AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Thank you, ma’am,” the delivery driver said. “Have a great night.”
“You too!”
With that, we took the pizza into the hotel room and set it on the table. Grace opened the boxes to find that they had indeed sent the right pizzas: one pepperoni, and one ham, sausage, and olive pizza.
Chapter twenty
Grace
Gabe and I married, and my life was doing better than I could have ever imagined.
After the tourism column ran into problems due to most people not wanting to pay for the article and looking up the places we featured online, I decided that Gabe had been right. I needed to at least give freelance photography a chance as a career.
Since most of the more interesting photos had not been used for the newspaper, I still had copyrights to them. They are what I used to start my portfolio and my business. Or I used them to create a website.
That was the first step in creating the now-blooming business. Many famous tourist sites were looking to book me to have more photos done for their websites and even some videography for their commercials.
This week, I was off to Orlando for some theme park fun. Each theme park that had contacted me had offered free tickets to their parks for a day, in addition to the typical fee I charged, because they wanted me to have a chance to enjoy their parks.
I was particularly excited for some childhood dream fulfilment, and Gabe and I had decided that we were going to use all the tickets together. We bought tickets for more days at some of the parks that were larger and decided to make a full vacation out of it after I was done with the shoots.
I rubbed the plain rose gold band on my finger. I had chosen to wear just a band now that we were married and I was traveling everywhere to do these shoots.
Gabe gave me lifts where he could, but his private flight business had boomed, too. In fact, he had upgraded to a bigger plane so that he could take more people on each flight or make multiple stops for each flight if he wanted to coordinate trips. He kept the little two-seater that got him started for our flights, though.
I shook my head and checked my calendar. The Orlando shoots and vacation were all that I had booked this month, for good reason. Each park had reserved two days for me to come in and take photos – warning all the visitors when they bought tickets for those parks that there would be a professional photographer/videographer there to do promo shoots. Anyone I talked to would have to sign a release so that the park could use the photos and footage I got.
“When do we leave for Orlando?” Gabe’s voice interrupted my thoughts.
“I need to be at the first park before it opens on Monday. Since we’re leaving tomorrow, that gives us tomorrow evening and all of Sunday to make sure we’re ready. It’ll be a lot of walking for me. Are you sure you’re going to be okay waiting to use your tickets until my vacation kicks in?” I looked over at Gabe.
“I’ve booked a few flights out of Orlando to pass my time, actually,” he said. “So, I booked two rental cars for us – one for you to use to get to and from the parks and one for me to use to get to the airport and to our rental again once we’re ready for vacation.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” She smiled a little. “There’s plenty to do in Orlando if you have any free days. I made sure to intentionally leave a relaxation day in between each of the different parks. That’s why it’s going to take so long to get all of them done, but I figured I’d need it to recover after so much walking each day.”
“I see. Well, those days, you can do whatever you need to do to keep your feet from getting mad at you.” He smiled at me. “I’m proud to see how you’ve come so far in your photography business, Grace. It suits you well, being such a successful businesswoman. And I like that it allows you to keep dreaming.”
“I couldn’t have gotten this far without you, Gabe,” I said as I took his hand. “You taught me how to do all the business stuff that keeps me afloat without any legal troubles.”
He chuckled and pulled me closer, pressing a kiss to my forehead.
“Hey, if I can keep my dreamer grounded so she doesn’t get in trouble, I’m more than happy to oblige,” he teased me. “Now, we should probably pack. You made sure to pick accommodations with a laundry room, right? You’re going to be there for a long while.”
“I did, I promise,” I said. “The hotel has laundry, a balcony, a kitchenette… the only thing it doesn’t have that others had was walking distance to all the parks, but since I’m going to all of them, I decided it’d be more prudent to be further away. It’ll allow me to do all the walking needed while lugging my heavy equipment without feeling like I’ve wasted a day.”
“Good. Are the parks giving you an employee or two to help with lugging the equipment around?”
“I have a wagon pass, actually,” I said with a laugh. “It appears they’re used to this song and dance at the parks. A few of them have offered employees since wagons are not allowed at all, and one of them is actually going to let me use their equipment so that I don’t have to lug anything in through security.”
“Are you sure you can handle using someone else’s equipment?”
I waved away his concern. “I’ve looked up the models, and I’ve used them all before,” I replied. “I’ll be all right, Gabe. What is going to be hardest is going to be missing you. I hadn’t realized you were making Orlando your home base for a few weeks.”
“Well, if you’re there, it means I can come home to you at night. I don’t do red eyes, after all,” Gabe said as I pulled away from him.
I nodded slowly. That much was true. He preferred to be at home with me as much as possible.
“Where all are you going then?”
