Chapter 81
81
Drew
It’s the artist’s statement that worries me most. It’s one thing capturing someone on camera and another doing it in words. If I could reverse time, I’d fight for you …
I like to think I see something in Evie that other people don’t. Something Oliver definitely doesn’t see. And as besotted as she used to be with him at school, I know she’s never looked at him the way she’s looking into the lens in every one of these shots.
It was that time on the beach when you looked straight through the disaster of my life and stayed. When you understood me as I was and didn’t want to fix me, or change anything, even though there was so much that needed shifting.
It was the night Mum died, when you stood at the kitchen sink waiting patiently for the tap to run hot to wash her hands. Mum, who didn’t need warmth by then, but you provided it anyway. It was the way you said, “Annie, I’m just going to pick up your hand,” as if Mum was still alive. And how you knew I would want to be the person to do that, before I knew how important that act was myself.
It was your utter delight in Jervis Bay, untethered from time or expectation, plunged into life so wholeheartedly, alight with the joy of phosphorescence, dreaming up our futures.
It was a million tiny things that add up to the resounding loss of the deepest relationship I’ve had in my life. It’s the loss not only of what we had, and what we could have had—but of the person I saw in you, and the one you imagined becoming.
These are pictures of you, Evie, before your large life closed in. Before it folded in on itself, and then folded in again, over and over, until your dreams ran out of oxygen.
Pictures of the woman you could be again.
I wrote those words down, until the document became less of an artist’s statement and more of an artist’s intervention. Likely the last straw in our relationship, but it had to be done.
I sent the email two hours ago and haven’t heard from her. I guess she does have a life. She isn’t just sitting there thinking how nice it would be if I dropped into her inbox for the first time in years and told her I was thinking of her. Still.
It wasn’t a declaration of love. It was a declaration of radical friendship. A last-ditch desire to get through to her. And save her.
And, yes, the exhibition itself is also a career move. There’s a quality in these photos that I’ve never captured in portraits of anyone else my whole professional life. Light seemed to radiate from her.
Whatever it was, I’m freaking out about having sent it now. Is it too late to recall the email? I should just ditch the competition, take the professional hit, and get the fuck over this entire situation once and for all.
People say you never forget your first love. At thirty, after never being quite able to commit to anyone else, and with a string of failed relationships and false starts with the wrong people in my wake, it’s time I admit that’s what’s going on here. Maybe it would have been easier to let her go if I hadn’t spent the last thirteen years worried sick.
I pull my sneakers on. I can’t sit here refreshing my email all day. Besides, I have a corporate shoot at a bank at midday and need to organize my gear. I’ll go for a run, clear my head, and move on with my life.
But just as I’m locking the door, my phone pings with an incoming email.
It’s from Evie.
Drew.
You do not have permission. Do not use these photos for this award. Withdraw from the competition. And never contact me again.
Evie.