“And I don’t think I’m going to stop wanting to be your friend,” she said softly. “I haven’t yet. Even when you’ve hurt me, I still missed you.”
She felt his chest rise and fall slowly.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said quietly into her hair. “I am so sorry.”
She nodded, resting against him. He made no move to slip away from her, and she decided to stay there until he did.
They sat there together for a long time until her eyes slowly closed and his breathing became a warm, steady rhythm against her hair.
When she woke,the lights were still on. She was lying down in Ren’s bed on top of the covers, and she could feel him asleep next to her. Their bodies weren’t pressed together but they were near enough that one of his hands rested on her hip.
She rolled slowly in place to face him. She knew she should get up, turn off the lights, set an alarm, and go to her own bed. Instead, she watched him. If she took this job, she wouldn’t need to say goodbye. There would be many more days with Ren: they would spend a week together every month or two. And she knew he wouldn’t fire her or pick fights with her. He would respect her ideas and pay her properly. And she would love him, like she always had. And she would bear that for as long as she could.
She stirred to pull away, and he opened his eyes and looked at her. She waited for him to remove his hand from her hip, but he didn’t. He smiled at her tenderly, and she couldn’t help it. She smiled back, knowing he didn’t feel the same for her as she did for him.
Then she moved a couple of inches closer, putting her face so near his that she could feel the warmth of his breath. She saw something in his eyes, a hesitation. She didn’t move, waiting for him to pull away. He always did. He was going to tell her that this was a bad idea. She closed her eyes and waited.
Instead, he came closer to her by another inch, so close that their noses touched, his breath uneven. She opened her eyes and he was still there, looking at her with a soft expression, their breathing exactly in sync. She kissed him lightly, touching her lips to his, just because she wanted to.
He kissed her back. It was slow and sweet, and then his hand was up against her cheek, warm and gentle. He kissed her again, and a warning hovered on the edge of her consciousness, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to listen to it.
After a moment, he slid up on one elbow so that he was above her, and he kept kissing her tenderly, one hand sliding into her hair, his fingers disassembling her curls. Her whole body felt warm and alive, but at the same time there seemed to be no pressure to do anything but this, no pressure to intensify things, just a slow, sleepy kissing that felt as gentle as a dream. Then he drifted his lips across her cheek, down the edge of her jaw, and started kissing her neck, and she melted completely. Her whole body felt like it was drifting away except her hand that was caressing the back of his neck, her fingers running through his dark curls, her other hand gently sliding up his arm. He shivered from the touch and pulled back to look at her, his lovely eyes dark, one of his hands gently curling around her waist.
“Sarah,” he said with such sweetness it made her heart break.
Meeting his eyes was too much to bear, so she closed hers tightly and pulled him close enough to kiss again. His whole body began to line up against hers as he softly tilted her head back to kiss her more deeply. He was so good at this. Ridiculously good. But more than that, he was being so careful and slow that she felt like crying. She took a quick breath as he touched her breast with one hand and he stilled, his lips still resting against hers.
This was the moment when he always told her no, and she didn’t want him to do it again. She wanted to wrap a leg around him and roll on top of him and not let go. But instead, she waited, her breath slow but her heart racing.
She opened her eyes, and there was that look again: the one that seemed so affectionate, so confusing. “We should go to sleep, right?” he offered gently.
She hesitated and then nodded once. “Okay.”
She watched him roll away from her and look at the ceiling.
What had just happened? Her brain felt like a traffic jam of hopes and worries. Maybe he’d been kissing her because he was too polite to reject her. Maybe this was his form of letting her down easy. Maybe he didn’t want this, didn’t want to ruin their friendship, and he had gone along with it, just for long enough not to be insulting. Just long enough to give himself a polite way out. And meanwhile, her whole body was still vibrating from what had just happened. Her heart was beating too fast. She felt lightheaded.
Another moment passed before he spoke, his voice full of sincerity. “I want you to know that I’m always going to be here for you no matter what.”
“I know,” she said. She looked at him for a moment, then forced herself to get up and get ready for bed. She wasn’t sure if that was the kindest thing anyone had ever said to her or a definitive rejection. Maybe both.
When she woke the next morning, he was already gone.
15
THURSDAY
By the timethe group met for class on Thursday afternoon, the sky had mostly cleared and the workshop participants were buzzing with excitement about their planned night under the stars. When Sarah entered the conference room, Ren and Kyle were busy comparing various phone apps predicting the night’s weather.
“KP index is high. It won’t be the full Northern Lights,” Ren explained to the group when he looked up, “but there may be some extra green and violet in your shots. You’ll see it if you use a longer exposure.”
The plan was to have an early dinner after class, and afterwards, Ren had chartered a boat to take them deep into Western Brook Pond, one of the most spectacular fjord formations in Newfoundland. They would get dropped off an hour before sunset and would be picked up the next morning, shortly after dawn. They weren’t allowed to cook anything or bring food into the park because of fire and wildlife risk, but they were allowed to bring sleeping bags so that if anyone got tired or cold, they would have a way to keep warm or nap for a few hours. Sarah knew from experience how much effort must have gone into convincing Newfoundlanders to do something like this: a chartered boat tour to a pristine location that operated outside the usual tourist boat schedule. It must have cost Ren a few thousand dollars and a lot of personal charm to set this up, Sarah suspected; this was the kind of exclusive access that helped Ren keep his photography workshops in high demand.
It felt strange to sit watching Ren answering people’s questions and giving advice about gear, knowing that they had kissed and were going to say absolutely nothing about it. They discussed everyone’s sunset photos and Kyle and Elka’s lighthouse shots. Then Ren gave tips for how to bring out the color in the Milky Way in photo editing software, and Sarah got to see more of Ren’s images from his trips to Iceland, Norway, and Alaska. There were never people in the shots, and Sarah couldn’t help but wonder how many women had come on those trips, how many women had come before Freya.
That night at dinner, Ren smiled at her and pointed to a chair next to him. “Join my table tonight?”
“Don’t we need to split up to answer questions?” she asked.
