San Francisco, USA
~Bella~
We were thirty-seven stories high in a beautiful suite overlooking the city. Twenty-three hours stateside, but we hadn't even ventured from our bed. Room service brunch between bouts of sleeping and sex—jet lag at its finest. I didn't put any clothes on all day and spent the entirety of it lying in that plushy bed, reading the manual to my new camera, a Nikon D5, one I thought was way too expensive, but Edward insisted that I had earned. It was the first digital I had held since the haunted camera, and I was nervous—thumbing pages, growing equally excited and scared.
Sometime late in the afternoon, after staring at his phone for a while, Edward flung himself on top of me, tossing the camera manual aside and kissing me everywhere he could reach between my giggles. "I have to go," he muttered between my boobs, sounding like he didn't want to do that at all.
"Why?" I tried to hold him closer, but he pulled up onto his palms to stare down at me.
"Rose is downstairs. I'd like to go have a drink with her." He looked as though he didn't want to tell me he needed to do it alone. His mouth scrunched up and I nodded, loosening my grip on his shoulders, a silent agreement between us that we didn't have to put to words.
"When do I get to meet her?"
"Tonight, we'll have dinner together." He eyed the manual lying forgotten beside me, tilting his chin toward it.
"Got the hang of that thing?"
"Maybe. It has a really high ISO, and 14 fps, so I can shoot dark and fast."
His eyebrows perked. "Strange as it may sound, you talking camera stats is almost sexier than that shit you did in bed last night."
I watched his eyes glaze over and his teeth dig into his lip before he descended on me, my own words clanging through my head. The strip of cloth we'd used was still tangled up in the bed sheets, a repurposed sash from a dress I bought in Greece. Deep emerald green, light cotton. I could still see him standing by the bed, hovering over me, winding it around his fist as he decided where to start.
"153 point AF," I exhaled, pulling him into my neck, and he groaned into my hair.
"Active D-lighting technology."
His teeth found my ear.
"Advanced scene recognition."
"Ok, now I really have to go," Edward grumbled. He stood, straightening his clothes and patting down his hair. "Give me a couple of hours with her, but be ready for dinner."
I stayed plastered to the bed, eventually pulling the camera to my eye and snapping a few exploratory shots of the hotel room, trying to get used to the lighting, the apertures, turning off as many of the automatic functions as I could. I still loved the precision, the adjustments, and wanted to work for my photos more than this camera allowed at first. By the time dusk had started to fall, I was over my hesitation and excited to test this new friend out in the wild.
I showered and put on a dress, waiting for Edward and growing hungrier by the minute. At seven, the phone rang, him clearing his throat on the other end of the line.
Two words, and then a dial tone.
"Come downstairs."
The elevator doors opened on a crowd of people milling the hotel lobby. I stepped into the melee, scanning for Edward.
I knew her before she even smiled at me.
"Bella," Rose said, reaching for me as I neared, my name splitting her mouth into a wide grin. She had been leaning against the wall watching the crowd huddled around the entrance to what looked like a reception hall but straightened the moment she saw me. Her fingers wound through mine, and she tucked herself up close. "I'm so happy you're here."
"Edward talks about you all the time. I'm glad we're finally meeting each other." I held her hand tight in response, a wave of something warm and familiar washing over me.
A new influx of people poured through the front doors, joining the masses of black suits, tuxedos, and evenings gowns entering the gated entrance into some sort of ticket-only event. I huddled closer to Rose, jostled by the woman next to me. "Someone's important," I grumbled.
Rose smiled slyly at the crowd. "I would have booked a larger space if I had known this would happen."
"This is for you?"
She shook her head. "No, not me. Everyone is buzzing about you already."
I stared at her blankly..
"Come on—I don't care where Edward is. I want to be the one to show you."
Rose pulled me by the hand through the crowd, bypassing two women handing out booklets at the entrance. She ignored a couple of advances, men in expensive suits with their eyes on us and women who were looking at me like they already knew me. Parting the crowd just like that woman from Sparrow's stories, her knife splitting the storm.
The room was larger than it appeared, with lofted ceilings, soft overhead lighting, and photographs blown up big and bold and bright on the stark white walls. My heart reared as we stopped in front of the two closest photographs, hung one beside the other like a pair.
I recognized the left one instantly—a shot I'd taken of the Serengeti, bleak and empty and burning hot, a lonely tree piercing the big red sun on the horizon. The other photo seemed oddly reminiscent: same flat horizon, same single stunted tree, same empty sky. The only difference was the girl standing there, long brown hair tied in a high knot on top of her head, hunched in front of a tripod camera, frayed shorts and a filmy white button-down shirt, six sizes too big for her.
Edward's shirt.
"Is that… ?"
