Page 66 of The Best Shot

Ava: I’m burning that rug.

19

“I’D RATHER BE WITH YOU.”

YASMINE

Ihad everything laid out on the kitchen table—extra memory card, backup battery, lens cloth, the 50mm I kept meaning to use more. Outside, the morning light had gone soft and gold at the edges, and I didn’t want to miss it.

I zipped the last pocket of my camera bag and reached for my keys just as my phone buzzed.

Hale.

“Morning, darlin’.”

“Hey.”

“You want coffee with me?”

I smiled. “I’d love coffee with you, but I can’t. I’m on my way out.”

“Where’re you going?”

“A hike. I want to get some shots before the light shifts.” I tucked the phone against my shoulder and slipped into my sneakers. Shop noise filled the background, loud and constant. His life, already in motion.

“Can I come?”

“Hale.”

“Darlin’.”

“It’ll be boring,” I tried. “I stop every ten feet. Backtrack. Crouch in weird places and wait for nothing to happen. It’s not a two-person activity.”

He considered that for about a second. “I’ll drive.”

“Don’t you have work?”

“Work’s not going anywhere. I’d rather be with you. Ten minutes.”

I stopped.

It was such a Hale thing to say. Casual. Almost throwaway. He was generous like that, with his words and his attention, open enough that it should have been easy not to read too much into any one sentence.

Should have.

Instead, I stood there holding the strap of my camera bag, thumb pressed into the canvas like it might steady me.

I’d rather be with you.

“Fine,” I said. “Ten minutes.”

I hung up and caught my reflection in the dark microwave door. My cheeks were warm. Annoyingly warm.

From the living room, a spoon scraped against ceramic.

I turned.

CeeCee was on the couch with a bowl of cereal balanced on her lap, her belly so enormous I remained deeply suspicious of the doctor’s one-baby claim.