Open Road Summer(20)

“Do you like people reading over your shoulder?”

The smirk pulls wider across his face, and he moves down on the couch, leaving a foot of space between us. In a way that is clearly patronizing me, he says, “I’m sorry. May I see the pictures from the show, please?”

“Nope.”

“Please? Just one?”

If he’s going to act like an obnoxious little kid all the way to Georgia, I’m going to smack him with my casted arm. But when I glance up to tell him so, he looks hopeful—like he genuinely wants to see my photos. I swear his looks are pure Darwinism. If he wasn’t so cute, someone would have killed him for being annoying by now.

“Fine.” I turn the screen so that it faces him.

“Wow.” Matt leans closer, scanning the image of Dee I just edited. Her little pose, the glint in her eye. “That’s her, all right.”

“Obviously.”

He looks up at me. “I mean, this captures a particular side of her beautifully. She’s this tiny girl, but she’s so powerful and in control.”

I glance back at the photo. It’s a great shot, but I didn’t realize it said all that. I turn the screen back toward me. “Yeah, well.”


“How long have you been into photography?”

“Three years. Since my first photo class in high school.”

“So the end career goal is . . . paparazzi?”

Asshole. I sneer. “God, no. I want to take photos of concerts, of political events, landscapes, of countries in revolution. Photos that accompany news stories. Photojournalism.”

My sincerity softens his tone. “You’re talented.”

“You’ve seen one picture. And it was of your girlfriend.”

He turns toward me. “Say what?”

“I know. It’s a ‘publicity stunt.’ ” I use air quotes. “But c’mon. Every guy in America is in love with her.”

Matt shakes his head. “I mean, I love her. But in a sisterly way—like, she literally reminds me of my sister. I don’t think I can change that, even if I wanted to, you know?”

I resist the urge to wrinkle my nose. He’s only nineteen, and I hope he doesn’t see me as too young for him. That would ruin my plans to flirt with him—not to start something up, of course, just to flirt for the hell of it. It’s a law of nature, like a cat with something shiny; dangle it in front of her long enough and eventually she’ll paw at it. Only in this case, I’m the cat and Matt is something shiny. The pawing part is the same.

“Besides,” he says. “I’m more into brunettes.”

To top it off, he grins at me, those dimples making parentheses beside his mouth. I feel warmth spread through my chest, but I manage to play it cool, shaking my head at him. “You’re very self-satisfied, aren’t you?”

“Something like that. And besides, I know Dee’s still upset about . . . you know.”

This is the first time that he’s mentioned Jimmy. Dee told Matt every detail of the breakup, but I wasn’t expecting him to bring it up.

“He sounds like a good guy,” Matt says, glancing up at me. Maybe it’s so Dee won’t hear us, but his voice is soft. Hushed and almost reverent, like heartbreak is too sad to use your regular voice.

“He is a good guy.” My mind flashes through images of Jimmy—helping me to his truck after a bender of a party, slamming Pete Harmon into a locker after he called me a slut in the hallway, looking at my best friend like he’s never seen anything so beautiful up close. “But he really believes he’s holding Dee back by staying with her. He thought she’d move on and be better for it.”

Matt shakes his head. “It seems crazy to me, that they’re both hurting so much by being apart. Seems like they should just be together.”

“I know.” I look down at my hands in my lap, at the thick cast enclosing my healing wrist. And for some reason, unwelcome pensiveness finds its way to my mouth. “But it must be nice to have someone love you like that, you know? Jimmy cares about her more than he cares about himself, and even though they’re not together, she knows that.”

Embarrassment floods my stomach like straight liquor, hot and biting. I have no idea what compelled me to share such a personal longing—the deep-seated wanting, that someone would love me in a limitless, sappy way, like Dee and Jimmy love each other. Like Dee’s parents love each other. I’ve seen that kind of unconditional love, but I’ve never felt it. I glance over at Matt, hoping that he’s not smirking at me. He’s not.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. His eyes follow the passing road outside the window. “Must be nice.”

As I stare back down at my photographs, my thoughts linger on a camera function called aperture, used to describe how much light is being let into the lens. It seems easy to think of myself this way—as someone who programmed herself to let in the least amount of light possible. There’s space for Dee and for my dad, and that’s the best I can do.

When I met Blake, I let myself click open a few millimeters, unfurling like a spiral shutter. In fact, I let in just enough to be overexposed. Burned. Maybe I should have known. It doesn’t bode well, meeting someone while doing court-ordered cleaning tasks in a retirement community. What can I say? The orange jumpsuit did it for me.