Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
RACHEL
The next morning arrived like nothing happened, which was the first lie.
The light came in at the same angle it always did, pale and filtered by clouds, turning my kitchen into soft grays and muted gold. The radiator hissed.
Somewhere below me, David was warming up his violin—slow scales that slid through the floorboards like the building itself was stretching awake. There were three places in my apartment where the sound came through cleanest. I’d found them without trying. Of course I had.
Everything sounded normal.
My body did not.
I padded out of the bedroom in Dominic’s heavy sweater that I’d stolen—I’d pulled it out when I got home the night before—bare feet cold against the floor. My phone was where I’d left it on my nightstand, face down like it had done something wrong.
I told myself I wouldn’t check it yet—coffee first, discipline first. I got the water going. I even rinsed the mug.
I almost made it.
Then I went back for the phone like my body had its own priorities.
His name was at the top of my notifications.
A voice note.
My throat tightened before I even touched the screen.
I stood there staring at it, thumb hovering, like if I waited long enough it would turn into something else—an email from René, an alert from my calendar, a harmless reminder that didn’t have feelings attached to it.
It didn’t.
I pressed play.
Dominic’s voice filled my kitchen, warm and low, threaded with that gentle amusement he got when he was trying not to sound like he cared too much.
“Hey, Flash,” he said. A pause, like he could hear my hesitation through the phone. “I got your message. And… I’m really glad you sent it.”
My eyes burned. I blinked hard and focused on the coffee grounds in the filter like they were the only thing keeping me upright.
“I miss you too,” he continued, quieter now. “A lot. I’m not asking for answers you don’t have. I’m not trying to corner you. I just—” Another small pause. “I want to know we’re on the same team.”
My stomach dipped. That word—team—hit like a sucker punch, sharp enough that my hand tightened around the phone until my knuckles went pale.
“And about Thanksgiving,” he added, voice tipping back toward lighter, like he knew he was walking a line.
“We don’t have to decide right now. But we should talk about it.
I can come to Paris. Or you can come here.
Or we meet in the middle and start a new tradition where we eat turkey in an airport lounge and pretend it’s romantic. ”
A soft huff of laughter—him at his most Dominic.
Then, gentler again, “Call me when you can. Not when you have to. Okay?”
The message ended.
The silence that followed was immediate and brutal.
I stood in the middle of my kitchen with the coffee still not dripping and my chest feeling too full and too hollow at the same time.
Not angry.
Not demanding.
Not even disappointed.
Just… present.
Which meant I couldn’t dismiss it. Couldn’t outrun it. Couldn’t label it unfair and use that as an excuse to shove it aside.
I stared at my phone until the screen dimmed.
Then I turned it face down again like that counted as restraint.
Coffee first, I reminded myself.
Then the rest of my life.
The mug in my hand was the one I’d been using all week—white ceramic, plain, nothing special. But the second it warmed my palm, my brain supplied Dominic’s hands over mine like a memory that didn’t need permission.
I set it down too fast. Coffee sloshed and I didn’t even wipe it up right away.
As if the mug had betrayed me.
As if I hadn’t.
The apartment felt sharper this morning. The air too clean. The quiet too honest. Even my productivity had a different edge after last night—like everything I did had to prove I was still the person who stayed in control.
I opened my laptop on the couch and pulled up yesterday’s files.
Work.
Safe.
Objective.
A set that had been all hard lines and hostile mood and calculated beauty. The photographer’s style was strict—high contrast, oversaturated edges, faces like mannequins, emotion like an accessory.
I’d shot my softer alternates anyway.
Habit.
Stubbornness.
Maybe something else.
I scrolled through the thumbnails, selecting, renaming, cataloging like the labels could keep me calm.
Then I saw it.
A frame I didn’t remember taking.
Or maybe I remembered and I just hadn’t wanted to admit it.
She was in it.
Not posed.
Not performing.
Not hitting a mark.
Just caught—half turned, hair loosened from whatever clip the stylists had forced it into, mouth open on a laugh like the sound had startled her out of her own control.
