Page 20 of Picture This

He arched his eyebrows.

Yep, here came the awkward. Any minute, Noah would put on his jeans, and our camping trip would be over.

Except a slow grin stretched across his mouth. Relief flooded through my veins as he started peeling back the foil to his wrap.

“My favorite part is the kids,” he said. “I love that they are brutally honest. Every day is a gamble. They’re funny and mean and sweet, and sometimes, little assholes. But they’re honest with their feelings. Most haven’t learned to mask them yet. I like that they can be real with me, and I can be real with them.”

“I like real too. It’s the reason I love photography. My camera gives me a chance to capture real moments.” A smile gifted from a stranger. A tear rolling down a child’s face. A man staring at a woman he loved when she wasn’t looking. Moments that only existed for a heartbeat before they were swallowed up by a busy world.

I hated selfies because they weren’t real. They weren’t raw.

“What’s your favorite picture you’ve ever taken?” he asked.

The mental image of that photo popped into my head, and that sweet relief I’d felt a moment ago vanished. I had a practiced answer for this question. Whenever a gallery owner asked which was my favorite, I always lied and said it was my most popular photo—a shot of a city street at dawn where the edges were blurry and the focus was at the end of the road.

All my favorite photos were fuzzy at the edges to draw your eye to the focal point. That photo of the city street had defined my style.

Except it wasn’t my favorite. And I couldn’t lie to Noah, not after I’d just professed how much I liked real, and he loved honesty. Shit.

“What?” He reached over and poked my knee. “Come on. Tell me. We’re in the tent of honesty.”

“It’s embarrassing.” I made a noise that was both laugh and groan. “It’s, um, a picture I took of you.”

The words came out so fast and jumbled they hardly made sense.

“A picture you took of me?”

I nodded, burying my face in my palms to hide my flaming cheeks.

“When?”

“A long time ago.” I dropped my hands to my lap and sagged. “It was right after my dad bought me my first camera my junior year.”

“Your emotional support camera. I remember. You carried it around with you everywhere and gave it a name. Alfred.”

I still had Alfred, though I didn’t use it often. But it would always be special. Alfred opened the door to a passion and, later, a career.

“You were home for a long weekend to do laundry or something,” I said. “I was on my front porch, messing around with the camera. You went for a run and came back all sweaty. You had your headphones in and stopped to sit on the lawn. Then you turned your face to the sky and closed your eyes. It was like you were so lost in whatever song was playing, you shut out the rest of the world.”

The picture I’d taken wasn’t the most sophisticated shot. It was slightly off center and a bit out of focus. But I loved that picture. It was like capturing a piece of my heart.

“That was the first photograph I took that felt like capturing a real moment. No one was looking at the camera. No one forcing a smile or saying cheese. Nothing fake or posed. It was real.”

A smile toyed at his mouth as his gaze held mine.

Noah’s eyes were worthy of a thousand photos. Green and gold and brown. The colors were ringed with a circle of charcoal and framed with long dark lashes. I blamed those eyes for the complete and utter lack of filter I had with my mouth today.

“Do you still have it?” he asked.

“Yeah, it’s somewhere in a box. I printed it out and kept it hidden under my bed so Emily wouldn’t find it.”

He threw his head back and laughed, the sound so carefree I couldn’t help but smile. “I hope I get to see that picture someday.”

Never. I’d also doodled hearts and our names together on the back of that picture.

“Can I tell you something?” he asked.

“Of course. We’re in the tent of honesty.”