Page 38 of Our Chaotic Love Affair

That didn’t make it easier to hear.

“You’ll find someone else,” she said. “Your PR team, or whoever it was that set this whole thing up. You don’t actually need me.” She reached out and squeezed my wrist once, brief and warm. “You’ll be fine.”

She went back to the living room, and I heard Melody immediately pull her back into the planning conversation, the two of them talking over each other with the particular frequency of people who’d spent years learning each other’s rhythms.

I stayed in the hallway for a moment, disappointed. More disappointed than made any reasonable sense, given that the whole arrangement had been impulsive to begin with.

I went back into the living room, sat down, and listened to Melody describe her vision for the ceremony, and I was fairly certain nobody noticed that I wasn’t really there.

CHAPTER 14

CLEO

Bridal boutiques were just so pretty. I was in my element immediately. I was calculating the lighting and backgrounds. The mirrors that gave a bride trying on a dress several angles would be perfect for dramatic shots.

This was where years of working alongside Melody had made me genuinely excellent at something I also genuinely loved. Finding the angles, reading the light, knowing instinctively which moment to capture before it happened. I had my camera around my neck and my phone in my back pocket. I already had a mental content strategy mapped out before we’d made it past the reception desk.

Melody’s followers were going to lose their minds over this. She was a plus-size fashion influencer who’d spent years proving that style had no size requirement.

A bridal dress shopping series was the kind of content that her community lived for. Real moments. Real emotions. A real woman finding the dress for the most important day of her life. I could see the whole arc already. Her followers were already invested in her relationship with Austin. They were absolutely going to celebrate with her.

And when the wedding was announced, she would get a surge of followers. And then the baby announcement. It was going to be a wild ride. My job was to make sure none of it was missed.

“Okay,” I said as a consultant materialized to greet us. “Ground rules. Don’t look at the camera unless I tell you to. Just be in the moment. Forget I’m here.”

“You’re impossible to forget,” Melody said.

“Flatterer. Go try on dresses.”

I spent the next two hours doing what I did best, moving quietly around the edges to document the moment without being overt about it. The genuine reactions were always better than the posed ones.

The consultant was wonderful. She was patient and completely unbothered by my camera. She’d clearly worked with influencers before.

We didn’t find the dress at the first spot, but we expected as much. The first shop was never the shop. But we got good content and a clearer sense of what Melody was looking for, which was its own kind of progress.

“Tapas,” Melody declared as we stepped back onto the street. “I need carbohydrates and something fried before the next one.”

“You read my mind.”

We found a cafe and ordered tapas and I got a Diet Coke. The nectar of the gods.

I could feel Melody watching me. Little glances between bites. The occasional pause that said she was clearly deciding whether to say something.

“You’ve been quiet today,” she said.

“I’m always quiet when I’m shooting.”

“You’ve been quiet when you’re not shooting too.” She tilted her head. “What’s going on in there?”

I considered deflecting. I had been doing it for a long time. But this was Melody and she was not going to believe the “I’m fine” line. She would know better.

“Cash invited me on his business trip,” I said. “To Rome. He thought he might need someone with my skills if his client needs rebranding help.”

Melody put down her fork. She picked it back up. Put it down again. “Rome?”

“Rome.”

“Cash?” She said his name like she was checking that she’d heard correctly. “Cash Bancroft invited you to Rome?”