9. Friday #3
She paused and swung her camera out to capture the guests drifting like scattered seabirds in the last light of sunset, her heart heavy with a feeling she couldn’t place.
Grief, she thought. She was grieving.
After she took the photo, she registered someone standing close to her. Ren was behind her, only a couple of steps away, dressed in his usual charcoals and greys, a fancy camera bag on his shoulder.
“Nice capture,” he said quietly, and the phrase infuriated her. He did photography for a living, now. And she hadn’t even known.
“We should talk about how we want to handle this,” she said briskly. “Do you want to shoot the rehearsal dinner and I’ll do the wedding? I don’t want them to feel overwhelmed by too much camera presence. There are only about twenty guests, so we should keep a light touch.”
“True,” he said, smiling at her professional tone. “How about you do the rehearsal dinner and I do the wedding?”
She shot him a look. This seemed vaguely insulting, especially given that he only seemed to shoot stars and mountains. “Have you shot a wedding before?”
“Well, no…”
“Have you shot people?”
“I was a journalist.” He smiled even more.
Of course. He was perfectly qualified for this, just as much as she was. Still, she had shot her friend Anya’s wedding years before. “I’ve shot a wedding, so I think I can handle the ceremony and reception.”
“Do you not want me to shoot?” He was giving her an odd look. “I just wanted you to be able to relax and enjoy yourself.”
“Well, I’m not doing that either way, so it doesn’t matter.”
His frowned. “Why not? Do you not like Abby?” His green eyes regarded her keenly.
“No! No, not at all. I like her. I’m honestly just…” She sighed. “I’m not terribly optimistic about weddings these days.”
“Ah.” He nodded.
They had arrived at the restaurant and paused, stepping to one side.
“Okay, we can both shoot,” she said, her eyes fixed on the ground so she didn’t have to see his thoughtful expression. “You decide how to divide things up.”
He nodded. “Sure. I would like to talk to you at some point, too. Maybe after dinner?”
Oh, no.
Was he going to make the apology that she had been owed all these years? She didn’t want it anymore. She didn’t want to feel anything else right now. What she was feeling already was more than enough.
“Ren,” she said, “you don’t owe me an explanation for…Everything that happened was a long time ago.”
His eyes were full of something she couldn’t read. Mischief? Pity? It was frustrating sometimes, trying to get a lock on him. “I’d like to talk to you all the same,” he said.
We’re not friends anymore, she wanted to shout, but she couldn’t get the words out. That would be a little too unkind. She was a grown-up, so she was going to have to let him hurt her one more time.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “We can talk later.” He smiled at her with more affection than he had a right to, so she turned away and walked into the building.
The restaurant was small and unfussy, the kind of place that sold fried clam platters and lobster rolls, though the separate dining room reserved for the event had been nicely decorated with flowers for the occasion.
The evening seemed relaxed: there were around fifteen people at dinner, a few bottles of wine on a table in the corner, and trays of food arranged to one side: lobster rolls, pasta, and steamed mussels.
Quiet pop music played. She got out her camera and stood to one side, taking some establishing pictures of the space, the room, the view.
One good thing could be said for photography: it took your attention away from yourself. For the next few minutes, she was framing shots, checking focus, and adjusting her exposure. Everyone in her shots was laughing and happy. Everyone was a portrait of joy.
Then her lens found Ren chatting with a petite blond woman with punk rock hair and a lace dress.
Sarah recognized the woman vaguely as Lisette, a friend of Paul’s from his improv comedy group in St. John’s.
She had met Lisette at Christmas a couple of years ago and knew her to be a close friend of Paul’s.
An old jealousy rose up—an ancient hostility towards any other woman talking to Ren—and Sarah shook it off.
He could sleep with Lisette if he wanted to.
He had been willing to sleep with anyone but Sarah, so she should be used to it by now.
“Do you need help?” came a small voice. Sarah glanced down and saw Abby’s niece looking up at her. The little girl had seemed half-asleep a few moments earlier, but she had apparently revived.
“Sure,” Sarah said. “Remind me your name?”
“Hannah.”
“Hannah, tell me if there are any important people I should take photos of.”
“Hmm.” The girl considered the room. “You should get Paul and Abby.”
“True,” Sarah agreed. Sarah picked up her camera and took a quick shot of the bride and groom.
“Get them looking silly,” the girl added.
