Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
VIctor
This is the second time Jason has voluntarily taken my hand in public. God, I want to kiss him. I’m pretty sure that would be pushing it way too far, though.
And yet, Jason is still standing here, staring at me. Holding my hand.
“Victor,” he says, then stops. He swallows and I watch the movement of his throat. “I’ve been thinking…”
“Always a bad idea,” I say lightly, even as he says over me, “Well, not thinking exactly, but wondering…”
He stops again.
“Wondering?” I echo.
“Yeah, that’s not the right word, either,” he says under his breath. He closes his eyes and his hand twitches in mine. Like he’s trying to clench his fist but can’t because his fingers are wrapped around my hand.
“Is finding the exact right word the important thing here?” My chest tightens and it’s harder and harder to get in a deep breath.
He’s going to say something that upends the tenuous bridge we’ve been building between us this week.
Either he’s going to confirm that this was just a fling and it’s been fun and all but he can’t have a relationship with a man once he goes back to his real life, or…
I can barely let myself think about an or.
Or he wants to carry on, but in secret because of his job with the Church. Which would involve lying and hiding in the closet. The first would eventually kill him and the second would kill me.
Or he wants to—
“Can we get the dads over here?” The photographer calls out.
Jason drops my hand like it’s burned him and runs his through his hair. I’m suddenly, unreasonably annoyed. “No one saw anything,” I tell him in a low voice, through clenched teeth. “Not that there was anything to see.”
He looks startled at the hardness in my voice. “I know. It’s not that. I just…well, now isn’t really the right time to talk about anything, is it?”
“What is there to talk about?” I shoot back, then pivot on my back heel and paste a smile on my face for the girls.
The photographer is all crisp, efficient business.
She positions Kelsey in between Jason and me, then Kelsey and Adrienne together in between us.
She takes dozens of photos of us in various groupings—Kelsey and Jason, Kelsey and me, Adrienne and Jason, Adrienne and me, both girls with Jason, both girls with me, the four of us together.
Then she repeats the whole round with Greta, Kelsey’s maid of honor, included.
Shots in the gazebo. Shots in front of the gazebo. Shots in front of a tree next to the gazebo. Shots in front of the various flowering plants surrounding the gazebo.
I smile and joke along with the girls and the photographer, but the incessant clicking of the camera starts to grate on my nerves.
My jaw starts to hurt from keeping a smile on my face.
Each time I get a reprieve, when she’s shooting Jason with the girls, I step out of the frame and try to settle myself.
Jason’s right. Today isn’t the day to discuss anything. Not what we’ve been doing together this week, not what we might or might not continue in the future.
Not how much I want him. Or how afraid I am that he doesn’t want me the same way.
Finally, the photographer seems to be wrapping things up. Except Jason calls out to her, “Will you take a few of Victor and me?”
She lowers the camera from her face and blinks at him. “Just the two of you? Without the brides?”
“Yes, please,” Jason says. He’s calm and unruffled and if he doesn’t feel the weight of Kelsey and Adrienne’s surprised looks, I sure as fuck do.
The week before the wedding, when Adrienne and I met in Manhattan, she’d said they were going to tell the photographer to expect some awkwardness between Jason and me, and here he is, requesting photos of just the two of us.
Together.
“Sure,” the photographer says. “Let’s start with the two of you standing next to each other in front of that tree there.
” I step up next to him and nervously unbutton and re-button my jacket.
“Let’s do one with jackets buttoned and then one with them unbuttoned,” she suggests, kindly pretending that I’m simply adjusting my clothes for a better photo.
“Can you step a little closer to each other, please?”
Jason does and my heart nearly stops when our shoulders brush.
It takes everything I have not to side-step the other way, away from him, out of fear that being photographed next to Jason will what?
Reveal that we’ve been fucking all week and that I’m gone for him?
That I have no idea how he feels about me?
That I’m just as afraid he might have the same feelings for me as I am that he doesn’t?
But he’s totally calm. Like this is no big deal. Just co-parents having their photographs taken together at their daughter’s wedding.
We’re posed underneath the tree where Jason pointed out the turquoise and green bird he called a something’s motmot. And damned if one of those birds doesn’t swoop in and settle on a branch right above us.
Jason turns toward me and looks up. I don’t know whether it’s instinct or a suicidal impulse, but my arms are around his waist before I’ve really clocked what I’m doing. And Jason rests one hand on my shoulder while he keeps the other in between us, pointing up. “Look.”
I look, but not at the bird. I look at Jason’s face, the tamped excitement at seeing a beautiful bird so close to us. At the bronze column of his throat and the hollow at the base of it, barely visible where the first button of his shirt is undone.
The bird is clearly accustomed to people and I can see it twist and preen out of the corner of my eye. I’m still watching Jason watching the bird and my heart twists at the realization that the day after tomorrow, we’ll go our separate ways and I may never have him in my arms like this again.
“Okay, guys, I think I’ve got everything I need,” the photographer says, and I realize that the constant shutter clicks in the background have ceased.
Jason quits looking at the bird, looks at me, and I guess he realizes the position we’re in.
I drop my hands from his waist and take a step back. “Sorry,” I murmur.
“It’s fine,” he says.
The photographer’s looking back and forth between us. “Do you, um…need veto power over the photos?” It’s a tentative offer, like she doesn’t normally make it, or she’s afraid of offending us.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing them, if you’re willing,” Jason says. He doesn’t sound like he’s about to demand she delete any.
She tilts the camera toward him so that he can see the thumbnail images on the tiny screen. She scrolls through them and Jason says nothing until she gets to the last set, the half dozen or so where my arms are around Jason and we look we’re the marrying couple.
“Those,” he points. “Would you send those to me and not to Kelsey? I’ll pay you separately for them.”
“Um…okay. Sure.”
“Kelsey can have the others where we’re standing next to each other.
I know she’ll love them. You take beautiful shots.
” He gives her his contact information, shakes her hand, and tells both of us he’ll see us at the reception.
Then he strides off toward the resort’s flower gardens, away from the gazebo, from Kelsey and Adrienne, the photographer, and me.
The photographer looks at me. “It’s none of my business,” she says, “but if you’re not already tapping that, you should. That man is absolutely smitten with you.”
She can hardly know this from taking a handful of photos of us.
Except she continues, “I take a lot of photos of people who are supposedly in love with each other. I know what the real thing looks like when I see it.”
With that, she slings her camera bag over her shoulder and heads off to catch up with the girls on their way to the reception.