Page 98 of Almost Not Quite Engaged

I laugh, point at Colin as I bolt out the door.

Ginny’s gallery is a converted purple Victorian house on the main street that somehow pulls off being both precious and serious at the same time. I throw open the door and sidestep a seven-foot ribbon sculpture that looks like a kindergarten Valentine’s project that got into art school on a legacy admission.

A woman comes around the corner. “Can I help you?”

“Ginny,” I blurt out and cross my arms.

“Ginny’s out on a buying trip, can I help?”

“Bathroom,” I grind out. Something is going on and I feel kind of like a fool chasing my own tail right now.

She smiles like she’s been waiting for this. “Of course. Just there. And please, take your time. They’re all freshly hung.”

“The bathroom is hung?”

“I’ll be right here if you have questions.”

“About the bathroom?”

“Yes, the bathroom.” She smirks.

“Pretty sure I know what I’m doing in there but should I need you I’ll give a shout.” Fucking weirdo.

I fling open the door and my breath is gone.

My tree. The one in Rana Park, Dhaka. Full frame, shot from below, the light coming through the branches in that thick way it does in the early morning there. And carved into the bark, unmistakable, my Z.

But next to it, fresh and the bark is still pale around the edges.

KAT

“Tricky little harpy.” My voice comes out quieter than I intend. “What are you up to?” I trace her initials then mine. She went there or is there. This photograph is stunning, moving and so freaking intimate. There’s another of the tree in the distance at dawn, Courtney on the edge framed by light looking at the water.

Now I’m even more confused. Between the increasingly vulnerable blogs, the FaceTime extravaganza last night and she went and found my tree. How? When? Where is she?

I turn slowly. The ring, my Aunt Lolly’s ring that I slid onto her finger in a Fairmont lobby, photographed outside a café in Dhaka. The same ring in front of the Palace of Winds in Jaipur, the pink stone behind it making the diamond look like it was always meant to be there. I whisper as I study her work, “She’s in Jaipur.”

There’s a picture of two naupaka flowers held together in my palm. I know it because of the small scar on my thumb from the fishing wire incident I never told anyone about. There’s another with her holding the flowers together, but now they’re dried. She kept them. She carried them from Hawaii, which I think is illegal, photographed them and her best friend hung them on a bathroom wall in Rhinebeck, New York.

There’s another of my hand in the corner of the frame, a cocktail dangling from my fingers, beach in the background, her composition making even that look like something worth keeping. Like I’m something worth keeping.

This is a love letter not to my journey but hers. Mine is on the beach in the Seychelles, in a Prague square and on that silent hike. It’s like that’s where my path began too. My producers told me they wanted more of the stuff I’ve started to enjoy. The cafe in Dhaka and soccer on the beach. She and I fake chanting. My footage is in Bill’s hands to witness, but she’s showing the world through her lens. She’s behind me and didn’t say a word. She’s not sharing this with me and suddenly I’m furious, frustrated and flattened by the idea that she’s following me. But somehow I feel as if she’s ahead of me on this yearlong sojourn. But not traveling with me and suddenly, I desperately want that.

I stand in that bathroom for what is probably too long and feel something rearranging itself in my chest without asking my permission. I take the tree photograph off the wall. Then the naupaka. Then everything else and pile it all by the door. I take the tree over to the woman.

“I want all of it.”

“Sir, oh no. Wait. You can’t do that. I can’t let you take them off the wall. They were just installed. I can order prints, have them framed, it would only take⁠—”

“No. These. Mine. All of them. I’ll pay whatever the number is and for the repairs to the wall when I ripped two of them off of there.”

“What? Um.”

“Double the price of all the photos and add $100 for repairs. You get a bigger commission, she gets a payday, a random sold-out show and I get the photographs of my life. One condition. Don’t tell Ginny until she comes back from wherever she is.”

She hesitates for exactly three seconds and then takes my credit card. The number she runs is significant. My girl is apparently in demand. There goes first class to Ecuador.

I load the car and drive back to the Little Bird.