The Photographer - Mary Carter (best romance ebooks .txt) 📗

in Florida, my best friend got married. She asked me to be her maid of honor and then she changed her mind. We’d had an unusually close bond. I cared for her when she fell and broke several bones. Her fiancé was probably threatened by the strength of our relationship. He couldn’t handle the depth of her affection for me.

I heard the front door open and Amelia’s and Fritz’s footsteps. They appeared in the kitchen and saw me and Piper at the island. Dressed in winter coats and boots, eyes shining bright, faces flushed from the cold, they looked dashing.

“Hi, guys.” Amelia furrowed her brow in confusion. She and Fritz threw their coats on the hall bench and removed their boots.

“Piper had a nightmare,” I said.

“I’m OK.” Piper brought her cereal bowl to the ceramic farmhouse sink. “The radiator in Natalie’s room woke me up. Hashtag Noise. You guys should get it fixed. I don’t know how Natalie sleeps in that room.”

“Sure.” Fritz pursed his lips, perhaps to indicate that he appreciated the gravity of the problem, or perhaps he was trying not to laugh.

Once Piper was safely upstairs, Amelia cut her eyes at me. “That kid is a piece of work.”

I nodded, then gathered my belongings. “Listen, I’m sort of embarrassed to tell you this. I…”

“What?” Fritz asked.

“I took some pictures of your kitchen. It’s exquisite. One day, when I buy a house, I want to have a kitchen that looks like yours.” I gestured toward the cabinetry. “The workmanship on the cabinets. I took some photos so I don’t forget. Is that OK?”

Amelia laughed. “My God, I don’t care if you take pictures of the kitchen!”

Her laughter sounded like music to me, her voice lifting up to a high register, and then descending. In that instant I recognized my love for Amelia. I wasn’t sure how to describe it. My feeling was bigger than any label I could come up with.

I woke to the sound of my cell phone ringing. It was my former colleague, Lana. She hadn’t called me for three months. For a while she’d been calling every day. She found out I’d slept with the man she was dating. I’d had no idea they were in a relationship. I only saw them together twice. One night, about six months earlier, I’d bumped into Christopher at an overpriced bar on Vanderbilt, and we started talking about photography. He wanted to walk me home and he ended up spending the night. I hadn’t talked to him since.

When Lana discovered what had happened, she said some vile things to me. She called me a whore and a parasite. It wasn’t worth my time to fight with someone like her. She projected her own dishonesty and disloyalty onto other people. Years earlier she’d betrayed my trust, so our friendship was already on an inevitable decline. In the last couple of years, I’d barely seen her. It was even a stretch to describe her as a friend.

Lana’s call went to voicemail. She rang again and it went to voicemail again.

I sat down at the kitchen counter with a cup of black coffee and a piece of toast and surveyed the living room and kitchen. I owned three expensive pieces of furniture: a solid rosewood coffee table and two leather chairs. The kitchen cabinets were well made, with high-quality chrome hardware, though I would have preferred polished nickel. My large walnut cutting board, prominently displayed on the kitchen counter, contrasted beautifully with the white Caesarstone countertops. But recently such details that had pleased me in the past failed to lift my spirits. I couldn’t help comparing myself and my apartment to the Straubs and their house. The contrast left me feeling profoundly inadequate. I found it impossible to shut down the voices in my head that shouted out my inferiority.

Lately my brightest moments were derived from my personal photoshopping endeavors, particularly the ones involving the Straubs. I would usually allow myself to devote several hours to those projects later in the day, as soon as I’d finished my work. It was something to look forward to.

After breakfast I took a soothing hot shower and enjoyed the force of the water pounding onto my shoulders and arms. My shower was only thirty inches by thirty inches, though the glass walls on two sides gave the illusion of a larger shower. A small hexagon-shaped glass tile covered the shower floor, and a rose-colored subway tile covered the walls and gave off a warm glow. I should have painted the walls of the apartment the rose color instead of lavender. The lavender walls looked gray and flat in the northern light. Why hadn’t I known that would be the case? If there was one thing I knew about, it was light. What kind of light made people and places shine.

CHAPTER SIX

On a Saturday afternoon in early March, I received a text from Amelia.

What r u up to during the day tomorrow?

Her question was one I’d hoped and prepared for.

going for a run over Brooklyn Bridge

I knew that Amelia enjoyed the route over the Brooklyn Bridge and through Brooklyn Bridge Park, because I’d overheard Natalie discussing it with Piper. I surmised that Amelia liked Brooklyn Bridge Park because she wanted to feel like she was part of the community. She liked the image of herself as someone who took advantage of the free things that the city had to offer, as if what she loved most about her life was accessible to anyone who lived in Brooklyn.

It wasn’t an especially convenient route for me. Moreover, I disliked running. But I had a feeling that if I casually mentioned a plan to run over the bridge, Amelia would be tempted.

She wrote back: I’d love to go with you.

I spent a few minutes composing my response. I hoped to appear pleased, in a measured way, but not excited. In the end, I wrote: Great.

We met at 10 A.M. on Sunday morning and started by