"Your photo. And his." Rose nodded, another face-eating grin. She was watching me, waiting for my reaction, but I could only stare and stare and stare. I could taste the dust. Could see the heat. Could feel the sun beating down on me and his voice clanging through my head. I could remember the way he'd smiled at me when I looked back at him, the way he'd been touching the camera as though he'd just loaded a fresh roll of film for me. The way we talked about lens flares and heat stroke and what we would have for dinner that night. The cool sip of water before I ventured back out into the grass. The shot I'd taken just as the sun touched the earth, the horizon of my photo matching up perfectly with the one hung next to it.
My heart started hammering in my ears.
A silhouette against the raging red sun, chasing the last fading rays of the day. A photograph of me, crouched over my camera, getting sunburned.
A photograph that Edward had taken.
~Edward~
"Edward, it's really good to see you." Rose grabbed me tightly, and I squeezed her in return. We stood like that for a few moments, both of us laughing and happy.
"You look fantastic." I held her arms out and looked at her black suit, an American flag pinned to her lapel. "San Francisco agrees with you."
"And I'd say almost a year of travelling agrees with you. Edward. I've never seen you so happy."
I shrugged and let a small smile grow. "These months have been… everything. Relaxing, adrenaline-filled, challenging. It's really brought me back around mentally to that guy I lost. I needed it."
She gave me a sly look. "And this metamorphosis has nothing to do with your travelling companion?"
"Oh, it absolutely does. Getting back out there was good for me. Helped get my head right again. I don't know." I paused and looked at her. "I feel more like the guy I was supposed to be."
"He was always in there." She patted the front of my shirt. "But you have to change into the suit I bought you; it's in my room." We turned towards the gallery space Rose secured weeks ago. "The pictures are amazing."
"She's good, isn't she? I'm not just blinded by her?" I trusted Rose, her instincts. She'd always been right about my own stuff, my career, and she led me confidently through every phase. She would never talk me up to soothe my ego, was never afraid to speak her truth, even if it was a harsh assessment, and the petulant artist in me wouldn't speak to her for days.
"She's good. Raw and unbiased, untouched. Which is what I think I like most about her." Rose grabbed my hand and nodded towards the doors. "You okay?"
"I'm great."
Together, we walked into the familiar setting. White walls, spotlights appropriately placed, shining, gleaming floors. Even though I'd been in a gallery in Iceland recently, I felt the back of my neck prickle and my hands tingle slightly. I shook them out and relaxed as my excitement grew, knowing full well why I was there and knowing that it had nothing to do with me.
Bella's name hung in large, black lettering above the welcome area. My heart swelled with pride, and I was anxious to see her prints enlarged and mounted, waiting for the world to discover them. "You know, when you emailed me that you'd developed the film, I was a little ticked off."
"I figured you would be, but I couldn't help myself. It was like sending wrapped Christmas gifts to a six-year-old at Thanksgiving. Just trust me that I did what I thought you would, right? In terms of composition and what you'd show."
"I trust you. Bella, on the other hand, might be mad." I laughed. "She's been sorely missing developing. I really hope she's excited by this plan of yours."
"I think she'll be okay with what I've done." We walked farther into the gallery, and I recognized Bella's print of an acacia tree immediately. It was bold and intense, bringing me back to Africa and all its heat. I felt the beauty of it in my chest.
What didn't make any sense to me, however, was the print mounted directly next to it.
It was Bella in my white shirt, taking the picture that hung alongside that one.
Mine.
"Rose, you developed my film." I clenched my palms together, trying to shake the clammy feeling that was fast approaching.
She held her hands out to me. "Before you say anything, let me explain."
I glanced around the space quickly, noticing my own name, on the opposite wall of Bella's, in the same bold lettering. Every wall had pairs of photographs lined up all along them. "Those are my pictures."
"They're yours, and hers. Together. The way they should be. I don't even think you realize what you had been doing all along. Each photo I found on a roll of hers, I found the counterpart to on another. Do you know how long it took me to piece all of these together? I had to develop everything once I realized what I had discovered. While she took her pictures, you were there, in the background, taking your own."
"They were for me. They were just for me to capture what she was doing."
"So? What does it matter what their purpose was? The end result is stunning. Just look." She turned me and pushed me towards the opposite wall.
Bella's on the left, a stunning shot of a shifting sand dune hit by late day sun, with mine directly next to it. A similar vista, a similar scene, but my subject was the photographer at work.
Over and over, pairs upon pairs. Twins and couples. And I had to admit, it made for a remarkable effect.
I felt Rose lay her head on my shoulder, her arm snaking through mine. "Edward, you're taking pictures again. You have no idea how significant that is. And how sorely missed you've been."
"This wasn't my intention."
"But what do you think?" She waited for me to answer as the wheels turned in my head.
