“Huh,” she muses, moving onto the next photo. “Right. Everly must have taken it. You know, I’m surprised you still have these.”
I glance up at her, frowning. “Why?”
She gives me a quick smile. “I don’t know. I guess when I heard you left I just pictured you leaving every trace of me, of the school, of everything behind.”
I feel the blackened guilt roll through me as it sometimes does. I pick up my beer and the camera strap and then I sit on the bed on the other side of the Pentax. “Believe it or not, I didn’t want to go.” I pause. “After we broke up, everything fell apart. Getting expelled was the last straw, especially so damn close to finishing school. My mother kicked me out. Said she couldn’t handle me anymore. I had a couple of days before she booked my flight back to Oslo. Part of me wanted to just move on, but I couldn’t. I knew you hated me and yet…I couldn’t let you go.” I stare at her, unsure how I’ll get her to see how sorry I am about the way I treated her. “I was a different person Shay, I never meant to hurt you. I—”
“Stop,” she says quickly, eyes flashing. She raises her beer defensively, like a barrier between us. “Please. Just stop. It’s in the past. What happened, happened, and you’re right. We were different people.”
That’s what she says, but it doesn’t explain the way she keeps her distance from me, like she thinks I’m going to screw her over again, it doesn’t explain that I can feel her anger at times, her disappointment in me. People say that you have to move on, but so many of us are tied to the past, even when we know we should let it go. Shay may say we should let bygones be bygones, but there’s something deep inside her that doesn’t want her to. Won’t let her.
And I want to know why that is.
I want to know why, when she looks at me, there’s still this battle, this war behind her eyes, like she won’t ever be able to forgive me and yet wishes she could. Is it a pride thing? Or did I hurt her in ways I can’t even imagine? After so many years, none of this should matter anymore, and yet…
I reach out for the camera and clip on the strap, then hold it out for her. “Here. This is yours now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I told you I have a lot of cameras and I know that you need one.”
“This is a film camera, Anders.”
“So? Don’t you believe in the magic of that anymore? The wait to see what you’ve captured?”
She shakes her head, chuckling softly. “I take a picture and I post it to Instagram right away. There is no waiting with me.”
“That’s not true,” I tell her. “You take many, many, many photos, then you edit the photos, then you post. You’ve learned a little bit about patience. You just have to stretch it out more. Don’t you know how good delayed gratification feels? When you finally get what you’ve been waiting for?”
My voice is husky now, and from the way that pink is creeping up on her cheeks, I can tell she feels all the innuendo I’ve loaded into those sentences. Still, she doesn’t bite. She has more patience than she realizes.
She clears her throat. “I can’t accept this camera.”
“Please,” I tell her, and I reach out, closing my hand over hers, pressing it against the Pentax. I’m leaning in close, the smell of her shampoo making my heart skip a beat, my blood to run hot. “This is yours now. My gift to you. It’s the least I can do.”
She rubs her lips together, staring deep into my eyes. “You’ve done enough,” she says softly. She waves the beer in my face. “Letting me drink your beer…”
“Astrid’s beer.”
“Your sister’s beer. Letting me stay in your house.”
I grin at her. “Technically you’re earning your keep by helping out on the farm.” I press my hands in harder and then pull back, getting to my feet. “Keep the camera. We’ll get you some film tomorrow and you can start shooting.”
She stares at the camera like she’s been entrusted with a child. “And you have a place to develop film in Todalen?”
“Of course. Ol’ Thor Ragnorok down the street has a one-hour photo shop in his closet.”
“Thor Ragnorok?” she repeats. Then she laughs and hits me on the arm. Hard. “Shut up!”
Fuck, I love the sound of her laughter. It feels beyond good to hear the happiness in her voice, even if it’s at the expense of me pulling her leg.
It gives me hope.
After that, we spent the rest of the night in my room, going through pictures, old cameras, souvenirs, weird things I used to collect like skeleton keys, lighters, bottle caps, carved stone butter knives, and candle holders. We drank beer and talked about the old times, ignoring the ugly bits at the end of our relationship. I even read her some of my terrible poetry from back in the day, then went through all the old photos that I could find.