Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
MILO
I’d edited over three hundred versions of the same kiss.
The image filled my screen again: her veil caught midair, the light hitting them just right and the guests behind them softened into a warm blur. It looked effortless. Intimate—something out of a magazine spread.
I slid the temperature gauge to a slightly cooler tone. Her dress deepened closer to ivory than pristine white. Some blurring on the shine on the groom’s forehead, and sharpened the details around her eyes.
Perfect.
Again.
The problem wasn’t the lighting.
The problem had been the kiss.
The ceremony had run late because of wind coming off the lake, the best man misplacing the ring, and a flower girl who decided halfway down the aisle that she no longer wished to participate.
By the time they reached the moment of the kiss, the sun had dropped lower than their requested sunset kiss.
They leaned in.
It was quick, closed-lipped and awkward in the way real kisses could be when hundreds of people are watching.
Before I could lower my camera, the planner leaned in from the edge of the aisle, voice low but sharp. “Again. Hold it longer.”
The guests laughed, probably thinking it was part of the moment.
The bride stepped back, still smiling for them, and muttered, “Not like that.”
They tried again.
The kiss was longer this time, more deliberate and the groom even threw in a slight dip. Applause followed.
“Just one more,” the planner said, clapping softly. “For backup.”
Three tries in under thirty seconds.
At the reception, the bride found me near the champagne tower. “Did it look real?” she asked, eyes wide. “Like we weren’t… performing?”
I pulled up the shot on the back of my camera. “The ceremony kiss,” I said. “This one.”
She leaned closer. The frame where her now-husband’s arm supported her without hesitation, where her expression came naturally instead of posing for it.
“Oh,” she gasped. “That one.”
That one.
As if it hadn’t taken three tries to get there.
Back in my apartment, I opened the image again.
The same one she had chosen.
The same moment.
I didn’t need to compare it to anything else.
I already knew it was the one.
The way his hand claimed her waist. The way her expression melted into something real, even just for a moment.
That was what they wanted.
That was what I would give them.
Because I always did.
Seven years of it—clients satisfied, galleries polished, moments shaped into something cleaner portrayed in an image far from reality.
I was very good at my job, but sometimes that was the problem.
I leaned back in my chair, rolling my shoulders until the knots built there loosened.
The apartment was quiet except for the low hum of my computer and the occasional rush of traffic below.
Wind coming off the lake rattled faintly against the glass, early spring still undecided about committing to warmth.
My phone lay face down beside the keyboard, and I turned it over more out of habit than interest. Two unread texts.
Marianne: Reminder about Saturday. Wear something navy. The lighting at the venue is warm.
Victor: Miami client confirmed. Call me when you can.
No check-in on the last shoot, nor about my life in general. I stared at the names for a moment, then I set the phone back down without opening either thread.
Nothing even remotely close to something parents should say.
It wasn’t anger that stopped me. It was familiarity. I already knew how those conversations would go—details about schedules, appearances, expectations.
Everything perfectly managed.
Everything presented well.
I glanced back at the screen, but instead of moving on to the next image, I opened a different folder.
One I’d been returning to more often than not.
The thumbnail was small, slightly overexposed, and framed poorly, but reflected a subtle shape of two boys standing in front of a treeline
I opened it.
Elias was fourteen—too tall for his limbs and his wild curls tangled by the wind, arm hooked around a seven-year-old me. My sneakers were caked in mud. His jeans were ripped at the knee.
Behind us, the Wisconsin woods stretched out in a blur of green. I’d forgotten how much I’d loved them.
Mrs. Alvarez had taken the photo. She’d been the one who raised us, really. That weekend, she’d taken us camping because the house had been too quiet and we’d both been too restless.
She hadn’t taken us alone. Mr. Gutierrez, our driver—who became security anytime our parents felt the need—had stayed a few steps back, watching the trees like something might step out of them.
The photo tilted slightly to one side, sunlight washing out the corner, but it caught us mid-laugh.
We were filthy and sunburned, but we were happy.
I remembered that day more clearly than most of my childhood.
It wasn’t because our parents hadn’t been there—but because they hadn’t needed to be.
Elias had let me complain the entire first mile.
I’d been convinced the forest was working against me. The trees leaned too close. The air felt thick. Every snapped twig sounded like something following us.
