Chapter Three #2
“It’s that or one of us gets no sleep all week.” he murmured. “So how’s about it , roomie?”
I smiled, despite feeling like I was burning alive in my own personal hell. Or maybe it was heaven, I couldn’t quite tell. I rolled my case over to the stupid chaise and then stood in front of the window and looked out at the water below.
“Teenage me would have thought sharing a room with you was a riot. She’d have been kicking her heels and giggling like an idiot.” I laughed before running my hand over my face. Fuck my no filter.
“What do you mean?” Theo exclaimed, I heard his footsteps get closer, until he was standing next to me, our shoulders touching. I turned and looked up at him and narrowed my eyes.
“What the heck do you think I mean Theo?” I replied. “Like you didn’t know.”
Did he actually not know I’d pined after him with a stupid sickly sweet high school crush?
“Know what.” he was looking down at me with a playful smirk now. Fucking jerk, he was eating this up, teasing me just like he always had.
“Oh I see, now we’re back, you’re going to revert to your asshole self.”
Theo leaned in closer. “Well, it is my asshole self you’d have been kicking your feet over.”
I smiled and pushed against his chest, which felt surprisingly hard, and warm.
I hadn’t expected him to grab my wrist and push me back, gently though until I was backed against the window.
The contact was nice at first, but then my stupid brain took over.
What if I felt too soft to him? Where he was sculpted, I was… round. Where he was perfect, I was not.
“Imogen.” He breathed out, my name barely registering from his lips.
It did something to my insides and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me.
But instead my phone rang… loudly in my pocket.
Theo stepped away and said something about going to freshen up.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and swiped to answer, knowing it was Sloane.
“So how’s the room?” I could hear the hint of a smile in her voice.
Oh she’d known alright.
“It’s lovely.” I was being honest, because it was beautiful - but even I could tell my tone was curt. “I just wish you hadn’t decided to meddle.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She said, though there was definitely a chuckle in her voice now.
“We have to share a bed! That is not okay!” I picked up a pillow and placed it down the middle of the bed.
“Okay, okay okay. I’m sorry but I really do just wish you’d stop dancing around it and just make a move… either of you.”
“There is no it Sloane!” I made a face, not that she could see and flopped on the bed.
“Sure sure sure.” She drawled. “Look I really am sorry. It was a shitty thing to do, I can make room at home for you or for Theo… I kind of forgot I’d done it and then I forgot to change it. Forgive me?”
I sighed. Staying mad at Sloane for too long had always been impossible. It was a family trait so to speak.
“Of course I forgive you. We’ll see you in a bit.” I was letting her off easy, mostly because I didn’t have another option, and I couldn’t stay mad with her this week.
“Bye Gin.”
“Bye Sloane.”
I hung up the phone and chucked it on the bed… which I realised was now our bed.
Early September 2015
I was at the lake alone. Everyone else had gone into town for supplies. I’d brought my notebook and was sitting on the dock with my feet in the water, trying to work on a poem that used imagery from nature to relate to a girl who falls in love with someone she can’t have. (Subtle, I know.)
I heard footsteps on the dock but didn’t turn around. I figured it was Sloane.
“Don’t move.”
Theo’s voice. I froze.
“Just... keep doing what you were doing. The light is perfect.”
I heard the camera shutter. Click. Click. Click.
My heart was racing so loud I was sure he could hear it. I tried to keep writing but my hand was shaking. I was wearing my swimsuit and I was suddenly hyper-aware of every inch of exposed skin. My thighs spread on the dock. My arms. My stomach.
“You do that a lot,” he said, still taking photos. “Bite your lip when you’re thinking.”
I hadn’t even realized I was doing it.
“What are you writing?”
“Nothing important,” I lied.
“Can I read it sometime?”
“No.”
He laughed so loud the echo sounded through the trees. The shutter clicked again.
“Why do you keep taking pictures of me?” I finally asked, still not looking at him.
The clicking stopped.
“Because you’re interesting.”
I turned around then. He was sitting cross-legged on the dock behind me, camera in his lap, looking at me with this expression I couldn’t read.
“Interesting?” I repeated. Not beautiful. Not pretty. Interesting. Like a science experiment.
“You get this look,” he said, gesturing vaguely at his face. “When you’re writing. Like the rest of the world disappears. Like nothing else matters. It’s...” he trailed off, looking down at his camera. “I’m not explaining it right.”
“Try.”
He looked back up at me. Our eyes met. The air felt thick.
“You look free,” he said finally. “And I want to remember it.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. My brain was short-circuiting.
He raised the camera again. “Can I take one more?”
I nodded.
“Look at me.”
I did.
Click.
He lowered the camera and smiled - that stupid, beautiful smile that makes my chest hurt.
“Thank you, Gin.”
Then he stood up and walked back down the dock toward the cabins, leaving me sitting there trying to remember how to breathe.
I don’t know what to do with this. With him. With the way he looks at me through that camera lens like I’m something worth capturing.
Sloane came back an hour later and found me still sitting there, staring at the water. She asked if I was okay.
I lied and said I was fine.
But Iwasn’t fine. I was the opposite of fine.
Because Theo Bennett just spent twenty minutes photographing me like I was art, and I don’t know how to go back to normal after that.
Tomorrow we leave for home. I won’t see him again until Christmas, probably. Part of me is relieved. Part of me wishes summer could last forever.
I hate this. I hate wanting someone who sees me as “interesting” when I want to be beautiful.
But god, the way he said “you look free.”
No one’s ever said anything like that to me before.