When August Ends(13)

“Ninety.”

“Damn. Well, she knows what she wants, I guess.”

“She must have been pissed when she realized you weren’t on the menu.”

As I stirred the pasta into the pot, I changed the subject. “So, what did Eric want? He told you to think about what he said…”

Heather crossed her arms and blew a breath up into her hair. “He wants me to agree to go out with him one night while he’s home. He says he wants to talk about what happened between us. I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Hurt me once, shame on you. Hurt me twice…you know that saying.”

“He hurt you pretty badly, huh?”

“Well, we were together for a long time, throughout high school. I always knew there was a risk in him going away to college without me. I just didn’t think he’d call me drunk and in tears, confessing that he’d messed up and slept with some girl at a campus party.”

“Shit. I’m sorry.”

She shook her head as if to dismiss my sympathy. “You know what, though? He did me a favor. At least I didn’t waste more time with him.”

“You should never settle for someone like that. I don’t care what he has to say to convince you otherwise.”

She continued to watch me cook until I plated two dishes of angel hair pasta and poured the red sauce over them.

“You okay with eating outside?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s a nice night.”

We took the food out to the back patio. The sun was halfway down.

Scooting her chair in, she said, “This is a real treat. I should be ashamed at the way this dinner turned out, but I have to say, it’s kind of nice being served by you. It might even be worth burning the lasagna.”

She grinned, and it took everything in me not to smile back.

I pointed to her plate. “Stop smiling and eat.”

Heather twirled her noodles around her fork. “Can’t stop smiling, but okay.”

I needed a lock for my jaw, because I was smiling now, too. It was contagious.

We ate in silence for a while.

Wiping my mouth with a napkin, I said, “What would you want to be doing if this situation weren’t holding you back?”

Heather put her fork down and pondered my question. “Well, I would be in college, probably halfway through. I think later I’d want to get my masters to become a psychiatric nurse. But then I’d also want to find some other things I’m passionate about—like you have with your photography. Your photos are amazing, Noah. Truly. I’ve been meaning to tell you that.”

I’d never shown her my work. “You Googled me, I take it.”

“Yeah. Hope you don’t mind. Your photos from Havana were breathtaking. I’ve visited that page on your site several times. How did those pictures come about? What made you choose Cuba?”

It impressed me that out of everything on the site, she’d taken notice of that piece. The photos weren’t easy to look at, but they were real with a powerful message. Those particular shots were all in black and white.

“It was an assignment for a newspaper five years ago. You could say it chose me. I was working freelance at the time and traveled there with a reporter for a feature on the current state of Cuba and its people. It was one of my longest times away from home, actually. Only the photos are on my site, not the accompanying story.”

“Well, that’s the beauty of it. The photos tell the story even without the full explanation, which proves your talent. I’m not just saying that. Believe me, I’m a terrible liar. Your work is really amazing.”

I was never good at accepting compliments, especially about my work. But I tried.

“Thank you.”

“Will you tell me more about it?”

“The Cuba trip specifically?”

She leaned in, her eyes full of wonder. “Yeah.”

For some reason, I felt like obliging.

“I don’t know if you noticed the shots of the teenagers with tattoos. There’s this underground punk culture of young people there. Many of them were high on amphetamines when we were taking those photos.”

“Have you ever heard of Los Frikis?” she asked.

I nodded, surprised. “Yeah. Actually, I learned about them when I was there.”

“Those kids reminded me of a modern-day version of that. Hopefully things are better for the people you photographed than they were for their predecessors. I remember reading about Los Frikis and being totally blown away that some of them intentionally injected themselves with HIV to escape their own government. Imagine being forced to do manual labor or imprisoned just because you look different? So you make yourself sick to escape danger by being put in a quarantined sanitarium? That tells you how bad things had to be. It breaks my heart.”

I knew my eyes were wide. “Where did you learn about that?”

“I read an article about it some time ago. Some things you just never forget.”

“You’re right.”

“What about the photos of the little kids?”

“That was an orphanage.”

“Oh, that’s sad.”

I stared down into my plate, thinking back to one kid in particular who still had a little piece of my heart.

“There was this one little boy. His name was Daniel. He was only five. He had mitochondrial disease.”