28. Twenty-eight
Twenty-eight
The only person I tell about the gallery show is Scotty. After Camp left me naked in a blanket and forgot to come home for four hours last week, “Come to my gallery show” were the last words I wanted to say to him.
And with the kids, it’s a complex tapestry of excuses. I want them to see me trying something new—set the example that there’s a way to be brave at any age—but I also can’t bear the idea of failing in front of them. I can’t compare to Camp—to a dad that played major league baseball and is the unofficial prince of the town. A few photographs in a small gallery in a small town seems so . . . small. If I’m good enough—if I don’t get laughed out of Ledger—I’ll tell them. I’ll show them the work I made. The work they unknowingly made with me.
Scotty helps dress me: my new jeans, her expensive heels, my black top, her purple blazer. Her style and mine, a collaboration of us.
At the gallery, through the propped-open door, to the small section that contains my collection of twenty canvases, all exploding with unexpected color, I pause. Take it in. Feel it swirl and swell, in my palms, my throat, the space between my shoulder blades, and my knees. Pride.
“They fit together,” Irma says stepping next to me, radiant in a red, flowy top.
I nod. “They do. And I like the name.”
“Ah,” she says, looking at the same placard I am, LOVE AND LITTLE DETAILS written across it. “Seemed fitting.” She smiles, squeezes my arm. “Now, get some champagne. First people are arriving. Try to have fun with it, June Cannon. Take the compliments. Pose for the pictures. Let your family gush over you.” She runs her fingers through her short hair. “It’s the only way these stuffy things are fun.”
With a laugh, she’s gone, greeting the guests, leaving me with my photos and a split-second regret of wishing there would be family to gush over me.
“You’re making us look bad, June,” a smooth voice says. Reed.
I laugh with a shake of my head. Taking him in. Clothes tailored to his body. A suit sans the tie. Eyes swallowing me whole. Too sexy to be fair. The sight of Reed Simmons nearly knocks the wind out of me as he hands me a glass of champagne.
“You’re a liar, Reed Simmons. But my photographs thank you.”
“Ah.” He lifts his chin, blue eyes calculated. “I didn’t even notice those.”
He’s playing a game. A temporary Casanova in a small town, and I shouldn’t let him—I’m married. But, for a night I’m in sexy heels and wearing make-up in front of art I created. Nobody screaming mom. No dog drooling on my lap. No husband leaving me naked in the name of high school athletics.
“Careful, Reed.” I tip my glass of champagne toward him. “That mouth of yours has been known to get us in trouble.”
It’s the closest I’ve come to flirting with someone other than Camp in twenty-five years and it tiptoes the line of completely wonderful and downright wrong.
He scrapes his teeth across his bottom lip, raking me over with his gaze before shaking his head with a breathy laugh that settles somewhere low in my belly.
I know in the seconds of our heated silence, the sexual tension pulling at every curve of my bones, this is how it starts. An affair. Someone sees another in a way nobody else does. Fills in the fractures that have spread across the surface, wedging their way in with bedroom eyes and fuck-me words. The need to be seen, feel wanted. An itch begging to be scratched, and someone willing to drag fingernails down the skin.
I blink away; we fall quiet. Staring at a photo of Lake Ledger.
Sun bright, amplified by a burst from a light leak, fatefully cutting the image in a way that interpretation decides if it’s art or trash. I hadn’t planned it to look this way—it was Hank. He yanked the camera out of my bag, asked, What’s this button do? And, before I could respond, the back popped open, partially exposing the roll. Most were destroyed, but the ones that survived were magic.
“Reed,” Irma calls from across the gallery, next to where WOMEN OF THE EARTH are on display, waving her hand through the air with an eager-faced couple beside her.
With a dip of his chin, he’s gone, long strides across the room, and I down my champagne.
Like a floodgate opens, the people arrive. The small gallery fills, low music drowned out by conversations and laughter. Their faces are a mixture of tight-lipped almost-frowns of the highest echelon of art perusers to rosy-cheeked smiles of people just here for the wine. Most I know, some I don’t.
What feels awkward at first turns into comfortable chaos. The first “How did you make this photo?” shocks me, but the dozenth time, the process rolls off my tongue.
The film soup.
The light leaks.
The prisms.
The tilt-shift lens.
And though the smile is on my face, it becomes my entire personality. Happy. Fulfilled. After seventeen years of being only one thing, proof that I can be more. A mom, and .
When I hear, “Look at this bitch, painting the sky in rainbows,” it pulls a loud laugh right out of me.
