“We have one at home,” Hallie told her quietly, “that Dirk made. It has a photo of the five of us in it. Little snowmen and sleds inside.”
“That sounds lovely,” Audrey replied, her voice equally soft. The rest of the visitors felt like they were fading into the background when it was just her and Hallie and quiet, secretive voices.
“It is. We’ve had it for a long time but it’s always been my favorite of the decorations.”
“You like photos,” Audrey observed, thinking of the wall of them in Hallie’s room.
She smiled up at Audrey, and the rest of the world really was disappearing. “Yeah. I always have. Not the perfectly posed ones, but the real ones. The photos where you capture a moment in time, where you look back at them and feel every emotion all over again.”
“I’ve never really liked photos, probably precisely because of that. My family would take them, but the ones they’d keep and put on display were always so formal and forced. They’d pick them apart, comment on expressions and bodies and a million other things that don’t need to be important. They were not like the photos you have in your room.”
“You deserved to have all the wonderful, real, beautiful photos, Audrey.” She moved to stand directly in front of her. “I meant what I said last night. You’re the most beautiful personI’ve ever met, and you deserve to have a world of photos that capture and celebrate that.”
“I think you might be the only one who thinks so.”
She shook her head. “I’m not, but I can believe it for both of us until you’re ready to.”
Hallie was the most beautiful person in the world. It didn’t make sense she was describing Audrey that way when she knew herself. She was looking up at Audrey with a fuzzy hat and snow fluttering into her hair and across her cheeks like glorious confetti. And all Audrey wanted to do was preserve this memory forever. No photo would be able to capture every magnificent part of it, but maybe it could catch part of it. Maybe, if a photo existed, Audrey would look at it and her body would remember the rest.
It wasn’t a good idea, though. They only had a few days, and she didn’t want to disturb Tracy and Dirk to take it. Plus, if they did ask for a photo to be taken, it wouldn’t be precisely this moment. It would be a recreation of it, still loaded but not quite this exquisite, aching moment ofalmostbetween them.
Audrey’s chest felt tight but not in a bad way. Her mind sometimes struggled to know the difference but, with Hallie, every atom in her body seemed to understand that this was something different, something real and vital, something Audrey had been blocking out for a very long time.
“You know,” she said, almost breathless, “I’m leaving in a couple of days.”
Hallie smiled sadly. “I know. California has never felt further away.”
“Somehow, I think it will feel worse on Sunday.”
“I do too.”
Audrey shook her head. “It’s deeply inappropriate of me to develop a crush on my cousin’s girlfriend.”
Hallie laughed, beaming like she hadn’t truly believed before that Audrey wanted her. “I’m not your cousin’s girlfriend.”
“My family thinks you are.”
“Audrey, honestly, I couldn’t give less of a shit what your family thinks.”
She laughed in surprise, and, completely forgetting where they were, took a step closer to Hallie, their thick coats brushing together between them. “That’s fair, I suppose.”
Hallie tilted her head. “They think a lot of things that aren’t correct. And, yes, this one is something I told them, but my concern in life is not them.”
“What is it?” Audrey asked, her voice almost lost on the wind.
“Right now, it’s you and getting as much of you as I can for the next few days.” She laughed a little bitterly. “And it’s trying not to think about how shitty it’s going to feel to say goodbye to you on Sunday.”
“We could stay in touch?”
Hallie nodded, swallowing hard. “Yeah, you’d better, Dr. Bee. Can’t live the rest of my life not knowing about insects, can I?”
“Ah, just here for the insects. Can’t say I blame you.”
“Not just the insects.” She sighed heavily, pulling Audrey a little closer again. “But I don’t really know what to do with the rest of it.”
“The rest of it…”
“Mm. The fact that I like this, like you, so much. That I went to the world’s worst family gathering but met the best woman I’ve ever encountered.”
