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“Did you find any?”
“A few.” I lifted the Leica so he could see it better. “My baby here has helped.”
“Nice.”
His attention shifted to the parking lot behind me and before he could say goodbye I blurted out, “Yeah, um, I got this lens the other day.”
Daniel’s gaze fell back to my face. “Yeah? Is it special?”
“Uh-huh. Super rare.” I cleared my throat. “I’ve been curious about it for ages.”
“Well, that’s awesome.” Daniel smiled and wiped his sweaty forehead with the hem of his shirt, revealing his toned stomach. “What’s special about it?”
I swallowed thickly, my brain spinning, caught by the blond fuzz leading to the waistband of his shorts. I rallied. “It’s a great lens for pushing in low light.”
I babbled on, afraid if I shut up, he might say goodbye, and who knew when I’d see him again? “I subscribe to a couple of photography magazines, and over the years I’ve read a lot about this lens, so I couldn’t believe my luck when I found it at Pawn It.”
Daniel nodded, a small smile turning up the corners of his lips, his eyes lingering on my mouth. “Cool.”
“Um, one review called the lens ‘magical.’”
Creamy and organic, too, but I didn’t want to say that, because now that I was standing in front of Daniel again for the first time in what felt like forever, I couldn’t help but think of the fantasies I’d had about his “organic cream.” Heat crept up my sweaty neck, and I busied myself fiddling with the f-stop settings on the lens. “And ‘romantic,’” I muttered.
“A romantic lens? I had no idea.”
I cleared my throat and gave up. I was such a dork. “I’m more interested in the magical side of it. I mean, to use a word like that, you know, I should expect to see fairies when I develop these rolls or something.”
Shut up, Peter, you are lame!
Daniel tweaked one of my curls. “Magical,” he teased. “Like you.”
My eyes flicked up to his face. He smiled knowingly. The lock of hair he’d tugged quivered, and my scalp tingled. I shivered despite the heat. “Huh?”
“You keep popping up when I least expect it. Out of nowhere. Like magic.”
I could say the same for him. Instead, I murmured, “Yeah? I guess we do keep running into each other. It’s weird.”
“We do,” Daniel agreed, his voice going soft.
Everything around him seemed to tighten, like a camera focusing and clarifying, until I could almost see the air bouncing off his skin in little sparks. My heart tumbled.
“I wonder why?” Daniel asked under his breath.
But my mind supplied an answer.
The universe was trying to tell us something. If my lens was a sign that the summer without Adam was going to be good, and my lens led me to the park tonight, and the park produced Daniel…
That was ridiculous. I forced myself to stop thinking like an idiot with a crush. I was just searching for any reason to believe that the feeling ricocheting around in my chest was fate.
Stop it! You have a boyfriend! Sort of. Kinda.
An awkward silence grew, and I wanted to sink into the ground.
All of our prior meetings flitted through my mind, including the time Daniel admitted he found me attractive and offered to kiss me just to “get it over with” so we could both move on. I swallowed hard. At the time, I’d told him I had a boyfriend, but if he made the same offer now…
“That camera looks confusing. I wouldn’t know where to start with it. I’ve just got a Nikon that used to be my dad’s.”
I leapt at his effort. I could talk cameras no problem. “Cool! What model?”
