Ten Things I Hate

Unless Pat had told her about the incident in the bedroom that completely threw me off guard, I wasn't sure how Rachel would have known about it because I didn't tell her. And when I got a phone call two days later from her, she demanded to know what had happened. "I know something happened," she said in that matter-of-fact tone she always did when she thought there was more to a story than I was letting on. "You were in a bedroom, with Pat. And he kept saying what an idiot he was to have done what he did."
"Rach, I'm being serious, I've already told you everything. Nothing happened. We were talking, he was being weird and then I looked up and his face was right in front of my, like he was..." I trailed off, knowing she had heard it all before, but mainly because I couldn't bring myself to tell her what I really thought was going to happen.
"Like he was what, Sophia?" Rachel asked forecfully. "What was he going to do?" I took a deep breath, not sure if I even wanted to admit it to myself.
"Like he was going to kiss me, Rach. I could have sworn he was going to kiss me, and then he just got up and walked away."

Needless to say, Rachel told Garrett, and then Garrett asked me about it. All he said to me was, "You'd better get on that, we leave in two weeks to record." I shrugged off his comment, I wasn't going to get on anything at all. The band wanted me to take some shots of them practicing in the Kirches basement, just as a warm up and for me to get used to taking shots of them in such intimate situations, as John said he wanted a complete account of their first tour, not just the live shots. I agreed, carrying my camera and its several lenses to the practice in order to capture the intimacy John wanted. When I knocked, a smiling Pat answered the door. "You know you don't have to knock."
"I still will. Did everyone else walk over or something?" I asked, having noticed none of their cars in the driveway. Pat frowned at me.
"Uhh, no. You realise you're about a half hour early?" he said, and I realised I'd been set up. I was going to murder all of them, but I had a feeling that Garrett and Rachel had been the main driving force behind this scheme. I hid my anger however, just shrugging it off.
"Oh, I must have got mixed up. How's the light in the basement?" I asked, lifting my bag off of the floor and attempting to swing it over my shoulder. Pat grabbed it off of me, taking it from me as if it didn't weight a gram and carried it for me instead.
"If that's meant to mean something to me, it doesn't." Pat laughed, opening the door to the basement for me. "After you, ladies first, all that crap." I rolled my eyes and walked down the stairs ahead of him.
"So what the hell am I supposed to do for half an hour?" I asked, looking around the basement as Pat turned all of the lights on. He sat at his drum kit, tapping the sticks lightly on one of the drums.
"I dunno, set it all up?"
"It's a hand held camera Pat, it doesn't need setting up." I was distressed by how awkward the sitaution was becoming. I sat on the couch and sighed, fiddling with my camera to take a few test shots. "Look pretty," I told him, taking a few shots in sequence as Pat pulled various faces. I wanted to ask him about last week, and all of the weird things he had said, but I didn't know whether to bring it up. I decided to leave it be, it wasn't worth starting an argument (or being told something I didn't want to hear).

I began to flick through all of the photos I had stored on the memory card of the camera, deleting the ones that didn't immediately grab me. This way, there would be more room for photos of the band practicing and generally being idiots. I knew what kind of photos John liked, the ones where you didn't know you were being snapped in a spotaneous moment and it turned out wonderfully. There were a lot of memories on here, mostly from 8123 and Rachel and I taking photos of ourselves at my house. I deleted most of them, simply because I would always be able to get a photo with Rachel, anytime I wanted. It was then that I noticed Pat was watching me, his drum sticks settled on his kit and he was looking at me through his hair.
"What?" I asked and when I spoke, my voice came out quite a lot shyer than I'd anticipated. He didn't look away like he usually did, instead he lifted his gaze even more towards me. He stayed silent, smiled at me almost knowingly (although I wasn't sure what there was to know) and played the opening beats to one of the band's songs. I caught him doing this several times and each time I'd act even more shy than I did the first time it happened. The last time I looked up and saw him looking at me, he spoke.
"I wanna look at the pictures, please?" he asked, holding his hand out for the camera. I got up and handed it to him, just as John walked through the door. He looked back between Pat and I, before waggling his eyebrows at me. I rolled my eyes, shoving him a little and grinning. "Hey John."
"Hey losers, what's going on?" he asked, sitting on the arm of the couch. Pat stayed silent while John and I talked, mostly about me joining their "tour crew", as John liked to call it. "Have you told you parents yet?"
"Yeah, I've told them. Mom was... oddly pleased. She said she knew I'd choose it sooner or later. Dad's really mad, he thinks I'm making a huge mistake," I sighed, leaning back onto the couch cushions.
"For what it's worth, I think this is what you should be doing, Soph. You take amazing photographs and you're going to get paid for it... Plus, you're with all of us." John curled his arm around my shoulders and I looked up at him, a smile on my lips.
"Soph! Here's your camera!" Pat interrupted, leaning over the base drum to hand me my equipment. I got up and took it from him, almost worried he'd drop it with his skinny arms. I went to check my phone to see the time, but it was flat, so I asked John. He told me it was 3.20, and that everyone else would be arriving in ten minutes so I didn't need to be impatient.

It wouldn't be much later that night, as I was going through the photos that I'd notice five of me sitting on that couch in the Kirches basement, four toned in black and white, one of me smiling at someone unknown but tall in colour. I could see the slim gold shape of the edge of cymbal on the left side, and I realised it had been taken by Pat. They had all been taken by Pat, juding by the positoning. I remembered my phone had gone flat, and upon plugging it into my charger and switching it back on, I noticed I had a new text message.

How does it feel to be in front of the camera, instead of hidden behind?
From: Pat

To: Pat
You take nice photos.

Thanks :) I personally think it's the subject that really makes a photo.
From: Pat

I must have read that message several times over the course of the night between uploading the photos to my editing program and sleeping. Just as I had switched off my light, taking advantage of my brain's relapse from its torrential thoughts to attempt some sleep, my phone lit the room and buzzed on my nightstand. I picked it up, the screen displaying 1 new message[/n] proudly.

I like to think that you're different. Or that you're different from what I expected. I don't know what's happened to make you suddenly change your opinion of me, but it's nice. We got lost... or at least what I felt got lost somewhere. I guess there's no point hiding it already. You already probably know.
From: Pat

I wasn't sure if I had read it correctly the seventh time I read it, and it was hard to believe it the next day, and the next day after that. I never replied to that message, and sometimes I wonder today that if I had, things would be different right now.