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I look at his hand, surprised at the formality. People don't usually shake hands but maybe it's some French thing.
"Eve," I manage and he holds my hand in both of his for a bit too long. I try to pull my hand away, and finally, he releases it.
When he turns back to the tripod, I noticed strange marks stretching from one shoulder to the other, browny red like a tattoo but raised like a scar, the marks resemble wings and I can't imagine what caused them. I think maybe it's some kind of kelp that attached to his skin while he was swimming and touch the marks, but they don't brush off.
He glances at me, squinting as if to gauge my response.
"It won't come off," he says. "It's part of me."
"I'm sorry," I say, embarrassed. Then I realize they must be scars – maybe burn marks – and sympathy fills me. He works away at the tripod and manages to get it set up.
"Thanks," I say. "You're a godsend."
"I wouldn't say that." He smiles and then picks up a flat stone from the sand and throws it out, skipping it across the surface of the water. "What are you taking pictures of?"
"I'm going to do some time-lapse photography. I saw this really great time lapse video that shows the Milky Way in Atacama Chile and I thought I'd give it a try," I say, "but given my lack of technical expertise, I think I'm probably a bit too ambitious."
"I saw that video on YouTube," he says. "Amazing. What we only can see using technology. It's there, but our light and time perception prevents us from seeing it."
I smile at him, glad to have found someone else who's interested in such things. I attach the camera and timer.
"I read up on it and the timer is set to take a twenty-second exposure with a 2 second pause between images."
"Are you an amateur astronomer?" he says, and I feel his eyes on me, watching me instead of the camera. When I glance up at him, I can't help but blush. God, his eyes are so blue. My heart does a little flip-flop because he's just so beautiful but for some reason, I feel incredibly sad when I look at him.
"No," I say. "I just saw the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image one day in an old National Geographic at my doctor's office and I couldn't get it out of my mind. I started looking at YouTube videos of stars and saw the Atacama video. I'm recovering from an injury and have some time to kill. I thought I'd give it a try."
"You don't look injured."
"It was my brain," I say. "I was in a coma for a while and now I have memory loss."
"Permanent?"
"The memory loss is, but the brain swelling is down now so everything pretty much works."
"That's good."
That's the most I've said to anyone outside of my neurologist and my foster parents since I woke up in the ICU after the bombing.
He goes to his clothes, which are folded on the sand. Once he's dressed, and I have everything set up, I start the timer and we watch as it takes a few exposures.
"Keep your fingers crossed," I say.
He smiles at me, tilting his head to the side.
"You don't have faith?"
"Oh, no," I say. "Atheist. No faith in anything. Just trust in science. And good instructions."
“How long will it continue to take pictures?"
"A few hours."
"Would you like to go for a walk along the beach?"
I take in a breath. I don't know him from a hole in the ground but he seems nice enough and for some reason, I feel no threat from him. We walk along the beach in silence and I examine him from the corner of my eye – he's about a foot taller than me, his body well-muscled but not overly. His straight black hair is longish, beneath his chin and long down his neck. His blue eyes seem to shine with intelligence.
"So what are you doing in the little hamlet of Ipswich, Massachusetts?" I say, awkward with the silence.
