Chapter 6 #3
I look away the second I’m past him so he won’t know I was staring, and then I cross the living room toward the kitchen.
I’m just passing the peninsula when I notice his laptop is sitting open, with a gallery of edited photos in Photoshop on screen.
I pause and glance at the photos, but my breath is taken away by their beauty.
Both the stunning photography and also the skilled editing.
I try not to stiffen when I feel him behind me, but it’s impossible—his breath is on my bare neck and his proximity has me on edge. He reaches his right arm around me and taps on one of the photos and it fills the screen.
In the foreground of the shot are snow-covered trees with a crystalline blue-green lake beyond. Snow-covered rocky peaks line the far side of the lake.
“What do you see in this one?” he asks.
“The composition is perfect. The angle and the light, the shadows. The way the orange clouds of sunrise are reflected across half the lake. It’s a perfect shot.”
“Hmm,” he mumbles approvingly.
“I used to take pictures like this,” I mutter under my breath, but there’s no way he doesn’t hear me.
“I remember how much you always loved photography,” he says and my stomach drops at the mention of him noticing my passion even when I was a teenager. “Maybe you ought to be using your talent for more than just photographing my sister.”
I turn my head over my shoulder to give him the nasty look he deserves.
Instead, my eyes act of their own accord, traveling down his body, over the planes of his chest and abs, where every muscle in his torso is sharply defined under a light layer of chest hair, down to where his low-slung gray sweatpants hug his muscular legs and, from what I can tell, a pretty impressive package of his male bits as well.
Okay, eye contact only from now on.
“I don’t only photograph your sister,” I tell him, looking back up, though it’s true that for years a large majority of the photos I took were of her.
Running her social media when she was ski racing and until she married Nate was my almost full-time side hustle.
But I was such a natural at it and she hated managing her social media and sponsorships, so it was a great fit for two best friends.
“I live and breathe photography and videography at work too.”
“Is sports photography your passion?” he asks. His eyes are locked on mine now and his face looks sincere as he questions me, but his tone informs me that he already knows the answer.
“Photography’s not really a big part of my job anymore. What I do is more about social media engagement.”
“Con-grat-u-lations,” he drawls. “You get people to like more photos.”
“No, I help people get to know our athletes, to care about them, to passionately root for them.” I love that part of my job, the way social media lets these athletes who spend most of the year training in small groups get to show their fans what their day-to-day is like, lets their fans get to know them.
“Skiing used to be something that people cared about every four years when the Winter Olympics rolled around. What I do helps people stay connected to the sport and realize that it’s a nearly year-round endeavor every single year. ”
“And what reward do you get out of it, besides a paycheck?” On each side of the flat bridge of his nose, his nostrils flare.
Is he looking for a fight?
“It’s a job, Beau,” I say as I step away, reminding myself that I don’t have to attend every fight I’m invited to. “What kind of reward do I need besides the satisfaction of doing it well, and a paycheck?”
“Don’t know,” he says, as I walk toward the sink. “I’m not exactly an expert in the whole job department. But I guess I’d want to use my skills to do something fulfilling that I felt made a difference.”
“Like you do with snowboarding?” He doesn’t compete often enough that he’s a household name like Shaun White or Chloe Kim, but if you follow professional snowboarding, there’s no way you wouldn’t know him.
Especially if you’re on social media, because now that I’ve really looked into it, he’s all over every social channel—usually without a shirt.
Even so, he’s not “making a difference.”
I turn the water on full blast so if he responds I don’t hear it, and get to work cleaning the dried carbonara off the dishes before loading them into the dishwasher.
I don’t turn to see if he’s gone, but I assume he has—leaving just his words to haunt me.
What reward do I get out of my work? Where does my fulfillment come from?
And is the fact that I don’t know actually the problem?
I think back to high school, when I got ahold of my first digital camera—a hand-me-down from a friend’s mom after we had a long conversation about photography.
I took every photography class my college offered, and in the early days of working in social media marketing, I spent countless hours each day setting up and getting the perfect photo.
But engagement is where the money is, and I always had a sixth sense for knowing how to engage an audience online.
I’ve had a great career over the past ten years and don’t regret it.
But I did love photography, especially nature photography, and I don’t remember why I dropped something I loved so much.
Why I let work and relationships take precedence over something I was truly passionate about. Or maybe I wasn’t passionate enough?
As I load the last dish into the dishwasher, I wonder if there’s a way I could use photography to help people.
Not like I helped Jackson build her brand on social media, but like really help people.
Maybe there’s some type of photography volunteer work I could do?
Lord knows I could use something to distract me from thinking about my failed relationship with Peter, and the roommate who seems intent on getting under my skin.
I dry my hands off on the dishtowel, and as I hang it neatly across the handle of the dishwasher to dry, I’m resolved to spend a little time this week seeing if volunteer photography work is a thing. Hopefully it is, and bonus points if it gets me out of being home with Beau.