“IT guy?” He ties off the plastic bag I hand him and stuffs it into the bin holding the other things I ruined today.
I shake my head. “My workplace nemesis. He’ll stop at nothing to destroy me.”
The back doors shut with a satisfying series of thuds and clicks. “Poor Paul.”
“No ‘poor Paul.’ Paul sucks. The only crime I committed was starting at A & G the same day he did. For that grave offense, he sniffs next to me in the break room and goes, ‘Was that you?’ then slinks away like the little snake he is. He does that, like, once a month.”
He removes my neoprene bag from my shoulder with a cough-laugh. “No, Paul, my guy.”
“Right?” I climb into the passenger seat while Ethan secures my bag in the cabin.
“I was inclined to take his side,” he says with a grunt, “because I know you’re secretly a monster, but I’ve flipped. I’m on your side now.”
“You’re the worst person I know,” I tell him in the flattest voice I can muster.
Ethan rests a hand on my headrest as he climbs into the driver’s seat from behind. “You don’t believe that for a second,” he tells me before cranking the ignition switch.
We drive north on the highway that snakes along Lake Superior. Our van pokes out from the trees to view the shoreline every so often. There’s some light weekender traffic, but not enough to ruin the drive. We’re quiet for a bit, our chatter replaced by the music pouring from the stereo. I roll down the window to stretch my arm into the breeze like I’m in a road trip movie, but the mood is spoiled by the wind’s low, obtrusive throb against the glass.
A familiar feeling grips my throat. Something like homesickness. Nostalgia. Longing. It all mixes together in that wistful cocktail of feeling like you’re losing grip of the moment even as you’re experiencing it.
“Did I see a camera back there earlier?” I ask. “And your toe running shoes? I thought you burned those, by the way.”
“You mean when you were traipsing around a moving vehicle, like a drunk girl on a Spirit flight, and then got sick, like…a drunk girl on a Spirit flight? Yes. There’s a camera and barefoot toe shoes back there. I can’t get rid of them. They’re the only kind I can run in with my plantar fasciitis.”
His eyes shoot daggers at my straightening legs, so instead of standing, I reach behind his seat, groping around for the guitar strap poking out of a nylon camera bag. When I tug on it, a Nikon swings between our bucket seats and plops into my lap.
“Careful,” he intones. “I spent way too much money on that thing.”
“Nah. These babies can take a beating. You should see the kinds of stuff my parents put theirs through.” The weight of his camera sinks into my hands. It feels nice. It’s been ages since I’ve broken out my sturdy DSLR camera, but it’s also been ages since I was in a moment I felt compelled to keep.
I zoom in on Ethan until his profile is perfectly framed by the blur of sun-soaked trees whipping past. I adjust the shutter speed and curl my feet under me like a bird perched on a fence, repositioning my body so that the daylight floods his features.
“What are you doing?” he asks, curious but not exactly surprised.
I gently press the shutter and watch Ethan’s eyes come into focus in the viewfinder. “Keeping this for later,” I answer.
He shakes his head like I’m hopeless but he smiles anyway. It bursts across the tiny screen like a solar flare. It’s exactly the moment I wanted. I press down my index finger and hear the burst of images the camera captures, and know without looking that one of them isit. One of those photos isexactlyEthan at this exact moment, and even once he leaves, I’ll have a piece of him frozen in time, forever.
“There. Moment captured.”
“Good,” he responds, sneaking a glance at me swiping through his camera roll. “Searching for nudes?”
“I don’t need to look for those. You’ve sent me plenty.” I don’t bother looking up.
He rears back but keeps his eyes on the road. “Are you referring to the medical photo I sent of a very troubling bruiseyouinflicted onme?”
I lower the camera. “If you pick up a woman from behind in a crowd of strangers, she’s going to struggle. It would’ve been insane if Ihadn’tkicked you in the junk.”
“You missed my junk—thank god—but your boot turned my inner thighgreen.”
“I know. I saw it in the nude you sent me.”
“That wasnota nude!” His laugh turns his cheeks bright crimson.
There’s something that always shakes loose in Ethan when he laughs like that—that laughter that starts in his belly and bursts from his chest like a firework. It’s as though, for the briefest moment, the small part of him he keeps for himself is on full display, and it’s magnificent.
I shake my head, hiding my own reddening face with his camera. “There was a sampling of balls. Balls equal nude, dude.”
