Epilogue #2
Poppy’s hands dropped from her face. “Do you think he’d say yes? He hasn’t dated anyone all year.”
A certainty settled across Skylar’s shoulders. “I think he’ll say yes.”
Poppy studied her with narrowed eyes, then exhaled and stole a fry from Seb’s plate without asking. The moment dissolved into the larger warmth of the room.
Skylar raised the camera and framed each occupant at the table.
Seb mid-gesture, a fry pinched between thumb and forefinger while he conducted an invisible orchestra with the other.
Wyatt tilted back in his chair with the reckless confidence of someone who’d never fallen.
Booker leaned on his fist, tracking Seb’s story with quiet amusement.
Grant’s mug suspended in midair, his eyes cut sideways toward Poppy’s ponytail.
Charlie beside her, his thigh warm against hers, blue eyes alight with mirth.
The shutter clicked. The diner swallowed the sound.
Last semester, she would have kept shooting. Would have eaten up the rest of the memory card capturing every angle of this table because the viewfinder was the only place she knew how to exist in a room full of people without disappearing.
She lowered the Nikon to her lap. The maintenance worker on the ladder that morning had reminded her of the thought she’d been circling for weeks.
Skylar had spent years believing she had to choose between the two photos on her desk, the beauty and the justice.
This semester she’d started shooting for the student paper, pieces that combined both, and the work hummed in a frequency she recognized as her own.
Not her mother’s mission. Not Kate’s unfinished degree. Hers.
She didn’t need the camera between herself and this table. She could sit in the warmth and let the warmth be enough.
Seb reached across the table. “Give me that.”
“No.”
“You’re always behind the camera.” He wiggled his fingers. “Get in here.”
She tightened her grip on the Nikon, the instinct to hold the barrier between herself and the frame as automatic as breathing. Then Charlie’s hand landed on her knee under the table, a single warm pressure, and the reflex loosened.
“Fine. But be careful.” She grinned at Charlie. “Don’t drop it.” She handed the camera to Seb. He held the Nikon with the confidence of a man disarming a bomb, and Poppy lunged to adjust his grip.
“He catches a football for a scholarship.” Grant’s hand landed flat on the table, and his gaze tracked Poppy’s grip on the camera strap before he caught himself. “I think he can handle a camera.”
Seb instructed Charlie and Skylar to pose in a variety of goofy positions and the camera clicked like a metronome.
Rosa materialized behind Seb and plucked the camera from his hands with the authority of a woman who had been confiscating things from young men for forty years. “Time for a group photo. Everyone squish.”
They squished. Charlie’s arm curved around Skylar’s shoulders. Poppy pressed against her other side. Grant leaned in from the end of the table, his expression suggesting the act of posing caused him physical discomfort, and Seb threw both arms wide enough to clip Booker in the ear.
Rosa raised the camera. “Nobody blink.”
The shutter clicked.
Seb demanded to see the photo. Wyatt asked if his eyes were open. Poppy bumped Skylar’s elbow under the table and whispered, “I’ll ask him tomorrow.”
Charlie’s arm tightened, tugging her closer, and his breath grazed her temple. “Good picture?”
“Rosa takes better photos than half my class.”
He laughed, the vibration traveling through his ribs into hers, and Skylar let herself lean into the weight of him..
He wanted her to find herself before she folded her life into his.
A year, maybe two, and then the tiny bed would become a shared apartment with his books on one shelf and her photographs covering every wall.
She could wait.
But she didn’t need time to choose.
She chose Charlie. The man beside her in this vinyl booth with his thumb tapping against her collar, the way it tapped against the space bar when he was searching for a word.
She chose him now, in January, with snow on the ground and a semester stretching ahead of them.
She would choose the ordinary mornings, coffee and deadlines and disagreements about whose turn it was to call the plumber.
She would choose the difficult ones, the ones that demanded more patience and grace than either of them had been taught.
She would choose every unremarkable Tuesday and every quiet Sunday and every loud, crowded Wednesday night in this booth with these people at this table.
She would choose Charlie Carnell for all of her days. The good ones, the hard ones, and all the beautiful ordinary ones in between.
Skylar stared at the group photo on the camera’s display. Seven people crammed into a booth designed for five, none of them looking at the lens at quite the right moment, all of them exactly where they belonged. She traced Charlie’s face on the screen with her thumbnail. Relaxed. Unguarded.
And right beside him, in the frame instead of behind it was a woman who had finally stopped watching from the edges.
Turn the page for a sneak peek of Second Option, book 2 in the Thorndale Hearts series.