Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 97466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
“Definitely. The light today is incredible.”
He looked over my shoulder at the photos as I scrolled through them.
“Why do you have so many of the same shots?” he murmured, the warm air from his breath floating across the skin behind my ear and making me shiver.
“I have to take hundreds of shots to get just the right one, and even then, it doesn’t always happen.” I deleted a few test shots from the drive and flipped through more.
“How do you know when you have the right one?”
I turned to see a divot of concentration between his eyes as he squinted at the tiny screen.
“It’s a gut feeling. I mean, I could tell you about all the usual qualities: the right lighting, interesting composition, movement, richness of detail… but there are elements I can’t really put into words. Something evocative. Magnetic. Whatever it is that makes you keep coming back to look at it again. To sit with it and wonder.” I glanced back at him. “Have you ever felt that way?”
He met my eyes. I could see the thoughts tumbling behind his expression in a way that made me wish I could pull my camera up and capture it.
“There’s a museum in a little town in southeastern France… I can’t remember the name of the place… but it has a portrait of an old man from the 1600s. I kept wandering back to it over and over to try and figure out what it was about it that caught my eye.” Oscar shrugged. “I never did figure it out.”
I nodded. “It’s common with artwork. And with people.” I studied him—his windblown hair, his golden tan, the tiredness in his eyes that I didn’t think had anything to do with inadequate sleep—and wished that I could read his mind. “We use the word ‘charisma’ to describe people who have an unexplainable magnetism. What’s really happening is a set of subtle cues that are so nuanced they’re hard to define. Some of them we know—composition symmetry, affinity to the subject, unique details that draw the eye to learn more. But some are undefinable. And we just have to trust that our gut knows things we don’t.”
Oscar’s eyes glanced back down at the camera screen. “So many wasted images.”
I let out a soft laugh. “So many opportunities to learn and adjust and get it right. So much practice. Any one of these might have been the magical shot… but how would I have known if I hadn’t captured them?”
He pursed his lips. “You wouldn’t be turning my innocent curiosity into a metaphor on relationships so you could drive home a lesson here, would you?”
I feigned innocence. “Me? I was just answering a question.”
Oscar poked my side with one slim finger. “Right.”
“If you happen to feel that there’s a metaphor there and that it’s applicable to another set of circumstances in your life, I can’t be held responsible.”
“It’s not applicable,” he said staunchly.
“You never see the discards, Oscar.” I gestured with the camera. “You never see all the shots that weren’t quite right.”
He huffed out a laugh. “Stop.”
“They’re like… well, they’re like ex-boyfriends littering the darkroom floor of your life.”
His laugh got louder, and he shoved my shoulder before stepping away. “You’re a pain in the ass.”
“You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take, Oscar Overton,” I teased. “I just came up with that line. Feel free to put it on a motivational poster.”
He put his fingers in his ear and backed away. “Lalalala. Your metaphors are terrible. One out of ten. Irredeemable.”
“If at first you don’t succeed…” I called after him.
Oscar waved and kept on walking toward the beach, his shoulders shaking with laughter.
Brant walked up, looking with a smile between me and Oscar’s retreating form. “I didn’t realize you had friends in the wedding party. Glad I asked you to come work it with me.”
“I did Wells and Conor’s wedding last year in New York. That’s where I met Oscar and some of the other guys.”
“Oscar’s the ex, right? Or… wait… was he James’s ex or Wells’s ex?”
“Both,” I said without adding that he’d also dated Roman.
We stood together watching Oscar make his way down the beach to where Wells was talking to a woman in a bright blue sundress. Despite the pretty dress fluttering in the breeze, my eyes kept returning to Oscar’s plain salmon-colored shorts and white T-shirt, which probably cost more than my whole wardrobe. Beneath them, I knew he sported faded Speedo tan lines, probably from his weeks in the Maldives or some yacht party he’d been to. It was a reminder that Oscar lived in a world I would never inhabit, and seeing it in the flesh—literally—was far more powerful than any text or snapshot ever could be.
“So, I’m thinking of arranging the wedding party over on the jetty,” Brant said. He stretched out his arm to point out a spot further down the beach, blocking my view of Oscar.