“It’s okay. My boss was a nightmare. I’ll be okay.”
He frowned. “Sarah…”
“No, it’s good,” she insisted. “Because I need time for my own work. I have an idea for a new photo series.”
“You do? Can I hear about it?”
When she told him about herMy Divorceseries, his eyes lit up.
“That photo of you in a bathtub,” he said, “will you redo that one? Because that one is burned in my brain forever.”
Their last classroommeeting had a casual, joking atmosphere; everyone was a little giddy from lack of sleep and more closely bonded after their night in the woods. Sarah and Ren reviewed everyone’s photos from the night before and discussed post processing techniques for making them look even better.
“I want to see all Sarah’s portraits,” Cole said.
“I still haven’t gotten Kyle and Elka,” Sarah said. “They wandered too far away. So I’ll get them tonight and then I’ll email everyone the full set.”
Sarah noticed Rita looking down. She wondered if Rita was regretting her choice just to shoot her face—not because it wasn’t a pretty shot, but because of the rationale behind it. Dismissing yourself was the kind of thing that could feel right in the moment and haunt you later.
“We can retake some, too, if anyone didn’t like theirs,” Sarah said lightly. “Maybe some people might want to bring a swimsuit.” She smiled at Rita.
They went outfor dinner at the local pub, joking over beers and not worrying too much about whether they were losing time to shoot. The plan was to go out and do a final night of shooting along a beach to the north. Several people planned to turn in early because they were flying out the next day.
Sarah watched Elka watching Ren during dinner. She looked so unhappy that Sarah felt for her. She had hoped Elka might find sympathy in the arms of Kyle, but it didn’t seem to have happened. Kyle, meanwhile, was looking at Sarah with a strange, curious expression. She wondered if he could sense something had shifted between her and Ren, or whether Ren had said something to him.
“Ideas for your portrait, Kyle?”
He shrugged. “We’ll find a location,” he said. “We’ll know it when we see it.”
Dark had fallen by the time they arrived at their last shooting destination, a pebbly beach that stretched beneath rocky, striated cliffs. Sarah spotted a rock outcropping that rose up from the tide pools in strange, architectural towers.
“Kyle,” she called. “That spot is you.”
She posed him in a way that she knew would make him look bold and heroic, since that was Kyle’s whole thing, and borrowed Fred and Tanjul to help paint him and the rocky outcropping with flashlights. Kyle examined the photo and had thoughts, so they took three more versions before he was happy.
When the photo was done, she paused to whisper to Ren. “Kyle prefers the version where he is looking away moodily into the distance in profile, and he suggested I make it black and white.”
“My favorite,” Ren said, his voice thick with laughter.
Sarah went to find Elka, who was not shooting anywhere near Ren anymore. The blond woman had wandered down the beach and was carefully dusting some rocks in the shallow water with side light; in the background of her shot, the Milky Way swept down towards the shore. Sarah had a moment of worry: what if Elka had seen her and Ren together that night and viewed it as a betrayal? But she pressed ahead.
“Do you have a minute for a portrait?” Sarah asked.
Elka turned to her and sighed, nodding. “I used to be a model,” she said. “So it’s not as exciting for me. But you can take one.”
“By the water, maybe?” Sarah said, and they looked at the waves. Elka pointed to a spot where a wide, flat rock formed a little platform, and Sarah carefully checked it for wet spots before having Elka sit down.
“Ren turned me down,” Elka said quietly.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah replied.
“I used to be able to get any man I wanted. I have to make peace with getting older.”
“How old are you?” Sarah said.
Elka sighed. “Thirty-three.” Sarah didn’t laugh, but it was a near thing. She reminded herself how sophisticated she had felt at twenty-one and how burned out she thought she was at twenty-six. At forty, she felt the reverse: a constant surprise that she had nothing figured out yet.
“It’s okay,” Sarah said. “If you are feeling sad, then we will get a sad shot.”