Scotty walks up looking so perfectly her: Chocolate hair in sexy waves, Norah Jones shirt under a pink blazer, and a glass of champagne over her head as she shimmies through the crowd.
I wrap my arms around her, some of my own champagne spilling with our too-big movements. “You came!”
“Of course I came!” she cries, looking around. “This is badass, Joo.”
She steps to a photo, one of long shadows on the baseball field. There are no faces, but it’s easy to imagine them.
“Where’s Camp? I bet he’s losing his damn mind.” She scans the crowd, bringing her glass to her lips.
“Right . . . I didn’t tell him.”
Her eyes widen. “The hell? Why not?”
The volume of her voice makes me flinch. “God, Scotty. Shhh!” I grab her arm, pulling her to me. “Because-because-because I don’t know why. Because I’m mad at him. And-and-and because this isn’t a big deal.”
We both look around the room, jam-packed, and the dozen people huddled around my photos. Her look, a silent this is a big fucking deal, you dumb bitch , I dismiss with a wave of my hand.
“Since when are you Team Camp?” I ask, annoyance thumping against my sternum.
She scoffs, sliding her phone out of her pocket to take photos of my photos. “I’m team you , June. And, don’t bite my head off, but I feel like you’re looking at this all wrong. Has Camp dropped the ball the last few years? Abso-fucking-lutely. But you are so definitive. Like, you think the only way to make a change, to do all this”—she gestures around the room—“is by abandoning everything else. You’re allowed to be more than one thing. Hell, you can be a dozen things if you want. A million! Just because you got knocked up doesn’t mean you have to be a martyr. It’s like you smothered part of yourself because you shit out a human or three.” She shrugs, takes a sip of her champagne. Nonchalant and arrogant as she snaps another picture.
“It’s not that easy, Scott. It’s . . .”
She waves my words away, pushing me to stand in front of my display, pointing the phone at me. I smile wide, bend a knee to point a toe midair, and hold my champagne over my head, resuming my annoyed stance when she’s done.
“Complicated, I know,” she finishes for me, hooking her arm through mine. “I’m just saying, life isn’t black and white. There’s so much color.” She drops her head on my shoulder, facing a portrait of kids licking ice cream cones, covered in shades of pinks and blues. “And judging by these, you already know that.”
I drop the side of my head against hers. “I hate how well you know me.”
“I know you don’t.”
I snort a laugh then we fall quiet, sipping champagne among the murmur of voices and soft music playing as we stare at the wall in front of us.
“So. Ford Callahan.”
She digs her elbow into my ribs. “For taking such good photos, you’re kind of a bitch.”
“I know I’m not,” I mock, slipping my arm out of hers to face her. “But seriously, is your plan to hate him forever or what?”
“Depends,” she says, raking her nails through her hair with one hand as she brings her glass to her lips with the other.
“On?”
“On if you’re going to keep up this stupid charade with Camp.”
I groan, annoyed with her typical deflective answer when it comes to anything about her, as a roar of laughter bubbles up from across the gallery. Both our gazes float to the source: A small group of people circled around Reed as he tells a story, animated with his hands. His eyes are so bright, even across the room in the low light they shine like two blue suns on his face.
“Oh, shit,” Scotty says when recognition strikes. Reed nods in our direction, giving a slight wave without breaking the spell he’s cast on the crowd around him.
“Mhm,” I say with a mouth full of champagne.
She clinks her glass to mine. “Bet he has a huge dick.”
When I choke, she cackles, then takes another photo.
Scotty leaves, the crowd thins, and, high on adrenaline or champagne or both, I check my phone for the first time all night.
My high plummets: twelve missed calls and eight unread texts.
Camp : hank fell taking him to the hospital call me
Camp: At the hospital waiting for doc
Camp: J call me
I don’t read the rest, rushing toward the door, heart pounding, I dial Camp.
Hospital?
Hurt?
A million and one scenarios run through my mind within the seconds it takes for his phone to ring then go to voicemail.
Me: On my way.
“Irma, I have to go,” I say, breathless as I cross the room. “My son—he’s hurt or something.”
Her eyes widen as she pulls the glasses from her face. “Go. Yes.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll come get these tomorrow. Or however this protocol is—I-I just—” Tears line my eyes, and panic constricts my throat as I fish through my bag for my keys.
She shakes her head. “No need. Someone bought them.”
“What?” I ask, freezing for a split second with keys in hand.
“All of them. Go.”
I nod, unable to compute what she’s saying, and run.