He’d pretended not to be annoyed.
When my laces came undone for the third time, he’d silently crouched and tied them himself, double-knotting them so they wouldn’t come undone again.
Our parents were rarely present for anything that involved mud or inconvenience.
Mrs. Alvarez had organized the camping trip the way she managed dentist appointments and school recitals—and the polite fiction that we were a normal family.
Mr. Gutierrez had driven us out and stood watch near the treeline like something might step out of it.
Elias was the one to notice them, squinting at the tracks in the damp soil like he was decoding a secret message from a government agency. “Probably deer,” he’d said with absolute authority, even though it could’ve been anything.
He’d always liked being the one who knew.
At seven, I’d liked that about him.
By the time he left for college—when I was eleven—I’d started pretending I didn’t need him to explain things anymore.
Boarding school made that easier.
Different campuses, different schedules. Summers arranged so we were never in the same place for too long.
Before that, we’d had nannies and drivers and holiday photos that looked carefully manipulated. Everything structured. Everything handled.
After that, we had distance.
We still had the right tuition bills, the right last name on donor plaques, the right kind of life on paper.
What we didn’t have was a close relationship. Not anymore.
After he left, the distance just became normal. Texts on birthdays, “Happy Thanksgiving” with a turkey emoji, updates passed along through assistants or forwarded from whatever our father was doing that year.
We didn’t fight, we didn’t fall out, we just… drifted apart.
Looking at the photo now—his arm hooked loosely around my shoulders, both of us sunburned and grinning like the woods belonged to us—I could almost feel the weight on his young shoulders.
The brother who tied my shoes without commentary.
The one who made the trees feel less like they were closing in on me.
A few months ago, on a night when editing had stretched past midnight and the apartment had felt too clean, too quiet, I’d opened this same folder and stared at the same photo longer than I meant to.
I’d zoomed in on his face first. Then mine. We looked like we were on the same team.
Before I could overthink it, I’d sent it to him.
Me: Look what I found.
He didn’t answer for hours.
That part didn’t surprise me. Elias in the field meant intermittent service and a brain that hyper-focused on whatever was in front of him—fungus, migration patterns, soil composition. If it moved, he documented it. If it didn’t move, he documented that too.
His reply eventually came in the late hours of the night.
Eli: Sorry for the late reply.
Eli: Was out on the field the entire day.
Eli: I forgot about that trail.
A beat.
Eli: You cried because you thought the trees were closing in on you.
I leaned back in my chair, staring at the screen and surprised he remembered that.
Me: You reminded me they were just standing still. That I was the one moving.
Eli: Still true.
I snickered to myself. It felt like finding a door in a hallway I’d stopped walking down years ago.
The conversation flowed easily after that. It wasn’t dramatic, or heavy. Just steady in a way we hadn’t managed in years.
It was me who mentioned Victor.
Me: He’s married again.
That pause was longer.
Eli: Number 4?
Me: Five. You forgot about the one in Denver.
Eli: Right. The yoga instructor.
Me: She was thirty-two.
Another moment of nothing.
Eli: Of course she was.
We’d learned long ago to not be surprised by our parents’ antics. We both knew how it went—fast beginnings, short endings, the next prospect lined up before ties were severed with the last.
We’d grown up watching that happen. Even at seven and fourteen, we’d known it wouldn’t last. We just hadn’t known how to explain it yet.
That night, the conversation stretched longer than either of us expected.
We talked about Victor’s new wife—not that we knew much about her—the yoga instructor we barely remembered, how many times you could start over before it stopped meaning anything.
Then talk shifted to Elias’s fieldwork in Washington, an ongoing argument about animal migration routes and shrinking funding.
Then to my last wedding, and the planner who’d wanted three versions of the same sunset.
We weren’t trying to break down Dad’s choices or figure out what they meant, nor were we trying to fix our relationship. We were just talking.
Message after message, neither of us letting the thread die the way we usually did.
At some point past midnight, the city quieted outside my windows. Only my phone screen illuminated the pitch-black apartment.
He sent a photo.
A stretch of forest rising into the distance—tall trees, uneven ground, light slipping through the canopy in a way I’d never been able to fake.
Eli: You should see this in real life.