Page 48 of The Heartbreakers
Oliver stopped midstride. “Huh?”
Taking a breath, I forced myself to slow down. “Now that I’m working for you guys, we can’t do that anymore. It’s not professional.”
“And by ‘that’ you mean…?”
“We should just be friends,” I said, watching him closely. There was this weird, punch-drunk look on his face, as if I’d smashed him over the head with my camera bag. For the smallest millisecond of a moment, I thought that maybe Oliver was upset. That he didn’t want to just be friends. But then he slowly nodded.
“Friends,” he repeated, still nodding. His temple was wrinkled in a half frown, like the whole thing was a strange concept he was trying to wrap his head around.
“Is that…okay?” I asked.
He ducked his head in thought. When he looked at me again there was a smile on his face. “Yeah. Totally fine.”
“Awesome,” I said, even though in that moment I felt anything but.
Chapter 13
Seven hundred and sixty-two. That was the number of pictures I’d taken by Wednesday afternoon. You’d think there’d be at least one decent shot somewhere in the lot, but no. All garbage.
Tonight the boys had an appearance on some late-night show, so I decided to use the rest of the day to assess my work thus far. After downloading the files onto my laptop, I started sifting through the images, hoping to separate out anything worth using for the blog. I was meeting with Paul on Friday—he was going to review the pictures I’d taken and show me how to work the blog—and I wanted to present him with my best work. But as I clicked through a never-ending series of terrible, if not atrocious, photos, my lungs started shrinking, one small breath at a time.
Who did I think I was, accepting a job that should be done by a professional photographer? And what was Paul thinking in hiring someone with no experience? This was the kind of stint Bianca Bridge should be doing, not some eighteen-year-old who didn’t even have a clue who she was. Professionals like Bianca went to school for photography and traveled the world perfecting their skill. All I’d done was graduate from high school.
Photography had become my comfort, my distraction, my crutch. Sometimes it was even my hope. So when Paul offered me the job, I thought it might become my future as well, but clearly I was wrong. Loving something didn’t make me good at it. And if I wasn’t meant to be a photographer, than what was I supposed to be doing with my life?
Pushing my computer away from me, I buried my face in my hands to hide my stinging eyes. In that second, I felt just as lost as when I’d found out Cara had cancer. One moment I was standing safe on shore, my path clear in sight. The next, my feet were swept out from under me, and that rip current of self-doubt was dragging me out into a dark, murky sea with no hope of rescue.
“Stella?” When I heard his voice, I forced myself to look up. Alec was standing over me, leaning forward on the balls of his feet, one hand half raised as if he thought I would bolt like a deer.
“Hey, Alec,” I said. “What’s up?”
He narrowed his eyes and looked me over, as if considering how upset I was and whether or not he was needed. Finally, he must have come to the conclusion that something was definitely wrong, and even though he wasn’t much of a talker, now wasn’t the time for his silent, brooding complex.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
I knew the “nothing, I’m fine” routine wasn’t going to work with Alec. He wasn’t the type of person to pretend to care by faking concern, only to take the first out that was offered. He might be quiet, but that was because he used his words thoughtfully and with deliberate purpose.
“Can I ask you a question?” I said, instead of responding to his. He nodded and placed his hands on the back of the chair in front of him. “Why’d you show my pictures to Paul?”
Cocking his head, Alec stared at me as if I’d asked him to explain the basics of breathing. “Because,” he said, his brows crinkled up, “they were worth showing.”
“But how can you know what’s worth showing?”
Alec shrugged. “I don’t know much about photography or what qualifies as good or bad. But I do know what I like, and I figured if I enjoyed your work, then why wouldn’t someone else?”
As he said this, I thought about how simple he made it seem. Like I’d made a whole big fuss in my head, and over what? A few photographs? Well, more than a few, but that’s wasn’t the point. Was I really stressing myself out over something that I shouldn’t worry about? Or was Alec off base?
“My turn to ask you something,” he said before I really had time to consider the answers to my questions. He pointed at my computer. “Do you have any work you can show me from before we met?” Obviously I had stuff I could show him—there was an entire hard drive worth of pictures—but why did he want to see it?
“Please?” he added when I hesitated.
“Yeah, okay.” I thought for a minute, tapping the side of my chin as I tried to decide what to show him, and then suddenly I was hit with an oh-duh revelation.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, when it came to her disease, Cara was the most positive, hopeful person in the world. The doctors told her she had cancer, and she smiled, nodded her head, and told them that she would get better before her first prom.
One of the only times I saw Cara truly angry was when she first lost her hair during chemotherapy. I remembered walking into her room and seeing her staring at herself in a compact. She wasn’t crying, but one look at her red-rimmed eyes told me she’d been bawling all night. Then she saw me standing in the door and smashed the mirror against the bedside table, raining silver shards onto the floor. In that fleeting instant of raw, unbarred grief, I was inspired to start a new project.
My sister needed to understand that just because she was sick didn’t mean she wasn’t beautiful. Her struggles with cancer and determination to get better only made her a stronger person. And there is so much beauty in strength. So I photographed everything that made Cara a tough person on the inside—the number of pills that she had to take each day, her collection of hospital wristbands, the needles and tubes that sprouted from her body every time she got sick—and the pictures I took turned into my first real portfolio.
