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“Josh…” she whispers, her voice laced with pity.
“It’s nothing,” I lie.
“Where was Tommy when Chloe got arrested?”
“I think he would’ve been with Natalie’s parents.”
“What?”
“Yeah, they take him once a month for the night.”
Her brow bunches. “I just—I mean…you’ve never once mentioned it. Has he been there since you and I—”
“He hasn’t been there for a few months. They’re on a six month cruise or something at the moment.”
Her eyes narrow.
“Is this a problem for you?”
“I don’t know,” she says, her gaze lifting and locking on mine. “It just seems strange that you haven’t brought it up. All this time I thought you had absolutely no connection with Natalie and now this. You’d think you’d tell me, right?”
“It just hasn’t really come up.”
“Josh,” she says incredulously. “We’ve spent all this time together and you never once thought to mention that Natalie was still part of Tommy’s life? Even if far removed, she’s still there. And she’s Tommy’s mom and your ex and…” She sighs. “Never mind. Eat your food.”
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After our meal, she grabs her camera and starts taking pictures of anything and everything. From the view out on the balcony to the tiny soaps on the bathroom sink. She hides her smile behind the camera as she takes shot after shot of me goofing around trying to make her laugh. It works—and her laughter is a sound I’d spend my entire life craving. “You’re such a dork,” she whispers, climbing onto the bed and fluffing the pillows against the headboard.
I take it as my cue and sit on the bed, my back against the headboard and my legs spread waiting for her to join me—something we do almost every night so she can show me the photographs she’d taken that day. After getting up and grabbing her camera bag, she positions herself in front of me, but not close enough. I grasp her waist and pull her into me, my chin on her shoulder as she flips through the images. “I think you’ve got close to a thousand pictures of me.”
She smiles. “And it’s still not enough,” she says, reaching up and running her fingers through the back of my head.
“Do you have a favorite photo you’ve taken?”
“Of you, or ever?”
“Ever.”
“I have two,” she says.
“Can I see them?”
She turns in my arms, her gaze right on mine. Then she sighs. “I only have one here.”
“So show me.”
She inhales a huge breath before going through her bag and pulling out a memory card. She sits opposite me now, changes the cards over and starts flicking through the pictures. I keep my eyes on hers trying to read her expression. Occasionally she’ll chew her lip and look up at me, as if she’s nervous to show me. Her shoulders drop when she seems to find the one she’s looking for. Almost hesitantly, she turns the back of the camera toward me. It’s a picture of me skating. I’m in the air, on top of the pipe grabbing the board. It looks just like any other skate shot. “You take hundreds of photos a day and you’re telling me this one’s top two?”
She nods slowly. “It’s not about the photo,” she whispers, “it’s about the content.”
“Because it’s a picture of me?” I ask incredulously.
“No, Josh. Because it is you. In that moment, I captured who you are—what you love and what makes you happy… what sets you free.” She clears her throat and takes the camera from my hand and places it on the nightstand. Then she climbs over me, straddling my waist. She runs a finger down my chest, her head tilted to the side, her eyes following the path she’s creating. “When I was fourteen, I went on this field trip. I don’t even really remember where it was. I just remember being the only kid there who didn’t have a phone or a camera. Olivia was there—and she saw how left out I was because of it. She let me use her SLR. It was the first time I ever held one. She walked me through the basic steps and soon enough I was more interested in the camera than the actual field trip.”
She’s giving me a piece of herself—a piece of her past—something I’ve wanted for so long. So I stay silent, letting her speak.
“I don’t really know why but Olivia let me borrow her camera for the rest of the week. That camera, it was like your version of a skateboard. I’d take it everywhere with me and snap away at anything and everything, probably like how you’d skate anywhere and everywhere.”
I link my fingers behind her back and continue to watch her, smiling at the thought of her at that age doing exactly what she’s describing.
“There was this one picture I’d taken of this homeless man. The clouds had just formed together to hide the sun and the atmosphere had turned this eerie gray. I took the shot just as the first clap of thunder sounded and he was looking up to the skies, his hand out, palm up waiting to feel the rain descend. It wasn’t until I got to school and Olivia and I looked at it on the computer that I saw a bead of water had splashed against his forehead… and his eyes, I’ll always remember the first time I saw his eyes. They were so dull, so lifeless, so hopeless. And I remember this ache in my chest when I reached out to touch the screen. I traced the lines on his face, the wrinkles that donned him, and I thought that it was horrible that his eyes held such lifelessness; because those lines—each crease on his face—they told a story. Good or bad. There was a story behind this man and I wanted to ask him about every single one.” Her voice turns to a whisper. “And with my hand on my computer screen and my heart racing, I knew it. I’d fallen in love with something. I’d fallen in love with photography and the ability it had to capture a split second moment and evoke something emotional out of me. And if I could do that for the rest of my life—capture moments that made me question life—then that’s what I wanted to do.”
