Chapter 29
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
RACHEL
Mischa made me print them.
Not thumbnails. Not digital previews.
Actual prints. Heavy paper. Matte finish.
The kind that forced you to commit to the image instead of scrolling past it.
It also let me use the dark room I’d actually set-up when I first moved into the building.
It was so weird to actively use this skill that had been lying fallow so long I was actually rusty.
I could have used the photo printer, but I didn’t want to. She said make it cost me, so I forced myself to do it this way. I forced myself to treat each print like film — slow, deliberate, unforgiving.
One at a time.
Music turned up, door sealed, red light on, and it was me and my pain in the little room until I’d done them all. I might have printed out more than ten. I might have spent all day and most of a night in that dark room until I had close to thirty different shots printed.
Selecting the first for Mischa’s project took even more time, but I lived in that space. I didn’t check my phone, my email, or my calendar. I had sent René a single note—I was finishing this project then I’d check in with him after.
I didn’t ask for anyone’s permission. I just did it.
The minute I realized I’d circled around twice on picking, then eliminating, then picking the same few images—I closed my eyes and picked up ten, put them in a folder and walked away.
It wasn’t until I laid them out on the long table of Mischa’s studio at the Sorbonne like evidence that I even knew what wounds I’d put on display.
Ten photographs.
Ten small admissions.
None of them were clean. None of them were safe.
A reflection in a bus window where my face was cut in half by glare. Weirdly, it seemed to make my mouth look twisted between pleasure and pain depending on how you angled your head.
A woman crying on the métro, hand pressed over her mouth like she was fighting to keep the sound and the misery inside of herself. It shook me when I first saw it. It shook me even more in the image.
Kiara’s shoulder in soft focus, sunlight dissolving her edges. A nymph or apparition, there was something almost luminous and utterly unreal about her.
My own feet on the apartment floor, one sock missing, the bed still rumpled behind me. I had chipped paint on my toenails and never had I seen feet more in need of a pedicure.
The café table after we left it, two cups, one still warm. The faintest hint of steam rising from one while the other was isolated, and almost cold.
A missed hand on the métro — mine reaching, someone else’s already pulling away. Fingers blurred, motion captured in that half-second where you realize you’re alone before you’ve processed why.
The soup night staircase, empty. Paper cups abandoned on the steps like evidence of a gathering that had already moved on without me. The kind of photo that looked social until you noticed there were no people in it.
Dominic’s reflection in a mirror from weeks ago — not posed, not aware, just him mid-laugh behind me while I adjusted my camera. His face slightly out of focus, my shoulder sharp in the foreground — like I was already leaving even while I stood there.
My calendar, photographed at night. The glow of my laptop reflected faintly in the screen, rows of color blocks stacked so tightly they looked like a glitch instead of a schedule. Green. Blue. Yellow. Purple — barely visible, almost theoretical.
And finally:
A self-portrait I hadn’t remembered taking.
Me in Kiara’s bathroom mirror, hair loose, eyes red, her oversized t-shirt slipping off one shoulder. The light was wrong. Too soft. Too forgiving. I looked like someone who had just been held and didn’t know what to do with the after.
Not smiling.
Not sad.
Just… exposed.
They didn’t look like work.
They looked like moments no one wanted to keep.
Mischa studied them without speaking, hands folded behind her back. She walked the length of the table slowly, deliberately, like she was reading a body instead of a portfolio.
“You are not hiding here,” she said finally.
I swallowed. “No,” I could admit this. I had to. “I’m not.” Even if I wanted to—desperately.
Mischa didn’t smile. “It is terrifying.”
I let out a breath that felt like I’d been holding it since October.
“These are not marketable,” she continued. “They are not beautiful in a way that comforts people. They are beautiful in a way that asks something of them.”
My chest tightened.
“And of you,” she added.
I stared at the image of Kiara laughing, still unable to decide whether it belonged to me or to the world.
“What if I can’t do both?” I asked quietly. “What if I can’t make honest work and also… survive?”
Mischa turned to me fully then.
“Rachel,” she said, not unkindly, “you are already surviving. That is not the problem.”
I frowned. “It feels like it is.”
“You are afraid of choosing what kind of life you want to document — because once you choose it, you have to live inside it.”
The words slid into me like cold water.
“You’re also confusing survival with progress,” she said. “You move constantly. You produce constantly. You adapt constantly. You diminish yourself to be someone else. That is not life. That isn’t progress.”
I chewed the inside of my lip.
I thought of Dominic.
I thought of Kiara.
I thought of René’s ten images.
I thought of my calendar, screaming in color.
Mischa Condre let out a low sigh and moved to lean a hip against the table.
She faced me with a kind of frankness I didn’t deserve.
“One of the most difficult choices we face is reconciling our art with business. Business is about demands, meeting a concept, extracting everything human out of it in order to create product. Art is the complete opposite. To be a photographer is to be the master of both.”
My stomach churned. “How do you do that?”
She gestured toward the photographs. “These images are the first time I have seen you stop long enough to be affected by yourself.”
My throat tightened.
“You are afraid that if you slow down, you will fail,” she continued. “But what you are actually afraid of is that you will feel.”
I didn’t argue. I couldn’t.
She softened, just a fraction. “Feeling is not efficient. It does not schedule well. It cannot be optimized.” A pause. “That is why you have avoided it.”
I stared at the table, at my life laid out in ten fragments, and realized with a dull, sick clarity that she was right.
I hadn’t been choosing anything.
I’d just been moving fast enough to avoid the moment where I had to decide what mattered more.
“I don’t know how to pick one thing,” I said. “Everything feels real. Everything feels important. How do you choose one?” How could I?
