I’d spent the last three days hiding out from the world, wallowing in self-pity. But I was done with all that. For one, I smelled disgusting. And my room was a shambles. I’d been here for weeks, and everything I owned was tossed in a pile in the corner of the room.
I’d finally accepted that my divorce was officially in limbo, and now it was time for me to accept another hard truth: I wasn’t moving out of my mom’s house anytime soon, and that meant I needed to get my shit together.
With a deep sigh, I flung myself off the bed and got to work turning the space into one that I could settle into for the long haul.
Several hours later, I was down to the last three boxes I’d brought with me to Vermont. Seeing as how we were going into the deepest dregs of winter, I pushed the two labeled “summer clothes” into a corner at the far edge of the room under the attic’s eaves and hefted the third one onto my newly-made bed. Grabbing the Exacto knife I’d commandeered from my mom’s toolbox down in the basement, I sliced into the duct tape, confused to find the box filled with packing peanuts.
When I’d fled California, I hadn’t done the best job packing, and I certainly hadn’t taken the time to buy proper packing materials. Throwing my clothes into large black Hefty bags and the rest of my stuff into various Amazon boxes I’d found down in our building’s trash room had been more my style. After all, I hadn’t had the time or the inclination to be precious about my belongings when I’d just caught my husband with his dick in another woman’s mouth.
The only positive to come from finally witnessing Blake cheating on me with my own eyes was it had given me the push I’d needed to leave him. If I hadn’t walked in on Philomena servicing him like a Hoover vacuum cleaner, I might still be living in San Francisco, wondering if I’d ever work up the courage to go through with divorcing him.
True, when I’d imagined starting over on my own, I hadn’t pictured doing it in my mom’s attic like some Grey Gardens reject, but I told myself now that the fact that I’d done it at all was what mattered most. I had plenty of time to land on my feet.
Sure you do, a voice that sounded suspiciously like my own mocked from within my consciousness. It’s not like you have a biological clock ticking dangerously close to its expiration date or anything.
I squeezed my hands to the side of my head, trying desperately to keep those thoughts at bay. It wasn’t like I’d been itching to have a kid before I’d left Blake. And I sure as heck didn’t need to be thinking about having one now. I needed to focus on the small wins, and right now that meant figuring out what was in this box.
Slowly, I tossed the packing peanuts over my shoulder, heedless of where they landed, as I uncovered its contents. I gasped when I spied the worn leather camera bag I’d used to cart around the Nikon D70 I’d picked up at a second-hand shop when I was in high school. Under it was another bag that housed an old Minolta 35mm camera Vernon had passed down to me when I’d first expressed an interest in photography. Beneath the cameras, I uncovered a flat, rectangular box that contained the photographs I’d exhibited for my senior project. I’d been so proud of the portfolio I’d put together, but the feeling had been short-lived. Good grades for pretty pictures didn’t pay the bills.
Gingerly, I removed the Nikon from its bag and raised the viewfinder to my eye. Panning the room as if I was looking for my next shot, a flash of something bright coming from outside sparked in my peripheral vision. Curious, I moved to the window and pulled aside the curtain, my eye seeking out what might have triggered the flash of light.
There, I found Preston sitting out on his porch with a whittling knife in one hand and a long, thin piece of wood in the other. His brows were pursed in concentration while his big, strong hands cradled the wood so gently. For the first time in what felt like forever, my finger itched to take a picture. Not merely a simple click on my phone for something to put up on Instagram, but an honest-to-goodness composed photograph.
Wistfully, my mind harkened back to the folio sitting atop my comforter. My senior project’s theme had been “Men At Work,” perfect for the moment in front of me. That semester, I’d traveled all over the Bay Area to capture images of everyday life. While some of my classmates had focused on the wealth and glitz of Silicon Valley and its many millionaires, it had been important to me to showcase the people who kept that world moving—people like the garbagemen who kept our city streets clean, the train conductors who ferried us to and fro, the hospital janitors who worked tirelessly in the background, the fireman who kept us safe … and so on and so forth.
I hadn’t come from money, and I hadn’t wanted to perpetuate the myth that it was the only good thing about the society we lived in. If I found it odd that less than a couple of years later, I was as far removed from the subjects I’d photographed as one could be, I tried not to dwell on it. In hindsight, there’d been a lot I’d chosen not to dwell on. Only now that I’d removed myself from those circles could I see how the constant need to keep up appearances had worn me down. It was no wonder I wasn’t smiling in all those pictures Preston had seen of me; I’d had nothing to smile about.
And speaking of pictures and Preston ...
Even though the camera wasn’t charged—nor did it have a memory card on which to capture any new images—I framed the scene below as if it were, pressing the button to fire the manual shutter, the faint clicking noise of the button still somehow loud in my quiet bedroom. With a sigh, I let the curtain drop closed and backed away from the window before Preston could look up and catch me admiring him from my attic perch.
I moved back to my bed and put the camera away, taking extra time and attention to ensure that it was stored properly. It wasn’t the best camera money could buy, nor was it worth much to anyone else, but once upon a time I’d thought it was the key to my future. How wrong I’d been.
A tear slid down my cheek to land on my lap as I put those girlish dreams away for good and made another important decision about my life. I’d taken the brave step of leaving an emotionally abusive marriage, and now it was time for me to start looking toward the future instead of always living in the past.
Without conscious thought, my gaze traveled to the window, and my mind latched onto the man sitting below working with his hands to bring beauty into the world.
Preston was the type of man I’d once loved photographing, and that was because he was the type of man I could admire. He’d been kind to me from the moment we’d first met even though everything he’d heard about me had painted a picture so similar to the selfish, grasping woman who’d dumped him for his brother. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d never wanted to speak to me. He’d had absolutely zero reason to strike up a friendship with me, and yet he had.
Time and time again these past few weeks, he’d been the brightest spot of my day, and it was ridiculous that I was avoiding him because I was embarrassed that my mom was trying to push us together like some plot from a Hallmark Channel movie, albeit one with more sexual tension and innuendo. Her scheming didn’t have to negatively impact our burgeoning friendship. Hell, I’d actually love to be able to just sit with him at the end of a long day and laugh about her crazy shenanigans. After all, no one understood better than he did the lengths she’d go to. Why shouldn’t he be my partner in crime? And if along the way, her scheming and plotting actually worked, and Preston and I happened to become more than friends, I wasn’t going to turn my back on a shot at happiness.