“Excellent idea. Can you get them to do something silly for me?”
“I think so,” the girl agreed, then ran off.
Kids got along with Sarah. That was on the great ironies of her life, Sarah thought. Kids loved her. Sarah watched as Hannah ran up to Paul and covered his eyes, making him laugh. Sarah took a few shots.
A moment later, the girl returned. “Can I tell you a secret?” the child said. “Ollie is going to ask my mom to marry him. I gave him permission.”
Sarah smiled. “He’s the red-haired man?”
“Yeah, over there,” Hannah said. Sarah had noticed Abby’s sister Laura standing on the tiny balcony with her boyfriend Ollie, leaning out towards the water and looking up at the stars.
Laura was a striking dark-haired beauty with a delicate chin, and her boyfriend looked dapper in a perfectly tailored suit.
“I’ll see if he’s doing it now,” Hannah said.
The girl ran toward her mother, and Sarah readied her lens, but then Ren stepped right in front of her and took the picture.
Ren had patiently waited all night, not shooting, but as Ollie leaned over to talk to Laura in front of a glorious emerald-blue sky, Ren had opened his shutter once and gotten the perfect shot. Stupid Ren with his journalist’s eye.
Ollie and Laura began to dance to the music, laughing, and they looked perfect doing that, too. Ren took more shots while Sarah leaned back against the wall, motionless, watching him. Why did he have to be good at everything? It made her feel so much worse.
As the dinner wrapped up and the cheerful guests gathered their jackets and hugged the bride and groom good-night, Sarah carefully packed up her camera, taking her time.
If Ren wanted to talk to her, she might as well wait for him so they could talk on the way back to the hotel.
Best to get it out of the way early, because she didn’t want to spend all weekend worrying about what he might say.
Sure enough, he smiled at her and put up one finger as he finished up a conversation with Paul.
Sarah sighed and waited by the door.
Ren caught up with her as the last of the guests were leaving and fell into step with her on the crunchy gravel of the parking lot. The night air was cool and the small fir trees across the street stirred gently like they were sharing secrets.
“I’ve never been to Newfoundland,” he said. “It’s pretty spectacular.” She glanced up at the Milky Way arching above, the stars radiant against the last quarter of a waning moon.
“It’s definitely remote,” she said. Beauty didn’t affect her like it once had.
Sunsets, rainbows, sudden storms…she felt nothing about them these days.
Not for the last three years, maybe four.
She had wondered for a while if that was what had killed her impulse to do photography: a deadening inside, a lack of hope that tracked with the slow decline of her marriage.
When she was young, she could look at the sky and believe all that beauty was meant for her, like a message from the universe.
Now each sunset and starry night seemed profoundly indifferent to her, so she had become indifferent as well.
Seeing beauty now felt like stepping inside the temple of a religion that she no longer practiced or believed in.
“So what are you doing for work now? Paul said you stopped doing photography,” Ren said, shoving his hands in his pockets as they began to walk back to their hotel along the small coastal road.
“I work in marketing at a bank. I do corporate headshots and events photography along with some graphic design.”
“And you like it?”
Sarah took a breath. “It’s steady.”
He watched her intently. “Steady can be good.”
“It can.” It wasn’t. Sarah’s manager at the bank was a fussy, difficult man named Owen, who was possibly the worst human being on earth.
Technically not the worst, she supposed.
Owen was several years younger than her but he had graduated from a fancy business management program, and he had a malicious streak that he considered a ‘management style.’ He particularly liked setting people up to fail in order to win small arguments or find reasons to fire them.
Maybe he was the worst person on earth who had never done anything illegal.
Ren said nothing, watching her face. A gust of wind blew in from the water, making her shiver.
“Cold? You can borrow my jacket.”
She shook her head quickly. That was the last thing on earth that she wanted, to find out that Ren still smelled the same. She held her arms tightly around her.
“I looked up your photography website,” she said. “It’s pretty amazing.”
“It’s the places I’ve been that are amazing.
” At least he wasn’t showing off, she thought.
But Ren had never been one to brag. She hadn’t loved him for no reason; he could be thoughtful and self-effacing when he wasn’t breaking hearts.
“So how has the rest of your life been going?” Ren asked.
“You split up from your husband, Paul said?”
“Our divorce was finalized a couple of months ago but we’ve been separated for almost a year.”