milk swirl away into an evenly coloured cuppa.
    ‘I’m not sure.’
    I was lying. I did know. Agent Veronica had sent me several long and detailed emails about the job, each with an increasing degree of foul language. Agent Veronica did not believe in mincing words.
    The job would take at least three months, probably more. The rest of July, August, September and some of October. I could easily be away until Christmas. Stood there in Charlie’s kitchen in my pants, holding a hot cup of tea, everything seemed to slow down to a complete standstill and I couldn’t quite seem to find the right words to tell him that. So I didn’t tell him anything. It was a serious problem I appeared to have developed.
    ‘Sounds like an amazing opportunity,’ Charlie said, heaping mounds of white sugar into his mug. I wasn’t allowed to put sugar in Charlie’s tea, I never added enough. ‘I mean, you never went travelling or anything after uni. It might be fun.’
    ‘It’s not just as easy as packing a bag and getting on a plane.’ I breathed in and felt the world shift back to a normal speed, rattling off the excuses I’d been telling myself, every time the tiniest buzz of excitement swelled up in my stomach. ‘I don’t have anywhere to live, I don’t