Sherry looked across the food court and saw Adam. She worked at the pizza-by-slice stand. He worked at the game/movie/CD store on the other side of the mall. Sherry was 20, and she figured Adam was a year or two older. Two weeks ago, she'd come back to work after missing a week due to the flu. She visited the store on her lunch break and saw him, and since then she'd made a habit of visiting at the end of her shift when she wasn't closing, just to get his attention.
Now he was chatting Donna up at the cell phone kiosk where she worked. What was she doing? From that distance, she looked like she was unbuttoning her blouse. Whatever she was saying to him, his body language made it clear that he was interested. Damn it, Sherry had brought him enough food that she should been getting his attention. Donna was even going to have his number now. Sherry tried to think of a way to get him to notice her. At that moment, business picked up and she didn't have a chance to give it any thought until her shift was over. When she left, she deliberately walked past the cell phone kiosk to look for Donna. In her mind she wanted to confront Donna, but she was relieved to see that she wasn't there. When she got to the game store, she saw two guys, not Adam, talking. One of them seemed to recognize her. Crap, she'd been there too often. She needed a good hand to play, but she needed to leave now before they started to think she was creepy.
As she walked to her car, she remembered one of the phone features, where you can tap your phones and share things. Her phone had that feature, but she rarely had an opportunity to use it. On the drive home, she remembered the image of Donna unbuttoning her blouse and had an idea. She'd take some selfies, wait for Adam to stop by and casually mention the sharing feature. If he had it, she'd share the pictures with him. Now she just needed the pictures.
At home, she took selfies in various states of undress and wearing clothes of varying degrees of sexiness. She wasn't satisfied with any of the pictures. She thought about the social media sites that she frequented. She only looked for the men's pictures, but she had to scroll past women's pictures to get to them. How did the women get their pictures to look so good? Obviously, someone else was taking them, but where did they find someone to do it and not get embarrassed? She'd have her answer soon enough.
Sherry was off work the next day. She walked past her younger brother Stevie's room. She saw him sitting at his computer and overheard him on his cell phone. "Yeah, I don't have a lot going on in my classes, so I decided this is a good time to ramp up my job search. ... Mostly fast food places and call centers, but there's also L'Image Coucher. ... No, I don't need a portfolio. This is just scheduling and taking payments." He was talking about a photography studio Sherry had passed a couple times in a mall on the other side of town from where she worked. They called it glamor photography, but she knew by way of her friends' older sisters and cousins that they also did boudoir photography.
Sherry watched the first of five episodes of a reality show that she'd recorded that week. When it was over, she went up to Stevie's room. He was looking at the computer, but he wasn't holding his phone any more. "Hey, Stevie!"
"Steve, not Stevie. I haven't answered to that since seventh grade."
"You answered just now."
"That's 'cause I was hoping to avoid this conversation."
"Fine. You don't want help getting a job, that's your problem."
"I don't like pizza."
"Good, 'cause it'd get uncomfortable if we worked in the same place. Too much time together. I heard you talking about L'Image Coucher."
"You know someone who works there?"
"No, that's not what I had in mind. I want to send a couple sexy pictures to a guy I met at the mall. I tried taking them myself, but I'm no photographer. If you want to build a portfolio, I could use some help."
Steve looked at her and shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. "Okay, why not. You got clothes picked out?"
"No, you can help me with that too."
They went into Sherry's bedroom. She opened her closet door. She pulled out the dress she'd worn to her senior prom. "Think it still fits?" Steve asked.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Sherry replied indignantly. "I park on the far side of the mall just to make sure that the pizza doesn't stay on my hips."
"I wasn't talking getting fat," Steve said. "You may be the same height as the first time you wore it, but you haven't stopped growing in other areas." He cupped his hands under his breasts and lifted up as if he were a woman.