It was messy.
It was alive.
And it was absolutely not what the photographer had been hired to deliver. The whole brief was power and distance. And I’d photographed the exact opposite—softness, belonging, the thing you couldn’t sell.
The light in the shot was wrong too. Not wrong technically—just wrong stylistically. It softened her. Gave her warmth. Made the whole room look less expensive and more real.
It looked like something you’d keep.
A candid.
Not something you’d submit.
My pulse ticked louder in my ears.
The name on the call sheet floated up in my mind uninvited, like a caption I could slap on the file if I wanted to.
I didn’t.
I zoomed in instead, letting the image fill my screen.
Her eyes weren’t on the camera.
Not on the lens. Not on the room.
On me—exactly where she’d been looking the night before.
I could tell because the angle of her smile was too intimate for anyone else.
Like she’d been reacting to something I’d said. Like she’d forgotten she was being watched.
For one second, the photo felt like the only real thing in my week.
Then the rest of my brain arrived, late and relentless, carrying all the reasons.
This is personal.
This is unprofessional.
This is not what they asked for.
This is not what you’re supposed to do.
This is dangerous.
I hovered over it with my cursor.
Delete.
Easy.
Clean.
Erase the proof that my eye had drifted off assignment and onto something I didn’t have the right to want.
My finger didn’t move.
Instead I dragged the file into a folder.
Not the selects folder.
Not the rejects folder.
A third place.
A limbo I could pretend wasn’t a decision.
I named it something stupid on purpose.
extras_misc
Then I kept working like nothing had happened.
René’s email came in at 08:03.
A call time. An address. A list.
And, as always, no greeting.
I stared at it while chewing a piece of toast I’d only half made myself eat.
Today was not with him.
I would be assisting someone else again—another photographer, another style, another set of expectations I had to match without knowing the rules.
And René had added a line at the bottom like an afterthought.
Send me your alternates from yesterday. I want to see your eye.
My stomach tightened.
That was new. He hadn’t asked for those before.
I read the sentence again, trying to find a loophole hidden in the phrasing.
Alternates.
Not selects.
Not the official deliverables.
My eye.
As if he’d noticed the very thing Mischa kept calling out.
As if he was offering me a chance to exist inside my work again—without ever calling it that.
I stared at my folders.
The clean set of alternates, safe and technical and correct.
And the one frame sitting in extras_misc like a secret.
I told myself it would be stupid to include it.
That René would know instantly it wasn’t aligned with the photographer’s intended look.
That it would look like I couldn’t follow direction.
That it would look like… me.
I built a new export set.
Twenty files.
Then, without thinking too hard—because thinking too hard was how I always talked myself out of breathing—I added one more.
The risky one.
The one that didn’t match.
The one that had her in it like a bright mistake.
I told myself it was a fluke. A test. Something to see if René would catch it.
I told myself a lot of things.
Then I hit send before I could change my mind.
The email whooshed away.
My chest didn’t loosen.
If anything, the space inside me got sharper.
Like I’d just thrown a match into a room full of fumes and was waiting to see whether it sparked.
The set that day was colder.
Literally—drafts sliding in through old windows, crew in layered sweaters, hands wrapped around cups like prayer. I was in layers, with a knit cap pulled over my icy ears, and I still couldn’t quite warm all the way up.
The shoot was for a local publication piece, quieter than an ad campaign. Denis—the photographer—was older, calmer, less interested in control and more interested in patience.
Which should have helped. And it did. Except his casual pace meant we were already running late before the shoot began. Since it wasn’t my fault, I tried to embrace the moment.
Instead, all I could think about was the email I’d sent René.
And Dominic’s voice note sitting in my phone like an unopened wound.
And the shape of her thumb against my cheek.
Every part of me was split.
I did my job anyway.
I always did.
I swapped lenses. Checked light. Stood quietly in the background and made myself useful.
By lunch, I’d helped Noor troubleshoot a layout issue via text and sent Frankie three reference images for the album cover concept she’d described as “moody, but like… triumphant, but not cheesy, you know??”
