21. Skylar
The sentences she could recite without looking glowed on her laptop screen: “The composition was strong, but the technical execution is still lacking.”
Feedback from her professor. She didn’t disagree.
The camera on her phone had been limping through assignments all semester, pixel-starved and slow.
Skylar’s gaze drifted to the unopened box on the corner of her desk.
Poppy had stopped leaving glitter-pen sticky notes on the lid two weeks ago, which meant even Poppy’s optimism had a shelf life.
Her fingers hovered over the body. The plastic was cool and smooth. She lifted the camera from the foam and the weight settled into her palms.
Her throat tightened.
Different. The grip was different, the balance was different, the viewfinder sat at a slightly altered angle. This wasn’t her mother’s camera. It never could be.
She raised the viewfinder to her eye and pressed the shutter halfway. The autofocus locked before her finger finished the motion, snapping the spines of the books on her shelf into razor clarity. The shutter fired clean and immediate. No lag or stutter.
She swung toward the window, at the gray November afternoon light filtering through the blinds, at the dust motes suspended in the air like tiny planets, and her shoulders dropped.
Click.
The sound was crisp and clean. Familiar in a way that had nothing to do with the specific camera and everything to do with the act itself.
Her mother’s hands had moved this way, framing the world, choosing what to keep, finding truth in fragments.
Skylar had watched her do it a thousand times before the fire.
The grain of the wood appeared on the preview screen in detail her phone would have smeared into mush. She adjusted the aperture, found the angle where the light caught the lip of a glass and split into a pale ribbon across the wall.
Click.
She took another shot. And another. The light on an abandoned coffee mug. The rumpled sheets of her bed. Her own reflection in the dark screen of her dying laptop, face half-shadowed, expression unreadable.
Camera set on the desk, she pressed her knuckles against her collarbone. The assignment required professional-quality images. The scholarship required the assignment. This was a means to an end.
“You okay?” Poppy leaned against the doorframe.
The question opened a door. All Skylar had to do was walk through it and tell Poppy about sleeping with Charlie. About saying it was a mistake and asking to be friends. Her roommate had dated Charlie, and they still managed to be friends.
Except Poppy and Charlie had only kissed.
Goosebumps rippled across Skylar’s chest at the memory of Charlie’s hands on her skin.
He hadn’t touched her since.
Charlie wasn’t exactly avoiding her. They saw each other in class, and except for the first Wednesday after they returned to Thorndale, he’d come into the diner, sitting at the end of the counter for her entire shift and driving her home.
She’d made a point of attending his game yesterday even though the contract didn’t require it.
Instead of sliding into the booth beside her, Charlie sat across from her at The Barrel afterward, his usual water before him, smiling and laughing.
But the smile was off. Too bright. His laugh too jovial. The spot below her breastbone ached at the difference.
Skylar turned to Poppy. “Can I take your portrait? It’s for an assignment for photography class. I need to photograph someone in their natural element. The image should reveal what words alone cannot capture.”
“And you think photographing me eating cereal in my pajamas reveals hidden depths?”
“You’re pre-med. You have depths.”
“I have flashcards.” Poppy sat on Skylar’s bed and tucked her legs underneath her. “Sky, the assignment is asking for someone whose surface doesn’t match their inside. Someone with layers you haven’t already figured out. You’ve lived with me for over two years. You know every layer I’ve got.”
Skylar opened her mouth to argue that there was more to Poppy than glitter pens, pom poms and a sunny personality. She had switched her major from nursing this year and the new course load was overwhelming her.
“Besides, I have a chem test tomorrow and I keep confusing my ketones and aldehydes. Photograph Charlie.”
The name landed in the center of her chest. “I’m not photographing Charlie.”
“Why not? He’s interesting. He’s got that whole golden-boy-hiding-something energy that your professor will eat alive.” Poppy held up a hand before Skylar could interrupt. “You’re friends, right? Friends help each other with homework.”
The word “friends” pressed against the backs of Skylar’s teeth. “I’m sure he has practice or something. Maybe I should ask Rosa or Frank.”
Poppy scoffed. “Sure. Ask your employers instead of your friend.” She emphasised friend.
Skylar searched for an excuse and came up empty. “Fine.” She pulled her phone from her pocket. “But only because you refused me.”
Skylar dialed before she could lose her nerve. Charlie picked up on the second ring
“Hey.” The single syllable undid an hour of convincing herself she didn’t miss him. “What’s up?”