Sherry was taken aback. "Oh. Um, ... thanks for noticing. Lemme try it on." She took it off the hanger and thought perhaps there was more to her brother than met the eye. His high school acne had finally gone away, but he looked more like their mother in his cheekbones than their dad in the musculature. He was an inch shorter than Sherry, but like Edna in
The Incredibles
and Hetty on
NCIS: Los Angeles
, he had a demeanor that conveyed his expertise, and he didn't even need dorky-looking glasses to pull off the look.
She hadn't even lifted the hem of her T-shirt when Steve turned his back on her. After a minute, he asked, "Is it okay to look?"
"Yeah, go ahead." She was still straightening it out. "Okay, I can already tell it doesn't fit."
Steve added, "It's not a good color anyway. I mean it looks good on you, but it's too close to your hair color for what you're trying to do. If your hair were any blacker, it'd say, 'Nevermore!' You need something that's at least a little lighter than your hair to accentuate it when it falls over your shoulders." He pointed to a shorter, bright blue dress that was next to it in the closet. "What about that one?" he suggested. Sherry pulled it out. Once again, Steve turned his back on her. When she gave her okay, he looked and said, "Well, that doesn't fit either, but I like the way it doesn't fit."
Sherry looked in the mirror. The plunging neckline revealed almost a full line of cleavage, and the dress itself barely came down to her knees. "Perfect!" she exclaimed. "I'll get my cell phone."
"No," Steve said. "You don't make a professional portfolio with a cell phone. Lemme get my camera." He came back with his digital camera. Sherry remembered that he'd gotten a free ride for his freshman year in college as the top prize in a statewide photography contest, and he'd used that camera for his entry. She took the opportunity to straighten out the bed and move the clutter away from it.
"Where should I stand? Or sit?" she asked.
"We'll start with how you're standing right now," he said. He positioned himself so that her bed was in the shot and snapped it.
Sherry didn't wait for instruction. She pulled the straps off her shoulder, making the neckline reach almost down to her navel. "How's this?" she asked.
While he noticed the cleavage, his attention was focused more on her shoulders. "You look like some of the R&B album covers from Uncle Jerry's record collection."
"I'll change," she said.
"No, it's perfect for what we're doing," Steve explained. "Put it back up. Now tug it back again, but leave your fingers on it so it looks like I caught you in the middle of it." She did, and he snapped the picture. "Now go ahead and do it." She tugged the sleeves a little further and let the dress drop to the point where the tops of her breasts weren't quite exposed. He snapped that picture as well.
"Should I get on the bed now?" she asked.
"Don't lie down yet; just sit on the edge." Sherry sat on the foot of the bed. "On the side," he told her.
She moved around. So far, her dress had stayed in place. She sat on the edge of the bed as he instructed. She held her hair up. "How's this?" she asked.
"That's a good pose, but I need to change the filter. The sun's coming through the window behind you, and it's almost like a silhouette."
"Then I'll just move to the other side of the bed."
"No!" Steve shouted. "Someone might look through the window and see you."
"What do I care? I'm still decent. More or less."
"I got it," Steve said. "Lift your hair again." She did, and he took the picture.
Sherry slipped her arms out of the sleeves. The falling material covered her breasts, as if straps had come undone on both sides. Steve gulped and took that shot as well. "Should I let it down?" she asked.
"Uh, I dunno. Do you really wanna show pictures like that to a guy you don't know very well?"
"I want to have good pictures ready for when I
do
know him well."
His voice went up. "Well ... okay." She let the dress fall to her waist. Her boobs were in plain view. "Put your hands on the sides, like you're trying to keep the dress from falling down." She did, and he took that picture from several angles as well.
Sherry thought, "I'm going to have Adam, even if I have to go full-on nude for him. Either Steve will take them like any nineteen-year-old horn dog, or he'll get all brotherly on me and try to protect my reputation, and I'll just have to use my own pictures after all." She asked him, "Did you get a good shot?"
Steve looked in the viewer and confirmed, "Yeah. It looks like you're trying to keep it on instead of off, and you did a great job of pretending to be embarrassed about it."