Page 170 of Dirty Like Dylan

How the fuck was I gonna pull that off?

All I really had to do was come to fucking terms with the fact that Dylan wasn’t—and would never be—falling in love with me.

Super fucking easy, right?

Simple.

But I hadn’t come to terms with it. I’d lied to Amber; I’d never accepted that Dylan wasn’t in love with me.

Maybe I never, ever would.

“You’re really taking her on tour?” I asked, trying not to sound bitter about it. Apathetic; I sounded fucking apathetic. But it fucking grated me.

Dylan had never taken a woman on tour with him before.

“Yeah,” he said. “At least, I’m gonna ask her to come.”

I tipped my beer at him. “I hope she says yes.” I took another swig, and tried like hell not to look so goddamn devastated. Destroyed.

But fuck…

Did I just lose Amber and Dylan, in like a two-day span?

“Seriously,” I said. “She’s the perfect girl. I thought she was the perfect girl for me. For us. I was wrong.” I shrugged, downing the rest of my beer. “I’ve been wrong before.” I slammed the bottle down on the counter. “She’s the perfect girl for you.”

Dylan didn’t even say anything. What could he say?

For once, I was right.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Amber

WOW.

I’d just witnessed pure love in action.

That was the only way to describe it.

All I could feel was awe and gratitude with every part of me. I’d actually had to remove myself from Jessa’s delivery room, twice, to burst into tears in the bathroom, before scraping my shit together and going back in.

Some professional.

I definitely didn’t see a future for myself in birth photography. If this experience was any indicator, it would wreck me.

These two people, people I barely knew—well, barely knew until last night—had welcomed me into this intimacy in their lives, and shared their love with me. Now, I felt like I knew both Jessa and Brody in an incredibly intimate, personal way.

The whole experience was beautiful, moving, and totally life-altering.

When I wandered out of the recovery room for the last time, in a total daze, I did not feel like the same woman who’d walked into the hospital the night before.

And it was all because of my camera. My camera had gotten me here.

And it really hit me… That this was what my photography was ultimately all about: bringing people together.

I was still trying to wrap my head around the profound majesty of it all. But I’d always been drawn to photography, and maybe now I knew why.

When I’d taken that class about the history of photography in university, I’d definitely fallen in love. It had introduced me to the fascinating fact that there was a time, not so long ago, when human beings had such a limited view of the world. We hadn’t been into space yet. We’d never seen the Earth from the air. We’d never seen the world from the top of a mountain, and most of us had never even seen it from the top of a tall building.

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