Eddie's Work

"Work?" she asks.

Eddie blushes, reaching back into his bag and pulling out his baby. A camera, DSLR and top of the line. Eddie never goes anywhere without it and if no one is around he is nearly constantly snapping photos and if people are, he is constantly looking for photos to snap.

"Oh pretty!" Rachel exclaims, clapping her hands together, "Fuck that's a beautiful camera. Is that the new model?"

Eddie shrugs, but he's just being modest, "I got it about two weeks ago. A going away present."

"Well it is gorgeous," she coos, then to my shock she reaches around and yanks a matching model out of hers, "I could only afford the one from four years ago. Had to save all my pennies from the grocery store I worked at to buy it too. But it's worth it. She's my baby."

She angles it up and points it at Eddie, "Say cheese."

The best he manages is "Uhh, " before the camera clicks and she slides it smoothly back into her bag.

"We can work on that," she smiles slyly, "And I can help you. Provided you let me play with yours. I mean I really want to play with it, Eddie. It's so pretty."

"Yeah," he stammers, quickly jamming it back into his bag, "Thanks. Um, yours is nice too."

"No it isn't," she replies quickly, "But thanks for the compliment. She was the most I could afford and I do love her, but there are so many features that yours has that mine absolutely does not. Oh! Since that's the newest model does it have..."

Now I'm cutting off here, because frankly I'm worried I'm going to start spelling things wrong. But I will say that the last thing I expected in this world was for Rachel to nerd out and start saying technical things that I couldn't even begin to understand, technical language so complicated that it left me behind in the dust.

It didn't leave Eddie, though, who gave back as good as he got. Launching into a discussion about this feature and that with an animatedness to himself that made his face brighten up far more than I'd ever seen it before.

With a guy like Eddie the real danger is that he's going to pretend to be all high and mighty about things. Real snooty asshole gatekeeper type coming right out of things as just knowing more and thinking less of her for it at the same time.

But to my shock he didn't do any of that. And it wasn't that Rachel knew more about him because she clearly didn't. It's more that he was patient explaining things when she didn't know them. He didn't judge. He didn't talk down. He just... was a decent person.

Which isn't a high bar, but might as well be a skyscraper for him.

I started to see it, to understand. Eddie was happy letting the conversation meander because this was a conversation he didn't really get to have. Outside of maybe one teacher in high school who introduced him to photography in the first place, Eddie was getting a chance to actually talk with someone who was just as excited as he was about taking photos, and that brought out a side of him that I didn't truly know was in there.

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