Mischa’s gaze softened, just a fraction.
“You must choose the one that scares you most,” she said. “Because that is the only one that is actually yours.”
“And if I can’t afford it?” I asked. “If doing that costs me everything?”
Mischa’s gaze was steady.
“Then at least you will know what you are paying for.”
Dominic called that night.
It had been four days since we talked.
Four days since I told him about Kiara.
Four days since I’d gone to find her and…
It was evening here when he called. That made it lunchtime there. The number was his apartment. Not his office. Not his cell phone.
This call wouldn’t be—five minutes or on his way to court or rushed.
My stomach clenched around all the things I hadn’t said and might need to if I answered. I almost didn’t.
But I did.
“Flash,” he said, and his voice still did that thing — steadied me, grounded me, wrapped me up in a hug that I never wanted to leave.
“Hey,” I replied, instantly aware of the tears filming my eyes and clogging my throat.
A pause. Not awkward. Careful.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “A lot. And I don’t want to keep dancing around this.”
My stomach tightened.
“I can come to Paris,” he said. “Not for a visit. For real. I’ve already talked to my firm. There’s a remote rotation. It’s not ideal, but it’s possible.”
My breath caught.
“I don’t need you to come home,” he continued. “I just need to be where you are. I can build a life there. With you.”
Silence filled the space between us.
He wasn’t pleading.
He wasn’t romanticizing it.
He was offering it like a blueprint for a solution.
“I’m not afraid to change my life,” Dominic said softly. “But I am afraid of losing you because I am too careful to do it.”
My chest hurt in a way that wasn’t sharp — just immense. It wrapped its vise like arms around me and squeezed out all of the oxygen.
“You’d… move?” I whispered when I could finally push the words out.
“For a year,” he said. “We try it. No pressure. No promises. Just… us in the same city.”
I closed my eyes.
I pictured him in my apartment. His mug. His coat. His routines folding into mine. My life becoming something that had edges defined by him.
“You don’t have to decide right now,” he added gently. “But I do need to know if I’m offering something you want… or something you’re just tolerating.”
The question sucked all the oxygen out of me. What air I’d managed to inhale past the vise just gone.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
Because the truth was unbearable. I wanted him, but I wasn’t ready to be chosen yet.
I wanted love, but I wasn’t ready to be a home—his or anyone else’s.
“I don’t want you to upend your whole life for me,” I said finally, voice shaking. “That feels… wrong.”
Dominic exhaled slowly. “It doesn’t feel wrong to me. It feels like commitment.”
The word made my stomach flip.
“I don’t know if I can be that for you,” I whispered.
A long silence so heavy with understanding that the tears burning in my eyes began to slip out.
“I see,” Dominic said quietly. “You’re not undecided. You’re just not ready.”
The kindness in his voice was worse than any accusation.
“I love you,” he said. “But I can’t keep waiting for a life you’re not ready to choose—if you are ever ready to choose.”
My eyes burned.
“I know,” I whispered. “Dominic…” A ragged breath escaped me, and it was hard to try and quiet the panicked nature of it. “I…”
The words were all right there, why couldn’t I say them? I chose Paris because I needed to get away from New York, from Frankie, from my family, from… him.
Now, I was terrified that if I didn’t choose him right now, I might lose him forever. Was that even fair to him? To have him reframe his life around me when I wasn’t willing to do that for him?
Not yet?
Maybe not ever?
“I know, Flash,” he said in this soft voice that was a caress. “I really do. You don’t have to say anything.”
Because that was what I did. I didn’t say anything. I was a damn coward.
A shaky breath escaped me and the tears were burning a path down my face.
“You must choose the one that scares you most. Because that is the only one that is actually yours.”
“I’m sorry,” I managed to push out those words, aware of the snot beginning to drip from my nose. “I really am…” I licked at my lips. “But I’m not ready.”
I swallowed hard.
“You’re right,” I forced the admission out past every single one of my fears. “You shouldn’t wait, because you deserve so much more than to be living your life on pause when I can’t promise that I ever will be.”
When the call ended, the loss felt enormous.
Not empty.
Not full.
Just… enormous.
René’s offer came the next morning.
Not by email.
In person. At my apartment door.
I was so not ready to see him there right after dawn when I’d barely slept and I was still hungover after drinking down two full bottles of wine and working in my dark room most of the night.
Coffees in one hand, and a folder in the other, he climbed the stairs after I’d buzzed him in and grabbed a hair tie to pull back my shockingly bad hair.
When I opened the door to him, he greeted me by saying, “I want to send you to Lisbon. Three months. Documentary project. Full access. Full responsibility.”
My heart stuttered.
“Me?”
“You,” he said, offering me one of the coffees as I stepped back almost weakly to let him in. “Not as anyone’s assistant. As the photographer.”
The room tilted.
“It will not be safe,” René added. “It will not be easy. And you will not have time for distractions.”
I thought of Dominic.
I thought of Kiara.
I thought of Mischa’s table.
“When?” I asked.
He gave me a long look, maybe noticing my disheveled appearance or my red-rimmed eyes for the first time. I doubt it. Very little escaped René.
“Two weeks.”
Two weeks to choose.
Or not choose.
“Your term will be over, I have arranged for the assignment to be covered as a private project for the next term.”
The next term was three months long.
I didn’t know anyone in Lisbon. I didn’t speak Portuguese. I told Dominic I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t spoken to Kiara in more than a couple of texts.
“When do you need my answer?” I asked, finally taking a sip of the coffee because my throat was raw.
“Now.”
Rachel’s story continues in Double Exposure.
Because some choices don’t end the story.
They just change who gets to tell it.