Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ava
Y our digital proofs are ready!
The email from Mariah made my head spin. Wow, that was fast. We’d only had our engagement shoot two weeks ago, and she already had our proofs up and ready? Cool!
It also felt like it had been ages since that afternoon in the park. Time had gone all weird, mostly because I was a mess of distraction.
Ever since we’d hatched this plan, I was either working or busy dealing with wedding prep along with Tori and my mom. Even while I was working, my mind was stuck on everything wedding-related.
After the engagement shoot, though, I’d been in a haze of distraction.
Still getting my work done, still handling wedding plans, but whenever my mind brushed up against Tori’s existence, my concentration vanished.
Or rather, it zeroed in on her. On that photo shoot. On everything we would be doing soon.
On the way she’d kissed me by the fountain while Mariah snap, snap, snapped away.
I glanced around my cubicle. Molly was in a meeting, and no one else was around. My work was mostly caught up; I needed some coworkers to email me with a few details before I finished my current project. The phone was, for the moment, quiet.
So now was as good a time as any to peek at our photos.
I opened the link and entered the password.
As soon as the album loaded… wow. I’d known Mariah was talented, and I’d seen with my own eyes how beautiful Tori had been that day, but the photos were mind-blowing.
The lighting was soft and warm. The compositions and the poses gave every image an intimate appearance.
And the way Tori was smiling in them…
The way I was smiling in them…
I could barely breathe as I scrolled through the album.
Then one particular image appeared on the screen, and my breath lodged in my throat. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the photo.
I didn’t remember that specific moment. What someone had said to make me laugh like that—eyes closed, head thrown back with my hand to my chest. This photo, though, would be seared into my memory forever.
The way Tori was looking at me in that instant…
Damn, she was an amazing actor, and I’d have genuinely sold my soul for her to look at me like that for real.
The soft smile on her lips was so beautiful, but it was her eyes that made my heart skip.
I’d always wanted a girlfriend—maybe someday a wife—who gazed at me with the longing I saw in Tori’s eyes.
She was doing it for the camera , Ava.
I knew that. I did. But what could I say? There was a part of me that wished I could grab on to what I saw in that photo and believe it all the way to my core. Another woman looking at me that way would be a dream. If that woman was Tori? And she meant it? Oh, wow, that would be everything.
But if it was going to happen, it would’ve happened by now. We were best friends and would be until the end of time. Romance? Intimacy? Those had had plenty of time to happen, and they hadn’t.
Let it go. Don’t pine after something that’ll never happen.
Pushing out a breath, I continued scrolling the photos.
I made it through three or four before I was once again frozen, staring at an image as my head spun and my heart pounded.
This was one moment I clearly remembered from the shoot.
Mariah had asked us to kiss, and we’d moved in slowly, unaware she was snapping multiple shots and not just waiting for us to make contact.
She’d caught us—oh, wow, she’d caught us hovering there with the tiniest sliver of space between our lips.
My hand was on Tori’s cheek, my ring glittering in the late afternoon sun, and we were both smiling, both looking like our whole world had stopped.
Like the entire universe was teetering there, waiting for us to close that last bit of distance before everything surged back into motion again.
And the next photo…
I pushed out a ragged breath.
I could still feel the softness of her lips against mine the way they were in that image. I’d dreamed about it. I’d day dreamed about it. And now, there we were, captured in that perfect moment.
It wasn’t real and I knew it. Tori would always be my best friend and nothing more.
But at least now I had that memory and that photo.
I ordered a five-by-seven copy from Mariah, and I had it shipped to the office so Tori didn’t accidentally see it. I wasn’t sure where I’d keep it once it was here. It wouldn’t be on display, of course, but maybe tucked into a drawer or an unassuming file folder.
No one had to know about it—the photo or the feelings I had when I looked at it—but me.
No one had to know that I would’ve given anything for Tori to feel the same.