Chapter Fifteen
Shane and I are standing toe to toe at the bottom of the staircase. For the life of me, I can’t read his expression. It’s like a mixture of grief and gratitude, so palpable I’m momentarily frozen. It clues me in that he overheard most of what his sister and I talked about, but I don’t want to take the time to analyze that just yet. After the scene with Faith, I’ve reached my emotional quota for the night. I give myself an internal shake and bypass him, heading up the stairs. I need to get to my room. Just need to breathe a little.
Of course, he follows me, our boots stomping on the hollow-sounding staircase. I don’t know what’s going to happen when we reach my room, but I know it’s probably not a good idea having him there when I’m in such desperate need for an outlet. My nerve endings snap with each punctuated step behind me, everything I’ve been feeling all day bubbling to the surface, ready to spill over.
I flip the light switch and walk inside, not bothering to close the door. Shane walks in and does it for me. I drag my messenger bag over my head and drop it on the bed. My jacket comes next. I’m actually surprised when I don’t feel Shane come up behind me right away. In fact, when I don’t feel him, I realize how badly I need him to touch me. A moment ago, he looked as lost as me and I thought he’d been following me, hoping to block everything else out for a while.
Instead, I turn around and find him staring at the walls of my room, a stunned look on his face. With a frown, I follow his line of vision. Photographs everywhere. I forgot that I’d hung them last night, when I couldn’t sleep. It’s a habit of mine, hanging my pictures and falling asleep with strangers surrounding me, their expressive faces reminding me what’s possible in the world. It’s a comfort I’d been missing since arriving in Dublin, so I’d gone yesterday afternoon and gotten a few rolls of film developed. I’d been so anxious to leave this morning, I hadn’t bothered taking them down.
As Shane circles the room, pausing to look at each shot, I struggle not to ask what he thinks. It’s something I never have to ask. I’m usually secure in the knowledge that I take good photographs, but he’s been silent so long I’m beginning to worry. He lingers at one picture longer than the others, featuring a young girl with a unicorn painted on her cheek, laughing in delight at the buskers she’d been watching perform on stage. It’s one of my favorites, too. There’s no reservation or self-awareness on her face, just pure joy. She’s laughing like no one is watching, a feat I seriously envy.
I bury the panic when he comes across the picture of him. The one I took the first afternoon we met, when he was leaning up against the inn as my cab arrived, looking like a thundercloud ready to storm. Somehow I know it will be among the shots I submit to Shutterclick Magazine to define my trip to Dublin. He has defined it, no matter how hard I fought against him. He’s reshaped the whole experience from what it might have been.
Shane stares at the shot of himself a moment, then looks back at me. Since I don’t think he’s asking about the use of light and shadow, I only return his look. I took that photograph because I couldn’t help it, the same way I can’t help what’s going on between us. In no way am I capable of voicing either thought.
“You photograph people,” Shane finally says. I choose to ignore the hint of disappointment in his voice, the one telling me he wanted an explanation as to why his picture is hanging in front of my bed. “I don’t know what I expected. Flowers…landscapes and the like, I suppose. Why people?”
No one has ever asked me that, so I take a moment to think about it. “Because of their expressions. When you find a subject that projects every emotion onto their face, not bothering to hide it… I don’t know, it’s like an honest moment. People tend to be so aware of themselves and others’ perceptions that they control their face at all times. Paste on a bored expression kind of like a shield. But sometimes you find someone that doesn’t. Children and old folks are the best subjects. And, as I’ve found out since arriving in Dublin, drunk people.”
He glances at me over his shoulder. “Drunk people?”
“They wear their personal tragedies on their faces, just begging someone to ask them about it.” I shrug. “I’m not comfortable asking, so I take pictures. Or mental ones, anyway, since I doubt your customers would appreciate flash photography when they’re trying to tie one on.”
“My customers?” He moves on to the next picture. “They would probably strike a pose for you. Not a shy one in the bunch.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to remind him they won’t be his customers much longer, to drive a wedge between us before I lose any chance of doing so, but I hold back. Having him in my room, taking his mind off the scene with his sister, feels right. There is a part of me that wants to soothe that expression I’d seen at the bottom of the stairs and it’s much stronger than the knee-jerk reaction to push him away. Infinitely stronger.
