The encounter
1441 Words
She won't go back.
That was the decision she made at eleven-fifteen the night of the launch event, sitting in her car in the parking structure outside her building with the engine still running.
She'd stared at the roof and made herself a promise in the specific, deliberate way she made all her important decisions quietly, alone, without asking anyone's permission.
She was not going back.
The follow-up shoot request from Sophie sat in her inbox unanswered. She had three days before it became awkward and four before it became unprofessional.
She'd drafted a polite decline twice and deleted it twice, which was not like her.
Aurora Wells did not hesitate. Hesitation was a luxury, and she'd cut luxuries out of her life the same year she'd cut everything else.
She closed the laptop.
She went to bed.
She did not sleep.
She dropped Nova at school, drove back through the morning traffic, and sat outside a hardware store on Fifth for eleven minutes arguing with herself before she opened her email and typed one sentence to Sophie.
I can be there at two.
She hit send before she could delete it a third time.
She told herself it was professional. She told herself it was just a job, an uncomplicated follow-up to a well-paying client, the kind of thing she did twice a month without thinking twice.
She told herself she was a grown woman and she could walk into a room where Easton Cole was standing and take photographs of him with the detached efficiency she brought to every other job.
She told herself a lot of things on the drive back home.
She believed approximately none of them.
She went back.
That was the first mistake.
Sophie met her at the elevator.
"Where do I start?"
"He said to start wherever you want." Sophie was already moving. "He's finishing a call. He said just go in, get comfortable, treat it like the space is yours."
Aurora followed her down the hall.
He was standing in the doorway of the open workspace, jacket off, sleeves pushed to the elbows, phone in one hand and the other braced against the door frame.
He was looking at her with an expression she couldn't immediately classify, not quite surprise, not quite recognition. Something earlier than both of those things. Something that looked, from the outside, like a man seeing something he hadn't expected and taking a private moment to decide what to do about it.
He hadn't placed her yet.
She could see that clearly.
He was still looking.
"You're the photographer," he said.
"That's what my invoice says."
Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. The suggestion of one, controlled before it arrived.
"Easton Cole." He crossed the room and extended a hand.
"Aurora Wells." She shook it. Firm. Brief. Professional.
His grip was the same. But he didn't let go at the natural moment. Just a half-second longer, barely perceptible, the kind of thing you'd convince yourself you imagined.
Then he released her hand and looked at her with that same unclassifiable expression.
"Have we met?" he said.
The question was a live wire. She felt it from her hand to her sternum.
"I shot your launch event," she said. Smooth. Even. "Two nights ago."
"I know." He tilted his head slightly. "I mean before that."
The air in the room did something.
Aurora kept her face exactly where she'd put it.
"I don't think so," she said.
He held her gaze for one beat longer than necessary. Then he nodded not convinced, but willing to let it sit and gestured toward the windows.
"Sophie said you needed me for portraits?"
"When you have time."
"I have time now." He moved toward the window. "Tell me where you want me.”
Easton Cole was making that difficult.
It wasn't that he was difficult to photograph. He was the opposite. He had what Aurora privately called honest bones the kind of face that worked from any angle because it wasn't performing anything
*Click*
"Good. Now look back at me."
He looked back at her.
*Click.*
And then he didn't look away. He held the camera's gaze her gaze, with a directness that made her drop the camera a fraction.
He smiled. A real one this time. Small, unhurried, directed entirely at her. And Aurora, who had kept herself insulated from real smiles for the better part of a decade, felt something move in her chest that she immediately and firmly relocated.
No.
She raised the camera.
"This one." He'd come to stand beside her while she reviewed shots on the camera screen close enough to see the images, maintaining the correct distance, but barely.
She met his eyes. The room was very quiet.
"Like that," she said.
Something shifted in the air between them. Specific and charged and neither of them moved through it or away from it.
They stood in it for exactly three seconds, she counted, automatically, the way you count things you need to document and then Aurora took one step back and checked the time on her phone and said, "I think I have everything Sophie asked for."
Easton was quiet for a moment.
"Have dinner with me," he said.
Not would you like to or if you're free or any of the cushioned phrasing men used when they were prepared to be declined gracefully.
Just flat, clean, honest. Have dinner with me.
Aurora looked at him.
She thought about the way he'd looked at her at the event, the almost-recognition that hadn't quite landed.
The fact that she was very good at keeping her walls up and something about this man was making that harder than it had any right to be.
"No," she said.
He nodded. Not stung, not pressing. Just receiving it.
"Okay," he said.
She picked up her bag. Slung it over her shoulder. Headed for the door.
"Aurora."
She stopped. She didn't turn around.
"I do know you." His voice was quiet. Certain. "I don't know from where yet. But I know you.”
She kept walking.
She did not turn around.
She made it to the elevator, pressed the button, stepped inside, and stood with her back against the wall and her eyes on the ceiling and her heart doing something she had no interest in giving it permission to do.
The doors closed.
She exhaled.
She was in the lobby, badge in hand, three steps from the exit and the street and the ordinary world that waited on the other side of the glass when her phone buzzed.
Jules.
She answered on the second ring. "Hey, I'm just leaving…"
"Where are you?" Jules's voice was wrong. The steadiness that was as fundamental to Jules as breathing gone. Scraped clean.
"Aurora, are you still at the building?"
"I'm in the lobby. What's…”
"Don't leave yet." A sound in the background. Movement. "Something happened."
Aurora stopped walking. "Jules. Talk to me."
"Someone came to Nova's school." Each word deliberate. Careful. The way Jules spoke when she was managing something terrible and refusing to drop it.
"A woman. She told the front office she was family. She had paperwork, Aurora. Official looking paperwork, with your name on it."
The lobby went very cold.
"Is Nova…"
"She's with me. She's safe. I got there in time." Jules exhaled. Unsteady. "But barely. Ten more minutes and…"
"Okay." Aurora's voice was flat.
Operational. The part of her that had learned to function in crisis taking over from everything else. "Okay. I'm coming."
"Aurora." Jules paused. "I saw the woman's face as she was leaving."
"Who was she?"
"I don't know her name." Another pause. Something careful and terrible in it. "But she looked like you. Same bone structure, same eyes." Jules's voice dropped. "Aurora I think she's your father's."
The lobby doors slid open automatically.
The afternoon light hit her face.
And behind her, the elevator dinged.
She turned.
Easton Cole stepped out. Jacket on now, keys in hand, clearly heading somewhere. He saw her immediately the expression on her face and stopped.
"Hey." He frowned. "What happened?"
Aurora stared at him.
She thought about Nova. About a woman with her father's eyes and official looking paperwork. About the ten years of silence she'd built her life inside of.
About the fact that this man was standing in front of her and something had been set into motion the moment she walked into his event and she didn't know yet how far back it started or how deep it ran.
She thought about all of it in approximately four seconds.
- Writer
