17. Sadie
Seventeen
Sadie
The library is quiet, which for a weekday afternoon, is surprising. Don’t students have work to do?
I’m sitting at my usual table, on the second floor east, my laptop is set up, and I pull out the contact sheets from last week's shoot and try to remember what I was thinking when I took them.
Photography assignments require a lot of attention, not just to the images but also to the intention behind them. I've been staring at the same three shots for twenty minutes and I'm not getting closer to the answer.
It might be because I’m not focusing on my work. I’m focused on my phone. I’ve not had any new messages, not for the last two days.
Two days of silence from a ghost and I've checked the screen more times than I want to count, which tells me something about myself. I am crazy.
I can’t believe I threw it all away, the photos on the memory card, the bracelet on my wrist, and then me deciding to throw everything away.
Apparently, my decision has a shelf life of forty-eight hours before it starts feeling like a loss.
I look back at the contact sheets, telling myself to focus, but I keep on glancing around the library to see who else is here. I don’t know who I expect to see, I don’t even know who the ghost is.
Then I see him. Miles Crawford. He’s four tables away, slightly angled away from me, he has two laptops open in front of him.
One of them is running something I can't see from here, the other looks like he has a document open. He has his headphones on, and he’s completely absorbed in whatever he’s doing.
The two laptops make me wonder what degree requires two laptops simultaneously.
He hasn't looked up once; he’s engrossed in whatever he’s working on.
I look back at my contact sheets, but they don’t keep my attention like they usually do. I only last about ten seconds, and then I’m looking back at him again.
The thing is, and I've been trying not to think about this, I like him. Not Ghost, not the flowers. Miles. I have no idea what it is about him that keeps taking my attention. He’s hardly spoken to me, but yet, I like him and want to get to know him better.
I don't know what to do with that when everything else is so complicated around me. I start tapping my fingers on the table wondering if I can talk myself into going over and talking to him.
I close the contact sheets and stand up before I can talk myself out of it.
Yet, my feet aren’t moving, I’m telling myself to move.
It takes me longer to move up four tables than it should.
I stop, convincing myself that I’m about to do something embarrassing, then keep going because standing in the middle of a library aisle is actually more embarrassing as other students are looking at me.
I stop beside his table, he doesn’t look up, so I tap his shoulder. He goes still for a fraction of a second, but he’s not startled. I honestly don’t think anything startles him.
He pulls one headphone off and looks up at me.
I smile. Probably a bit too wide, but I don’t care. No, that’s a lie, I do care. "Hi."
"Hi."
"Can I…" I gesture at the empty chair across from him. "Is this taken?"
He looks at the chair, something moves through his expression that I can't read, consideration, maybe, or something else entirely and then he pulls the chair out slightly with one hand.
“It’s free,” he replies with a smile.
I sit down, hoping he’ll talk to me. He doesn’t, instead he goes back to his laptop almost immediately, which should feel dismissive but somehow it doesn't. Maybe whatever he’s working on is important. I pull my own work out, spread the contact sheets, and start with my own work.
I feel him glancing over at me, and I’m doing everything not to smile at the feeling.
"What are you working on?" he asks.
"Photography assignment." I turn the contact sheet toward him. "I have to submit a series of ten images, a unified concept, and an artist statement. I keep changing my mind about what the concept actually is," I tell him. I’m impressed with myself because I’m not stuttering.
He leans forward to look properly. Then he pulls his chair slightly closer and angles himself toward the sheet. His arm comes to rest on the back of my chair, he’s not touching me, it’s just there.
There are more than a few things going through my head right now. How would his body feel against mine? Does he have a sexy body under those clothes? How many girls has he been with this year? I don’t know where that thought comes from, but it annoys me. It shouldn’t but it does.
"What were you thinking when you took this one?" He points at the third image, the library light shot, the one I keep returning to.
"That the light was doing something interesting," I say. "The way it hit the edge of the shelf made it look like the books were on fire. Just the edges."
"So, the concept is edges."
I look at him. "What?"
"Every image you keep coming back to…," he gestures across the sheet, "...
has something at the edge of the frame doing something the center isn't. In this one, it’s the light.
