Chapter 9 #2
I started shooting immediately.
It felt good. Clean. Purposeful. I followed motion instead of staging it, caught hands exchanging money, shoulders brushing too close, a laugh that cracked open at the wrong moment. I felt in it—the way René always talked about without ever naming.
By the time I returned to the Daily, I was quietly pleased with myself.
That should have been my first warning.
René didn’t sit when he reviewed the images. He stood behind my chair, arms folded, weight shifted back on his heels like he was already done with this.
Too done.
He said nothing for a long time.
Then: “Again.”
I turned. “Again?”
“You missed it.”
“I didn’t—” I stopped myself before the defense slipped out. Tried again. “What did I miss?”
He tapped the screen once.
“The moment you hesitated.”
I frowned. “I didn’t hesitate.”
“Yes,” he said mildly. “You did.”
He leaned closer, rewound the sequence, flicking through frames faster than I could track.
“Here,” he said. “And here. You felt it change. Your hand slowed.”
I stared at the images, my chest tightening.
There it was.
A woman stepping out of a shop, face open, mid-expression. Something unguarded. Something brief.
I’d taken the shot just after.
Too late.
“You waited,” René said. “Why?”
I didn’t have an answer I liked.
“Again,” he repeated, straightening. “This time, don’t be polite.”
That was the whole critique.
No yelling. No lecture. Just the quiet confirmation that I’d seen the lack—and chosen safety anyway.
I went back out.
Same street. Different light. More crowded now, louder, messier. I worked through the discomfort, through the urge to hang back, through the voice in my head that kept asking, What if they notice? What if they object? What if you’re wrong?
I took the shot anyway.
Several, actually.
I got cursed at once. Laughed at twice. Ignored more times than I could count. None of it mattered. What mattered was the moment my hand stopped hovering and started acting.
When I returned, René barely looked at the screen before nodding.
“There,” he said. “Now it breathes.”
Relief hit sharp and fast, followed by something heavier.
Regret.
Not for the reshoot.
For the first version I’d hoped was enough even when I’d known better.
After that, the pace accelerated.
Reshoots stopped feeling like punishment and started feeling inevitable. Every assignment carried the unspoken question: Did you hesitate? Every review forced me to confront it.
I stopped counting hours and started counting batteries.
My camera became an extension of my hand. I learned which pockets my spare memory cards lived in without looking. I stopped checking my phone unless I absolutely had to. When I did, it was usually to silence it.
Work helped.
That surprised me.
Not because I hadn’t loved photography before—I always had—but because this was different. This wasn’t indulgent or exploratory. This was deliberate. Demanding. Exhausting in a way that left no room for spiraling.
René pushed without warning and without apology.
One morning he sent me to shoot a location without telling me why. Another afternoon he rejected an entire set and told me to find the story I’d missed. Once, he handed me a camera that wasn’t mine and said, “Adapt.”
I did.
Sometimes badly. Sometimes brilliantly. Sometimes just well enough to survive the day.
I learned where Paris hid its edges. Where people dropped their masks when they thought no one was watching. I learned that disruption didn’t have to be loud—it just had to be honest. I learned that hesitation wasn’t always fear, but it was always visible.
By the Thursday after my night with Dominic, my body hurt everywhere. I hadn’t hurt this much when I tried to go to the gym.
I ate standing up more often than not. Showered on autopilot. Fell into bed without ceremony, my brain still half-framing shots as sleep dragged me under. I didn’t dream much. Or if I did, it was all light and shadow and movement without faces.
Dominic receded.
Not erased. Not forgotten.
But pushed to the periphery, where memory softened into background noise. Work did that. It demanded everything up front and gave nothing back unless you earned it. I liked that about it. Liked that it didn’t care who I wanted or what I was avoiding.
By Friday, René didn’t even tell me when something was wrong. He just sent me back out.
And I went.
Worse, he stopped hovering altogether.
He watched from across rooms. From reflections. From moments I didn’t realize were tests until they were already over. He corrected less and expected more. When he spoke, it was precise and minimal, like he was rationing words.
“You see faster,” he said once, almost idly.
That was it. No follow-up. No encouragement.
I carried that sentence with me all afternoon like contraband.
By the time the weekend rolled around, exhaustion hit me the second my head touched the pillow. No scrolling. No replaying conversations. No wondering what Dominic was doing or who he was with or whether distance had changed anything at all.
Sleep took me immediately.
I woke Saturday afternoon with my camera battery charging beside my bed and my shoes still by the door. I stretched, sore and foggy, and for a brief, disorienting moment, I felt… steady.
Like I’d outrun something.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand.
Once.
I ignored it.
It buzzed again.
I sighed, already knowing.
Dominic:
Miss you.
Just two words.
No accusation. No smile. No pretense. His name alone tightened something low and familiar in my chest.
I stared at the screen longer than I meant to, the quiet of my apartment suddenly too loud. Work hadn’t erased him. It had just delayed him. Given me enough space to forget how easily he stepped back into focus.
My camera sat on the dresser, lens cap off, waiting.
Paris waited.
So did he.
And suddenly, despite the exhaustion, despite the momentum, despite everything I’d built this week brick by brick—I was wide awake again.