Page 80 of When We Had Forever
“This.” I wave a hand. It hardly seems real.Grayson Drake—famous photographer, eternal bachelor, love-wrecked Romeo who outlived his Juliet—is sitting on my living room floor, watching me with a potent combination of vulnerability and concern.
But I haven’t done anything to earn it. Not one thing to justify this level of interest.
“Why did you come, exactly?” I say. “You’ve driven all this way to make sure I’m all right, but... Well, it shouldn’t matter to you.Ishouldn’t matter. There has to be something more. Some reason you’re looking at me like that.”
He stares, then drags a hand through his hair. “Wow. You really don’t pull any punches, do you?”
“Doyou?”
“No. So I can respect that.” He picks up my wine without breaking eye contact and gulps half of it down. “You’re really going to make me tell you?”
My heartbeat flickers faster. “I think I have to. Otherwise I’ll just be dissecting everything you do, trying to figure it out.”
He still doesn’t look away, so I don’t, either. Finally, he reaches into his back pocket, pulls out his cell phone, and flicks a few buttons. “This is the reason. What made me come.”
I take the phone. The room retreats, the snap of the fire fading.
It’s a picture. Of me. Standing on a beach in Hawaii, freshly emerged from the ocean, four years younger and four years happier. I remember the moment with perfect clarity—Michael and I had just gone swimming with sea turtles off Laniakea Beach. I’d never done anything like that before.
And haven’t again since.
I cradle the phone close. It’s not a terribly flattering photograph, even if thirty-three-year-old me does look pretty damn good in a bikini. I’d just pushed my snorkel gear onto my head, and a red mark from the mask indents my face. My hair pokes out around my ears, hopelessly in need of brushing after its encounter with the sea.
Yet I have to admit there’s magic there. Joy shines from my face like light. I’m laughing, exploding with celebration over being alive, and somehow the feeling rises from the pixels in a way that hits me square in the chest.
Okay, so maybe Grayson did know who he was talking to. Except...
“I don’t look like this anymore.” I stare so long my throat thickens. “I don’t feel like this anymore, either.”
“You could,” he says softly.
“No. That was another life.”
“Bullshit. That was this one. And that girl? She’s you. And the truth is...”
In the pause, I glance up.
He looks terrified, but keeps going. “The truth is...the woman in that picture takes my breath away. She’sradiant. She isn’t thinking about how she looks, or whether her photo’s going on the internet someday. She doesn’t care about getting her Christmas bonus or what’s going to happen next year. None of that crap. She’s just relishing a moment. She understands a secret other people don’t, about how to live, and I want her to share it with me. I want her to whisper it in my ear.”
I can’t move. I can’t even breathe. My attention dives to the photograph again—anywhere but the naked supplication in Grayson’s face. The snapshot wavers, a taunting reminder of the person I used to be. The person Icouldhave been.
Then I notice the heart icon at the bottom. It’s filled in, meaning he’s saved this to his favorites.
I pray for my voice to hold steady. “How many times have you looked at this?”
“A thousand,” he rasps. “More.”
I fight back my tears and swipe a button to display the picture’s metadata. There’s a date from four years ago and a line showing it was saved from a text message from Michael’s phone number.
“I don’t understand. Why would Michael send this to you?”
He laughs, low and humorless. “So I could torture myself with what I don’t have.”
“No. He would never—”
“He would.” His voice is hard. Final. “He absolutely would.”
I press my lips together, then decide to let that go. For now. I thrust his phone back. “Fine. So now you’re here to...what? See if I’m still her? Because I can tell you right now I’m not.”
