9. THEO
nine
THEO
The diner smelled like burnt coffee and the kind of industrial floor cleaner that only manages to move the dirt into the corners.
I'd been here for two hours, hunched over my laptop in the corner booth, editing shots from the East Side and pretending the anomalies in the frames were just noise.
My camera was draped over the back of the vinyl bench like a security blanket I was too old to admit I needed.
The bells chimed overhead and Oleander walked in.
He looked like he'd been dragged through the last three days by the collar.
Dark curls a mess, coat pulled tight around him, eyes scanning the room with the frantic energy of someone looking for an exit and a landing pad at the same time.
I raised a hand before I could think about whether I should.
"Oleander," I said. "You look like you've seen a ghost, or maybe just a very disappointing sunrise. Sit. The coffee could be worse, but it's hot, and the booth doesn't tilt more than five degrees to the left."
He sat like his legs had been waiting for permission to stop working.
I closed my laptop halfway, giving him space without making it formal.
He didn't say anything right away, just stared at the table with the blank focus of a man whose thoughts were somewhere much worse than a diner in Hollow Vale.
"I was just looking at some shots from the East Side," I said, spinning the laptop around to give him something to look at that wasn't the inside of his own head.
"There's a row house on Mercy Street that's doing something fascinating.
The foundation is literally sinking into the earth, but not straight down.
It's twisting. The brickwork is starting to look like a braid.
It's like the ground decided it didn't want the building to exist anymore, but it's taking its time with the erasure. "
He stared at the image but I could tell he wasn't seeing it.
His eyes were glazed, somewhere between the screen and whatever was eating him alive.
His fingers traced the edge of the table in a restless pattern, and I recognized the look.
It was the expression of someone trying to decide which secret to let go of first.
"You're doing that thing," I said quietly. "The thing where you go somewhere else. Usually, people only look that haunted when they've discovered a secret they weren't supposed to find, or when they've done something they can't quite categorize as a mistake."
"I slept with someone," he said. The words came out in a rush, like he'd been holding them behind his teeth and they'd finally chewed through.
I hadn't expected that. I'd expected something about the apartment, about the town, about the way Hollow Vale seemed to be paying specific attention to him. Not this.
I leaned back and let the surprise settle before I responded. "And? Sleeping with people is a fairly standard human preoccupation, Oleander. Even in Hollow Vale. I assume there's a 'but' coming that's shaped like a disaster."
"But I found out he's with someone else," he said, staring at his reflection in the polished chrome of the napkin dispenser.
"And the person he's with is someone I care about.
Or I was starting to. It's a mess. I feel like I've walked into the middle of a story that's already been written, and I'm the only one who didn't get the script. "
I let out a long, slow whistle, my fingers drumming a rhythmic tattoo on the table.
I already knew. I'd known the second he said "slept with someone" and his face did that specific thing — guilt layered over want layered over confusion.
There was only one person in Hollow Vale who left that particular kind of wreckage behind.
"Tall? Long hair? Looks like he'd fight a building and win?" I asked.
The silence that followed was all the confirmation I needed. He couldn't even look at me.
"Yeah," I said, dropping my voice. "Rowan has that effect on people.
You don't really choose to orbit him; you just realize you've been doing it for a while and the exit velocity is too high to escape.
And Julian is the anchor. You can't have one without the other. They're a closed loop. Or they were."
"You know them," he said, finally meeting my gaze.
"I've been in that orbit for months," I said.
I smiled, but I could feel it not reaching my eyes.
"Drawn in by the danger, the physicality of it all.
Rowan is easy to want because he's so loud about what he is.
But the dynamic is complicated. I've spent a lot of time wondering where I stand.
Julian hasn't fully opened the door to me.
It's not closed, exactly. But nobody handed me a key either. "
"Does it ever get easier?" he asked. "The feeling that you're just an interloper?"
"No," I said, leaning forward. "But you stop apologizing for it. This town is full of people who are broken in complementary ways. Maybe you're just the piece they didn't know was missing. Or maybe you're the one that's going to break the whole machine."
I reached out, my hand hovering over his on the table for a second before I pulled it back.
I wanted to touch him. I'd wanted to touch him again since the sidewalk outside the church.
But the timing was wrong and I knew it, and knowing it was the only thing keeping me from making a mistake I'd enjoy too much to regret.
"You're different, Oleander," I said, and I meant it more than I wanted to. "Most people who come here are trying to fade out. You're trying to hold on to something that's already gone."
"I'm not…" he started. "I'm just tired. And I think this town is doing something to me that I don't have a name for yet."
There it was. The edge of something he wasn't saying. I could see it in the way his jaw tightened after the words came out, like he'd let too much slip and was trying to pull it back in. I filed it. That's what I do. I file things and I wait for the frame to develop.
I pulled the laptop closer and started clicking through files.
I'd been wanting to show him the sinking building shots, but I paused on one from a few days ago.
The alley behind the bar, a picture with high contrast, deep shadows.
And in the center, that same blur I kept catching, a shape that didn't belong to anything in the frame.
I turned the screen toward him, Oleander’s reaction immediate as the color left his face and his hand on the table curled into a fist.
“The town plays tricks,” he said. His voice sounded hollow, almost rehearsed. “You said that yourself. The brain tries to find faces in the void.”
He was lying, but I didn't push. I closed the laptop slowly. “Sure,” I said, after a pause long enough for him to know I didn't buy it.
He'd tell me when he was ready. Or he wouldn't, and I'd figure it out from the negative space.
"Come on," I said, standing up. "I want to show you that sinking building. The light's going to be good for another hour."
He followed me out of the diner. I walked ahead, my camera bag swinging against my hip, but I didn't reach for the lens.
I was thinking about the way his face had crumbled when he saw that photo, the way his fist had clenched like he was trying to hold something in that wanted desperately to get out.
He knew what was in that shadow. He knew it by name.
I was going to find out what that name was. But not today. Today, I was going to show him a building that was falling apart beautifully, and I was going to stand close enough to feel the warmth coming off his skin, and I was going to pretend that was enough.
It wasn't. But I was a photographer. I was used to waiting for the shot.