Chapter 25
Sawyer
The Okafor engagement shoot had been easy — golden hour on the far point, Amara laughing so hard at one of Chidi's terrible puns that Sawyer had gotten forty usable frames just from that one unscripted minute — and it wasn't until three weeks later, sitting across from Chidi at a final planning meeting in the barn's small office, that the thing Sawyer hadn't seen coming finally arrived.
"You mind if I ask you something," Chidi said, while Amara and Josie were in the next room going over the seating chart, his voice pitched low, and the specific register men used when they wanted a conversation to stay between the two of them. "Off the record. Photographer to almost-groom."
"Sure."
"How do you know you're actually ready for this?
All of it. Not the wedding day — I mean the part after.
" Chidi turned his coffee cup slowly on the table, and something in the gesture struck Sawyer with an odd familiarity he couldn't immediately place.
"I was engaged before. Different woman, four years ago.
Got about six months out from the date and she called it off.
Said I was so focused on building the life we were supposed to have together that I'd forgotten how to actually be in the life we already had.
That I was always thinking three steps ahead instead of just showing up for the step I was on. "
Sawyer's hand went still on his own pen.
"I didn't understand it for a long time," Chidi went on, unaware of the effect his words were having, or maybe aware and choosing to say them anyway because that was the kind of easy honesty grooms sometimes offered a photographer they'd decided to trust. "Took me almost two years to actually sit with it instead of just being angry she'd left.
And then I met Amara, and I realized what she'd meant — I wasn't present.
Not really. I was always managing the relationship instead of living inside it.
Every date felt like a checkpoint instead of just a date.
" He shrugged, easy, the weight of it clearly long since resolved for him.
"Anyway. I got better at it. Slowly. I still catch myself doing it sometimes, honestly, drifting into managing instead of feeling.
Just wondered if that's a thing other guys deal with, or if I was uniquely bad at it. "
"No," Sawyer said, and his voice came out rougher than he meant it to. "You're not uniquely bad at it."
Chidi studied him for a second, something perceptive crossing his face, but he had the good grace not to push, and the conversation moved on to lens choices for the ceremony a moment later, easy and professional again, and Sawyer spent the rest of the meeting nodding at the right intervals while a cold, familiar unease settled into his chest and stayed there.
He didn't tell Josie about the conversation that night, or the night after, which he was aware, even as he was doing it, was its own small betrayal of everything he'd promised himself at the far point — no more standing at the edge, describing instead of stepping in.
But some things were harder to say out loud than others, and this one kept catching in his throat every time he tried.
He found himself, that week, running the same calculation Chidi had described without meaning to.
Watching Josie across a walkthrough and thinking, instead of just being present in the moment, is this what it looks like, actually being here, or is this just a better-lit version of managing it from a professional distance.
Lying awake after a good night together and cataloging the evidence for and against his own progress like it was a shot list he needed to complete before he could trust the outcome.
He worked more that week than the schedule strictly required — took on two extra engagement sessions he didn't need to book, spent an entire evening reorganizing three years of archived galleries that didn't need reorganizing, and told himself, each time, that it was simple business discipline and not the old, familiar retreat into the one place he'd always felt unambiguously competent.
Milo noticed before Sawyer said a word about it, the way Milo noticed most things.
"You've been in the studio every night this week," Milo said, on Thursday, watching Sawyer color-grade a gallery that had already been finished for two days. "You've also redone the Nguyen edit twice, which was already perfect the first time. What's going on?"
"Nothing's going on."
"That's the third time you've said that this month, and it's meant something different and increasingly worse every single time." Milo set his own work aside, fully turning his attention over. "Talk to me. Is it Josie? Did something happen?"
"Nothing happened. That's the problem." Sawyer finally set the mouse down, rubbed both hands over his face, the exhaustion of the week catching up all at once.
"Chidi Okafor told me his ex-fiancée left him for almost the exact same reason Camille left me.
Managing the relationship instead of living in it.
Three steps ahead instead of present. And I keep sitting here trying to figure out if what's happening with Josie is real, or if I've just gotten better at performing present than I used to be, and I genuinely cannot tell the difference from the inside anymore. "
Milo was quiet for a moment, weighing the answer carefully instead of rushing it, which Sawyer appreciated even through the fog of his own spiraling.
"Can I say something that might sound harsh?"
"Go ahead."
"I think a guy who was actually still just performing presence wouldn't be sitting here at eleven at night, tearing himself apart trying to figure out if he's really present enough.
" Milo leaned forward. "I've watched you for two months, boss.
I watched you catch a falling cake without thinking twice.
I watched you comp a shoot you didn't need to comp because you were worried about her business, and not tell her, because you didn't even want credit for it.
I watched you sit on a fallen log at sunrise and actually tell her the whole truth about Camille instead of the polished version.
That's not managing something from a distance.
That's just what it looks like when a guy who's genuinely scared keeps doing the work anyway. "
"You don't know that for certain."
"No. I don't. Nobody gets to know that for certain about themselves either, honestly — that's kind of the whole terrifying deal with actually loving somebody instead of just performing it.
" Milo's voice had gone unusually direct, all the usual teasing set aside.
"But I think you're doing the thing scared people do when they're this close to something good — you're looking for the crack before it shows up on its own, because finding it yourself feels safer than waiting for it to find you.
And I think if you keep doing that, you're going to talk yourself into causing the exact thing you're afraid of, instead of just letting this be what it actually is. "
Sawyer sat with that for a long moment, the studio quiet except for the hum of the monitors, Chidi's easy, unguarded confession still sitting heavy in his chest.
"The Okafor wedding's Saturday," he said finally. "I don't know how I'm supposed to shoot an entire ceremony about exactly this and keep it together."
"You'll keep it together because it's your job, and you're good at your job even on the days it costs you something to do it.
" Milo reached over, closed the laptop Sawyer had been using as a shield for the last hour.
"Or you won't keep it together, and that'll be okay too.
You're allowed to feel something at a wedding, Sawyer.
You've spent three years pretending the job means you're not allowed to.
Maybe this is the season that stops being true. "
Sawyer didn't have an answer for that, mostly because some part of him, underneath the unease and the old fear, suspected Milo was right — that Saturday was going to ask something of him he hadn't been asked to give at a wedding in a very long time, and that the only real choice in front of him was whether he let himself actually feel it when it came, or spent the whole day standing at the edge of it instead, describing it, the way he'd always known how to do best.
He went home that night without a clear answer, the cold unease still sitting in his chest, and lay awake a long time listening to the wind chimes on the porch move faintly in a breeze that hadn't quite decided yet what kind of weather it was bringing.