I had taken these pictures. I had done it purposely. It had been almost organic—the way I picked up that camera, without giving myself much time to question it. It had been something I swore I'd never do again as I stood covered in shame, over a year ago. Looking at them now, on display for the world to see, my heart wasn't pounding, my eyes weren't bleeding, my guilt wasn't enveloping me. I had never intended for them to see the light of day, but they fit perfectly alongside my rising star.
Because it was her I was photographing. It was all about her.
"I can't promise I'll ever photograph anything but this subject."
Rose nodded against me. "I'm okay with that. Doesn't matter how or why you started, just that you did. You are."
"I'm not 'back'."
"Whatever you say, Boss."
~Bella~
Rose ushered me through the crowd, fending off advances from strangers and pressing a glass of champagne into my shaking hands. We stopped before wall after wall after wall of the same picture pairs. Tango dances pinned flat before us as the two images talked back and forth.
My name on one plaque, and his on another, steadfast in our own right but even better together.
Better, so much better together.
Those pink sand beaches, pastel perfection under a mottled, melancholy sky and me sitting waist-deep in the water, with mermaid hair, a barely-there bikini and a sunburn, Edward's Canon pressed to my face.
A crumpled stone wall in England, dappled in green moss and silvery lichen, tiny dewdrops and pinprick flowers—a miniature forest from half an inch away—and me, pressing down so close that my hair was fanned out along the wall behind me, camera lens nearly touching the moss.
A perfection shot, the kind you can only hope for. A canyon, padded in lush jungle, early morning clouds sitting low and pale pink as the sun broke somewhere beyond them. The lens had been fogging up all morning, and the edges of the shot were splattered with raindrops, but I didn't even care. The feeling of it, if you settled in hard enough, was weightless. As though your wings had caught a draft and you were hovering midair, watching those clouds melt back into the sky. The truth was a slender high-wire bridge slung long and low through the fog, and me, tiny and still with a big camera jutting from my face, way down in the very middle of it.
My heart hadn't stopped hammering. Stomach hadn't stopped tumbling. Breath coming short and blood rushing way too fast, clutching Rose to stay upright as the reality hit me. Whispers from the crowd around us, the lights bright and the room warm and I was spinning.
I hadn't known.
I hadn't even known he was behind me, capturing images all along the way.
Capturing me, all along the way.
"There he is, finally," Rose huffed, and I dragged my eyes from the photos to Edward snaking his way through the crowd, stalled by handshakes left and right. He was wearing a suit I'd never seen before, a tie hanging loose as if he'd been pulling on it. Skin gone golden from hours in the sun, hair grown out soft and wild. That curve of his grin. The easy lope of his walk. The soft set of his face. The flash in his eyes.
My stomach turned over again, a hurricane in my belly as the champagne glass trembled in my hand.
"Rose." He smiled and let her kiss his cheek, her hand squeezing mine one last time before she disappeared and left me standing there in front of him. He tucked his hands in his pockets and grinned at me.
I had so much to say. So much to ask. I opened my mouth, fumbling for words, feeling too many eyes on us for something that felt so private.
"Some show, huh?"
"It's…I— " I wobbled through a wasteland of half-formed thoughts, struggling to find the surface. The awe must have been apparent, even if I wasn't making any sense. He reached out to take the shivering champagne glass from my unsteady fingers, draining it with one gulp and discarding it on a table nearby. His fingers curled around my hand, soft and warm as he tugged me close.
"I have something to show you," he whispered.
He led me through the crowd, faces turning to stare,but everyone smiling as we passed. I held onto his jacket, daring myself to smile back but failing every time, keeping my eyes on the black fabric bunched in my hand. Edward stopped before a hallway cordoned off with a red velvet rope and heavy black curtains. He unclipped the rope and ushered me through, leaving the bright room and the big crowd with its hum of noise behind us. We walked down the shadowed hallway in silence, his hand curled over mine, to a single door at the end. He stopped before it and kissed my knuckles.
"This part is yours," he whispered, nudging the door open.
The room was smaller, quiet, and lit in soft white-yellow lights, a golden glow kissing the photographs scattered along dark grey partitions. Edward leaned against the open door as I walked through the small space, feeling much like I was stepping through someone's inner sanctuary, straight into the warm, throbbing chambers of their heart.
Our first rolls of film.
The beginning.
Some walls were scattered with an explosion of images, the broken snapshot story of him trying to capture my smile without looking, the blurry palms obscuring my face, wild flashes of teeth and hair and prairie. One space was dedicated to images of Edward painting his house, half naked on a ladder, bent double in the grass, a close up of his paint-splattered hands, dripping rainbow buckets in the grass. There was the very first photo I'd ever taken, hung all by itself. Edward's kitchen with him chopping tomatoes at the counter in the late afternoon, sharp lines blurred, solid swatches of sunlight piercing the air. Another solo wall, the photo of my house— the one that had sent me into such a spin, the one with the flash of light splicing through it like a message from the dead.
