12. Exposure #2
Nora’s face fell. She set the coffee and the pastry bag down carefully, like they were fragile. “Morgan, I’m so sorry. I had no idea anyone was taking photos. I swear, I wouldn’t have—”
“But you’re not surprised.”
“No.” Nora’s admission came out quiet, defeated. “I’m not surprised. This is what happens when you’re visible. Someone always has a camera. Every moment is potential content. I hate it. But I’m used to it.”
“Well, I’m not used to it.” Morgan gestured at the phone, face-down and still buzzing.
“I don’t know how to handle strangers discussing my personal life.
Deciding who I am. Whether I’m good enough for you.
I don’t know how to exist if someone might be photographing me at any moment and turning the result into entertainment. ”
“I know. And I’m sorry you got pulled into it. It’s not fair to you.”
“No. It’s not.” Morgan made herself say the rest, even though the honesty left her exposed. “But it’s not your fault either.”
Nora moved closer—carefully, the way a person approached an animal that might bolt. Morgan was aware that she might. That the impulse to walk into the engine bay and not come out was sitting right there.
“Are you okay?” Nora asked.
Morgan considered it honestly. Was she okay?
No. She was panicking—about the photo, about the shop, about the orderly life that was visibly dissolving in her hands.
She was frightened of the attention, of losing control, of the boundaries she’d built being stormed through by people who thought their curiosity outranked her consent.
But she was also thinking about last night. About the parking lot, before the camera. About saying the hardest true thing she had and being heard—Nora recalibrating around her instead of arguing with her, the slow unhurried kiss that asked for nothing.
“I don’t know,” Morgan admitted. “I’m overwhelmed. Scared. Angry that my privacy was taken. But also…” She trailed off, not certain how to finish.
“Also?” Nora prompted gently.
“Also not sorry about the kiss itself. Only sorry it got turned into content.”
Something softened in Nora’s face. “Me neither. Sorry it’s content, I mean. The kiss itself was…” A small smile. “Pretty perfect.” She reached out slowly, giving Morgan time to pull back. When Morgan didn’t, Nora took her hand. “What do you need right now? How can I help?”
“I don’t know if you can.” Morgan stared down at their joined hands, at the way Nora’s thumb traced slow patterns on her skin. “You handled this right, but it only gets worse, doesn’t it? More attention. More photos. More people treating my life like it’s theirs to watch.”
“Probably. Yeah.” Nora’s voice carried a sadness that came from experience. “I wish I could promise you it’ll die down fast. But my life doesn’t really work that way. People are interested, and interest has momentum. Or that’s what my manager always says, anyway.”
“So what do we do?”
“I don’t know. What do you want to do?”
Morgan drew her hand back—needing the physical space to think clearly. “I want to go back to last night. Before the camera. When this was just ours. When I felt safe instead of—catalogued.”
“We can’t go back.” Nora bit her lip. “But maybe we can find a way forward that works for both of us. We can be careful about where we’re seen. No public moments that might get photographed. We keep this—us—private until you’re ready for anything else. If you ever are.”
“And then what? Eventually we’ll still be seen. Eventually there are more photos, more comments. How do I prepare for that?”
“You don’t.” Nora’s voice was gentle but level. “You can’t prepare for it, because it comes when the algos decide it’s the thing to push. And I’m… I’m really not a good example at handling social media well. When I came back to Redwood, I was drowning in it.”
Morgan nodded. “I remember.”
“And I could easily drown in it again,” Nora said. “That’s the way it is with social media.”
Morgan took in the woman who had become, in three weeks, somehow essential to a life Morgan had built specifically to need no one.
“Is it worth it?” Morgan asked. “For you?”
Nora hesitated. “Some days, yes. Other days, no. I’m used to it by now. But sure, I’d rather be a famous singer-songwriter without social media, if that were possible, but it’s not. And I won’t blame you if you decide it’s more than you want to deal with.”
Morgan thought about the forty days. About the apartment she hadn’t packed.
About the sheer logistical weight of relocating an entire life, never mind that she didn’t have anywhere to relocate to.
Adding the unpredictability of public exposure to that load seemed, by any rational accounting, impractical at best.
But she also thought about the mornings Nora showed up with coffee, so many it had turned into a lovely routine.
The quiet afternoons with guitar music smoothing the edges off Morgan’s work.
The way Nora looked at her and saw, not someone antisocial or difficult or broken, but someone worth attention and care.
“I don’t know if I can do the public part,” Morgan admitted. “Being visible. I’m not built for it.”
“You don’t have to decide today.” Nora moved closer again, careful. “We go slow. The way you said. We see how it feels. If it’s too much, we figure something out.”
“What if figuring something out means ending it?”
“Then we deal with that if we have to. But I’d rather try than give it up because we were scared.”
Morgan wanted to argue, to lay out the logical case for why this was a bad idea. But she was tired of logic.
“Okay,” she said quietly.
“Okay?”
“We try. But I need you to really understand… I’m not good at this. This sort of attention… it’s never been anything I wanted. I avoid social media. It’s going to be hard for me.”
“I know. And I’ll do everything I can to make it easier.” Nora reached out again, and this time Morgan didn’t pull away. “We’ll figure it out together.”
Then Morgan asked the question she had to ask. “What happens when you start working again?”
“I don’t know yet.” Nora tightened her hand around Morgan’s. “But I don’t want to disappear on you.”
“Okay.”
“You can ask me again when I know more.”
“I will.”
They stood there, hands intertwined, while Rusty snored under the desk and the August light came flat and bright through the open bay doors. It wasn’t fixed. The photo still existed. The comments still stung. The attention still felt like a door forced off its hinges.
But Nora was here.
“Your coffee’s probably cold,” Morgan said eventually.
Nora laughed softly. “Probably. Want me to get fresh ones?”
“No. Stay.” Morgan drew her a little closer, needing the physical proof of her. “Just… stay.”
“Okay. I can do that.”
And she did—settling onto the stool while Morgan tried to return to work, her presence a quiet steadiness even as the phone went on buzzing, face-down, with notifications Morgan refused to check.