Page 87 of Impulse Control
I dried off, dressed on autopilot, and almost forgot my camera entirely before spotting it by the door. That made my stomach twist—just a small, quiet reminder of how close I’d come to leaving it behind.
Paris Daily was already in full motion when I arrived.
Except René wasn’t there.
That shouldn’t have mattered. He wasn’t always there in the mornings. But the empty doorway to his office seemed ominous somehow, like a record scratch.
Margaux glanced up from her desk when I passed. “He left early.”
“Did he say anything?” I asked.
She hesitated. Just a flicker.
“Only that you were to check in with Luc instead.”
Luc.
My chest tightened just a little.
Luc wasn’t bad. He was competent. Efficient. But he wasn’t René. And being left to Luc didn’t feelnatural—it felt like being quietly shifted from the center hub to the fringe.
Luc didn’t look up when I approached.
“You’ll be doing light tests today,” he said, scrolling through something on his tablet. “New lenses coming in. René wants baseline comparisons.”
Light tests.
Not the main shoot. Not the creative work. Not the decisions.
Just support.
“Okay,” I said, because there was nothing else to say.
I spent the morning photographing gray cards and reflective surfaces and the same model walking back and forth under different lighting setups while everyone else discussed concepts around me. No one seemed to be excluding me deliberately. They weren’t cruel.
Which somehow made it worse.
By lunchtime I realized I hadn’t eaten again. Did I even grab breakfast with my coffee? I’d put toast in. Had I taken it out? Did I butter it? Or was it sitting in the toaster, abandoned like a half-formed thought?
I stood in the hallway with my phone in my hand, scrolling through messages I didn’t have the energy to answer.
One from Dominic.
Dominic:
Tomorrow, Flash. I’ll see you tomorrow!
My stomach flipped.
Excitement, yes. But it came tangled with something tight and sour—like joy I shouldn’t be celebrating. Not when…
I typed back:
Me:
I know. I’ll try to be human by then.
He responded almost immediately.