The fawn.
So many of her.
Little Thunder.
She was still buried so deep in me—I never even talked about her for fear of the sharp stab of pain I always got when I did. My momentary angel, appearing when I needed her and disappearing when I didn't anymore. Her silhouette, those perked ears and slender legs, down at the end of a long dark hallway. Curled up small and mottled in a bed of blue indigo, my bathrobe she'd dragged down the stairs and made a bed of on the porch. Snuggled up on the couch, in the bathtub, on Edward in bed, in my arms. Waiting patiently at the bottom of Edward's ladder. My heart ached ferociously at a close up of her face—simple, honest, the big black eyes and the long lashes and the right ear flicked out to the side.
I tore myself from her, standing wide-eyed and suddenly warm in front of two images from his bed. Both of them rubbed so hard up against the barrier of immoral art that the skin had broken. Rough and raw, black and white, his hand clenched deep into the swell of my hip, another disappearing between my legs, his teeth in my skin, my head heavy against his shoulder, toes curled in the sheets. Sex softened by the shake of my hands and the glow of the moonlight
I looked at Edward, still leaning in the doorway, watching me with careful eyes.
"I can't believe you did this," I whispered, my voice echoing in the small, empty room.
"I didn't. It was Rose. She started developing the rolls of film we sent home, put this whole thing together. She showed me this morning, I didn't know anything until a few hours ago."
"No, I mean…" I glanced around, swallowing the overwhelming panic creeping up my throat. "Edward, my pictures are hanging on a wall. A gallery wall." I pointed towards the other room. "All those people want to be here? To see our pictures?"
"They do." He chuckled. "Look at all of this, Bella. Look." He flung his hand out to the soft, quiet room we stood in and the noise bustling in from the big crowded one down the hallway. The easy smile on his face was something I was still getting used to, and he crushed me with it again, beaming at me. "It's amazing. You're amazing."
"But I'm not even a photographer. I'm just some girl with a camera and too much time on my hands."
"You are." He took a step into the room, closing the space between us. "You're one of the best photographers I've ever met. I think it's because no one tried to teach you. No one told you how to do it, or how not to. You just did what you thought was right. And it works."
"You taught me," I countered, unsteady and uncertain.
He shrugged. "Sort of. But you found me at a time when I didn't want anything to do with cameras ever again. There's more to photography than loading film or developing it. I don't know how different you would have been if I was…" His eyes fell to the floor between us. "If you had a better teacher, where would you be now?"
"Not where I'm supposed to be." I slid my foot across the floor, needing to be closer—that panic in my throat turning into something lighter, something liquid and shapeshifting. A lump of secret thrill lodged between my lungs and my ribs, squeezing a pleasant ache in my chest with every breath. "Not with you."
I thought about those photos hanging on the walls in that big, bright space. The thousands of hungry eyes eating them up. The name plates beneath them, the newcomer and the long-lost golden boy, returning from the land of the damned. How they must have crowed with excitement at the return of Edward Cullen—unannounced, unplanned, sprung on them without warning. I thought of the painful way he'd treated those cameras in the beginning, barely looking at them, refusing to touch them. About how he'd given me the box of his foregone life because he didn't want it anymore. The knife lodged in the kitchen wall. The ghost stuck in that digital. The vow to never take another photograph ever again. The tattoos that marked both of us, his re-touched and mine brand new.
The long, hard road we'd trudged together and how it ended there, in that room, with his photos hanging on a wall.
"You…" I stuttered. "Edward, you took pictures. The whole time and I didn't even know."
~Edward~
"Not the whole time."
It hadn't come as easy as she'd thought or made it sound. I couldn't lie to myself about either of us. We'd fixed nothing. The broken bits inside of me were still just as broken. There were still a few nightmares. There were still small outbursts. There were still treacherous stretches of territory we hadn't even come close to crossing. I hadn't fixed her either, much as I wanted to. We'd hardly spoken about our tumultuous beginning in the year we'd been traveling. Neither of us had managed to become the magic salve to soothe each other's burns.
But here we were, anyway.
I stepped closer to her, both of my hands grabbing hers and pulling them to rest between us as one lone finger traced the ink on her arm. "If you notice, I didn't take pictures of just any subject."
"You did—" she said, but I cut her off.
"They're all pictures of you, Bella."
My muse. My salvation.
I kissed her, full of unspoken gratitude for helping me rebuild a shattered life of self-inflicted misery and pain.
"I only ever want to take pictures of you."
THE END