This one, the person is halfway out of shot.
This one, the shadow is there." He sits back slightly.
"You're not photographing subjects. You're photographing thresholds. "
I stare at the contact sheet for a moment, and I can’t believe I didn’t see it myself. He's right. He's completely right and I've been looking at these for two weeks without seeing it.
"Thresholds," I say. “Do you know about photography?”
“Not really, I like to know things. So, I read a book a few years ago about photography, I was bored.” He stops for a moment when I open my mouth to say something and then change my mind and close it. With a smile he says,” It’s the point where one thing becomes another. That's your concept."
I write it down before I can forget. Being this close to Miles even I know I can’t think straight. I look at the images again with the new frame and feel them all shift into something I can work with.
"What are you studying?" I ask.
"English."
I look at his two laptops. "That explains the two screens?"
"One's for the case…" He stops. "One's for the assignment. One's for reading."
I let the almost-slip go. "English explains a lot actually."
"Does it?" he asks.
I wasn’t meant to say that out loud.
"Yeah, it’s the way you talk. You say things in the exact right amount of words. Never more. Or it’s because you don’t like talking.”
The corner of his mouth curls into a smile. "Is that a compliment? I like to talk, but I think my mouth can do so many other things.” He winks, and I look away because I know I’m blushing.
I have nothing to say, mostly because I know the words won’t come out without me sounding weird.
He looks back at his screen, knowing his words have affected me. "Regionals are Saturday, right?"
"Yep, four days.” Thank God he’s changed the subject, because now I’m thinking about what he can do with his mouth.
"Floor piece ready?"
"Almost. I'm still deciding on the music. The piece I have works technically but it doesn't…" I pause, looking for the right words, and for a split second my eyes glance to his mouth. "It doesn't feel like me yet."
He's quiet for a moment. "Clair de Lune."
"The Debussy?"
"Slowed down arrangement. There's a version that runs around four minutes.
The build up in the middle gives you time to breathe before the final pass.
" He doesn't look at me. "It would suit the way you move." I see the corner of his lips curl, even though he’s still not looking at me. “If you want to know what my mouth can do, just ask. It’s better than staring at my lips.”
"Shut up.” I playfully slap his arm. “You've watched me on the floor?"
"At the party," he says. "You were doing something in the pool area. Showing Juno a move."
I remember that, but I’m surprised he remembers it.
"I'll listen to it," I say, looking through my music and saving it. I know it’s a little late to be adding a new music piece to my routine, but the music I have at the moment just doesn't feel right, and I’m not sure why.
"Are we interrupting something interesting?" I look up from my phone and see Mason and Declan.
I still can’t believe how good looking this family is.
Miles doesn't look up from his screen. "Yes."
"Fantastic." Mason pulls a chair from the table behind us and drops into it backwards, his arms across the back. "Blake's tomorrow night. You're coming."
"I'm not."
"You are." Mason looks at me with the easy warmth he aims at everyone, yet you can see the crazy behind his eyes. This playfulness he has, I have a feeling is all show, there’s deeper something behind the look, I just can’t pinpoint it yet.
"He's been in this library for approximately four hundred hours this week. "
"Three days," Miles says.
"It feels like four hundred." Declan says. "You're coming."
"I'll give it a miss."
"Miles." Mason leans forward. "You need to…"
"Fine." The word lands hard, letting Mason and Declan know the subject is finished, and he only agrees to shut them up.
Mason blinks. "That was easier than expected."
"Don't make it weird."
"I wouldn't dream of it." He stands, replacing the chair, then he looks between me and Miles one more time looking amused and saying nothing about what he thinks he’s seen. "Sadie."
"Mason,” I mimic his tone.
They leave. Declan gives Miles one brief look on his way past that communicates something that only they know.
I turn to Miles. "What's Blake's?"
He leans back in his chair, then he looks at me for a moment like he's deciding something. Then he nods toward me, it’s a small gesture, he’s asking me to come closer. I lean in without thinking about it, which is a decision I regret the moment his cologne hits me.
He drops his voice low, and he’s close enough that I can feel the warmth of it.
"We have a friend who runs an underground fight club," he says. "We go sometimes."