Page 367 of Safe With You

“That doesn’t mean you get days off.”

He reached for her hand.

She took it without looking.

I pressed the shutter.

Click.

That one might’ve been my favorite.

They’d stopped thinking about the camera.

That was usually when I got the best ones.

Not when somebody was standing where I put them or smiling because I told them to. It was the second after they stopped paying attention to me. When somebody fixed the other person’s shirt. Reached for a hand. Laughed before they remembered they were supposed to be posing.

The things people did when they forgot somebody was watching.

We moved farther down the trail.

“How long y’all been married?”

“Ten years today,” she said.

“Together fourteen,” her husband added.

“Fifteen.”

He looked at her. “We didn’t start dating until the next year.”

She looked at me. “You hear this?”

I smiled and raised the camera again.

“I stay out of marital disputes.”

“Stand over there for me.”

They moved toward the trees while I changed lenses.

Ten years married. Fifteen since they met, although apparently only fourteen of those counted depending on which one of them I asked.

By the time I looked up again, she was fixing the collar of his shirt.

He said something I couldn’t hear.

She laughed.

I didn’t tell them to stop.

Click.

He leaned down and kissed her forehead.

Click.

She reached up and wiped something from his beard.