When I do, I hold my phone and wait for the first update.
I should have been there. I should have been on a plane the second she hit thirty-six weeks. I knew this was coming. I just didn't know it was coming today.
“Hold it there. Yes. Right there. Don't move.”
I try to hold still while the camera flashes in my face, but it’s hard to feel relaxed when I’m standing here in compression shorts that leave absolutely nothing to the imagination.
Sure, I've taken my fair share of promo shots over the last few years, but nothing has ever been this intense. Normally, it's a dark set with a lot of neon lights and I'm in my gear.
This is an entirely different experience.
“Great, Zach. Now, can you turn your chin to look at the stadium in the distance?” As I follow her instructions, the wind picks up. “Oh, this is perfect.”
Click. Click. Click.
“You're a real natural,” Ashley, the photographer, says. After two days on this shoot, I know she's just saying it. I'm not a natural. I'm stiff. My body was made for the field, not for posing.
“Okay, now I know you're cold–”
“You got that right,” I mutter. Between the wind cutting through downtown Rome and the fact that this vest has the insulation quality of tissue paper, I’m freezing my ass off.
Ashley drops her camera to the side and slumps. “I need you to relax. So just for a second, move your shoulders, close your eyes, and think about your favorite thing.”
Okay. Eyes closed.
I smile when I start to think about my favorite thing.
Her.
Always.
That little smile she gives me when she sees me for the first time in a long time...
How she laughs at every single one of my jokes...
The way her hair cascades down her shoulders when I take that bow out...
And to save my own dignity in these tiny shorts, I’ve got to stop thinking about her. Especially not about the last time I spoke to her. It’s been a week, and I’m still not over it.
We haven’t spoken since because she’s busy with Mike, Olivia, and their new baby boy, Harris.
I wish I could be there, too, not just to meet my godson, but because it would just be another excuse to see my girl, who's still in denial that she'smy girl.
“That's perfect. Keep thinking about whatever you're thinking. It's great.”
Well, since she's given me permission, I start to think about where Honey could be in the world. She was close enough to Mike and Olivia’s that she could get there in a few days, but thatdoesn’t say much considering Atlanta is the busiest airport in the country.
Honey could be pretty much anywhere if she got a flight. What if she’s done a Bella Summers and moved to London just to get away from me?
“Do you need a break?”
My brow furrows and I open my eyes. “No?”
“Oh, you were looking a little stressed.”
“Tell me about it,” I mutter.
“Okay,” Ashley says. “That's the solo sequence done. Let's take lunch, and then we'll bring Whit up here too.”