“When I was helping you that night behind the bar,” I start, watching his shoulders bunch, obviously remembering where that night had led. “I overheard one death threat, two breakups, and three marriage proposals. All from the same couple.”
Shane’s shoulders relax as laughter rolls through him. I shift on the bed when it reaches me. “You can’t accuse the Irish of being boring.”
“Orla said something similar earlier tonight.” When he turns with one eyebrow raised, I hasten to continue. “Did I ever tell you my sister Ginger was a bartender?”
“No.” He makes a sound in his throat. “That must be why you were halfway decent.”
“Well don’t bowl me over with compliments.”
“I compliment you all the time. You’re just not listening.” While I’m absorbing that, he rummages through a few black-and-white shots sitting on my dresser. “The photograph that won you the contest. Do you have it here?”
I nod once, bending down so I can drag my suitcase from beneath the bed. My neck feels hot, but I can’t tell if it’s from his interested gaze or my nerves over sharing this particular shot. I’d submitted it to the contest through the mail, not actually being required to show it to anyone in person. The subject matter of the shot was controversial, to say the least. I have no idea how he will judge it. Or me.
Hesitating the barest of moments, lest Shane notice my anxiety, I draw it out of the plastic portfolio and hand it to him. To keep myself busy while he looks it over, I thumb through the other photos, stopping on one of Derek and Ginger smiling at each other over their coffee mugs. It’s a picture that always comforts me.
“Where was this taken?”
Bastard. I can interpret nothing from his tone. Placing the picture I’m holding carefully back into the case, I shift my attention to the one in Shane’s hands. “One day last spring, I convinced Derek to take me on a ride-along. It was actually Take Your Daughter to Work Day but I didn’t tell him that until after we got back to the station.” I laugh to myself, thinking of his baleful expression when I told him. My brother-in-law really is way too easy to mess with. “The day started slow. Then we were called to a homicide in Chinatown. A man had killed his business partner over something trivial, then climbed onto the roof, threatening to jump.” I point to the subject of the photograph. Not the main event, never the main event. “This is his wife, leaning out the window trying to talk him out of it.”
I remember the day I’d taken the photograph. Derek had commanded that I remain in the car, but I hadn’t been able to stop myself from climbing out of the passenger side. Since the man’s wife had been speaking in Chinese, I couldn’t understood a single word she said, yet she’d had such horrible desperation on her face, I’d somehow known. She’d cried and pled, refusing to listen to any officer intervention from below. Then, just as her husband appeared ready to leap to his death, she’d reached behind her and picked up a sleeping baby, holding him out the window for the man to see. She held the baby so securely, I’d never once considered she meant to do anything but use him as motivation for her husband to remain alive.
That’s the picture I’d taken. A desperate woman holding her child out a high-rise window to convince her husband to come back inside. To choose them over the relief of death. The shutter had gone off before I’d registered a conscious thought. Just muscle memory and a need to capture that raw emotion on film. Miraculously, the man had gone back inside immediately after that, carefully inching his way off the ledge toward the window. If he’d jumped, I never would have submitted the photo to the contest. Even so, some people found it horrifying that I would take a picture of something terrible like that, but to me, it’s just the opposite. Love can save people’s lives. To me, that woman’s expression, her words and actions, are goddamn beautiful.
“Did he jump?”
“No.”
“I’m not sure what to say.” Shane drops down on the bed beside me. “Except they probably should have sent you to a better inn.”
My laugh is so unexpected, that for a fleeting second I’m unicorn girl. I don’t have the time or the ability to shape the laugh. It just flows out of me, and it feels unbelievable. When Shane simply watches me, like he’s finally figured me out, I force it to die down.
His thoughtful eyes are locked on mine, and I can’t shake the certainty he knows exactly who he’s looking at. I’m not some social experiment or a troubled girl with a smart-ass remark for everything when he looks at me. Even more, I don’t feel like one. I want to lean forward and kiss him so bad, it’s like a drumming need inside me, but I would dissolve. I’d dissolve under that look and his lips at the same time. His eyes soften in understanding, as if he can read that thought entering and leaving my head.
“Do you want to get out of here?” I ask.
“You read my mind.” He brushes a thumb over my bottom lip. “Grab that camera of yours and meet me out front. I’m going to take you somewhere.”