“Can I ask a favor?” She gripped the phone harder. “I need to photograph someone in their natural element. Can you do it?”
A pause. She heard the rustle of fabric.
“If you’re busy, I can ask someone else.”
“No. I’m free.” She heard his footsteps. “Do you want me to come over?”
Skylar looked around. “It’s too dark here. Natural light works better. What about the lobby of the library? It has big windows?”
Another pause, longer, and Skylar shifted in her seat. Maybe this was a bad idea.
“My condo faces west and has a wall of windows. Would that work?”
“Actually, that sounds perfect.”
“I’ll text you the address. Give me twenty minutes.”
Charlie’s condo was two floors of floor-to-ceiling windows. Skylar stepped off the elevator into an open concept space flooded with natural light. Light wood planks, white marbled countertops and chrome fixtures reflected the afternoon sun; a photographer’s dream location.
Exactly where she expected the son of a man whose father gifted McLarens would live. Except there were books everywhere. In an overstuffed bookcase, in piles on the coffee table, and on the corner of the L-shaped gray couch in the center of the room.
A quilt lay folded over the couch’s arm, handmade, the stitching uneven and the colors washed soft with age, at odds with every cold surface around it. It was the only thing in the space that belonged to a person instead of a brand.
Charlie stood in the kitchen in a worn gray Thorndale Athletics T-shirt and jeans, barefoot, hands in his pockets. His hair was slightly damp, like he’d just gotten out of the shower. A single drop of water trailed along the side of his neck, and the muscles in her lower abdomen clenched.
“I didn’t know what to wear.” He rubbed the back of his neck.
“You look…” Hot? Adorable? Skylar shook her head. Friends. That was all they could be. “You look fine.”
“Where do you want me?”
She walked the space, reading the angles.
“Sit there.” She pointed to the couch, near the window where the light carved the sharpest contrast. “Get comfortable.”
He settled in as she set her bag on the table and pulled out the camera.
His gaze dropped to the Nikon in her hands. “You’re using the camera.”
She adjusted the lens, avoiding his eyes. “My phone wasn’t cutting it.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. He pressed his lips together to flatten the expression, but she caught the remnant of the smile before he killed it.
Skylar raised the camera to hide the heat spreading up her neck and framed the shot. Charlie sat on the couch, shoulders back, chin lifted slightly. The sunlight carved shadows along his jaw.
Click.
She checked the preview. Technically the image was flawless. The golden boy from every press photo stared back at her, polished and perfect and hollow. The man who’d held her in a motel room was nowhere in the frame.
“Relax your shoulders.”
He adjusted but the tension didn’t leave.
She circled him, searching for an angle that would crack the surface.
The light caught the gold in his hair, turned his eyes luminous.
Through the viewfinder, she could study him the way a friend couldn’t.
The slope of his neck. The breadth of his shoulders beneath the sweatshirt. The hands resting on his thighs.
Those hands.
She remembered how they’d gripped her hips, caressed her breasts, how his thumb had coaxed an orgasm. The muscles in her lower half clenched. She pressed the shutter to cover the flush creeping up her neck.
Click.
“You’re stiff.” She lowered the camera. “You look like you’re posing for a mugshot.”
“Sorry.” He rolled his shoulders.
“Here.” She passed him his phone. “Pretend you’re writing.”
She lifted the camera and traced the line of his jaw without consequence. Lingered on his mouth and remembered how it tasted. Drank in the rise and fall of his chest and recalled the weight of it pressed against her own.
The ache between her thighs pulsed. She’d tried to relieve it multiple times since they’d slept together but nothing compared to his touch. Those long fingers tracing her skin, finding the places that throbbed for him.
Focus.
“Tell me about football.” She raised the camera again. “Why did you start playing?”
The shift happened in his shoulders first. They dropped half an inch.
His grip on the phone loosened and his thumb paused.
“I loved football.” A half-laugh, startled and genuine.
“I forget that part. My neighborhood had pickup games every Saturday and I’d play until my mom dragged me home for dinner.
I was fast and I could throw and nobody cared whose kid I was.
The game was just . . .” He paused. “Simple. The ball doesn’t care about your last name. ”
She pressed the shutter. The autofocus grabbed the softness around his eyes, the looseness in his jaw, and her fingers tightened on the camera body.
“What changed?”