I knew.
I didn’t know how I knew, but I did. I spoke Frankie pretty damn fluently.
My calendar buzzed again.
A reminder to start outlining Mischa’s term project proposal—again.
I ignored it.
Then, guiltily, opened it.
Mischa’s folder sat in my bag like a weight.
The list of projects she’d handed me still felt like a dare.
Something you care about. Something that costs you a little.
What even was that now? Did I know?
Or maybe I did and I just didn’t want to name it.
On the métro ride back, I opened my camera on my phone out of habit.
Scrolled past the photo Dominic had taken of us.
Scrolled past it again slower.
Then, like my thumb had a mind of its own, I found the frame from yesterday—the one I’d buried—because of course it wasn’t really buried if I knew exactly where it was.
I stared at it until the métro lights flickered over my screen like a warning.
Then I locked my phone.
René replied while I was at the corner picking up groceries. Some fruit. Some milk. Some bread. Most of what I had—had spoiled because I just forgot to eat it.
I paused in the line to open the note while I waited for my turn to check out.
One sentence.
Good We talk tomorrow
No punctuation. No softness. No explanation.
My stomach flipped anyway.
Good?
It could mean anything.
It could mean nothing.
But it was a reaction. It meant he’d seen it.
Had he seen her in the corner of the frame? Had he seen the part of me I’d been trying to erase for weeks?
I should have felt relieved.
Instead, my pulse went jittery with something that felt too close to fear.
Because if René was paying attention…
Then someone else might be too.
I got home and found the building in mid-chaos—voices in the stairwell, someone laughing too loudly, music leaking from somewhere below.
Soup night.
Of course it was soup night.
I almost groaned.
My body wanted the comfort of it. The stairs. The wine. The sense of belonging without having to do anything.
My brain wanted the quiet.
I hesitated outside Alix’s door long enough to hear her say something sharp and affectionate through the wood.
Then I kept going.
In my apartment, I dropped my bag and stood still for a second, listening to the silence settle around me. Then I carried my groceries into the kitchen.
I should have called Dominic.
His voice note sat there—kind, patient, dangerous.
I picked up my phone.
My thumb hit his name—hard enough that it opened the call screen. The green button sat there like a dare. I stared at it until the screen dimmed and the phone decided for me.
Next, I opened my calendar.
A wall of color.
Green. Blue. Yellow.
Purple, still barely there, like a joke.
My throat tightened.
I closed the calendar.
Opened my camera files again.
Found the risky photo.
The one that didn’t belong.
The one that felt like breathing.
I stared at it until my eyes stung.
Then, without thinking too hard, I dragged it—along with two others that were too soft, too honest, too not what I’d been submitting lately—into a new folder.
Term Project: First Set
The name of the folder made my stomach twist.
Like I’d just admitted something.
Like I’d just committed to a version of myself I couldn’t undo.
I stared at the folder for a long moment.
Then I emailed it to myself.
Not to Mischa.
Not yet.
Just… closer.
A step I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t taken.
My phone buzzed.
A message.
From Dominic.
My chest tightened reflexively.
I opened it.
Dominic:
Are you free for five minutes tonight? No pressure. Just… you.
I stared at the screen, throat closing.
Five minutes.
I had five minutes.
I could make five minutes.
I could also make five minutes disappear like I always did.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard.
And then, because I was apparently committed to being the worst kind of coward—capable, competent, and emotionally unavailable—I typed:
Me:
I’m in the middle of something for class. Can I call you tomorrow?
The lie wasn’t that I was busy.
The lie was that tomorrow would be better.
I hit send anyway.
Then I sat on my couch, staring at the photo on my laptop screen.
Her laughing.
Unposed.
Alive.
And for the first time in days, my calendar wasn’t the loudest thing in the room.
The quiet was.
And it was asking me a question I didn’t know how to answer.
How many times can you keep the shutter closed on your own life…before you forget what you were trying to protect?