I shoot cables coiling into snake piles, gaffer tape crossing like stitches, a tech kneeling with a Sharpie between his teeth, a fan already camped on the sidewalk in a Devil’s Halo hoodie three sizes too big, hands shoved into the pocket like she’s holding her own heart together.
Mikey gets ambushed by two girls who cannot be older than nineteen, and he turns it into a joke so fast I almost miss the softness. He does a goofy bow, signs their vinyl, makes the moment theirs. Click. That one’s going in.
I find Dean without trying to find him. He’s gravity in denim. He lifts a flight case with one hand like it weighs nothing, no one noticing he’s careful not to let it slam. He squats to talk to a kid with ear protection on that’s as big as his head. He does it like no one can see him, like kindness is contraband. Click. Click.
He glances up mid-smile and catches me. For a breath, the whole room stills. Then the wall comes down and his mouth flattens. He stands and turns his back. The photos live. We pretend I didn’t take them.
There’s a rhythm to build days: soundcheck, note bickering, the song nobody thinks belongs and then belongs, a run-through of the track they swear they’ll skip and then don’t.
I work around it, in it, through it. The camera gets heavy, but my mind doesn’t care. By the time the venue doors open, I smell like backstage air, cheap soap, and adrenaline. The crowd hits like a weather event. Phones up. Lights down.
From the wings, you can see everything and nothing. Luc, who none of us have seen today, finally walks in like a man on a wire. He gets wired, and then he’s on stage. The noise goes feral. I find him through the lens and track the space just behind his eyes. It’s the part I know that’s bracing for either impact or rescue.
And then suddenly, she’s there. Not onstage, but in the crowd. A blur of hair and a smile full of hope holding a sign above her head that says what none of us are allowed to say for him.
Luc, I love you.
It moves through the room the way lightning does. First you see it, then you feel it. Luc reads it slow, like the letters might rearrange themselves if he looks too fast. The stadium tips. The floor he’s on becomes something else. I press the shutter and miss the second after on purpose because some things are not mine to take.
I shift while sucking in a breath, my heart suddenly feeling too big for my chest. At the same time, I catch Dean at the edge of my peripheral. He’s watching Luc. He’s watching Lily. There’s a ghost in his eyes I haven’t named yet. He swallows it whole and steps back into the dark. My fingers itch. Some stories you can’t shoot. You can only be a silent witness. But there is a story there. I’m more than sure of it.
The set after that is a live wire. Luc sings like a man who saw his future and wants to get there. Dean plays like his hands are having an argument with his rules. Mikey bangs the drums like they need to be punished for some unknown crime. My camera drinks it all in like water.
After the show, I go backstage. Everything smells like sweat and triumph and the disinfectant they use on counters to make us pretend they’re clean. People move around me in bubbles of laughter, in exhaustion, others with purpose, but all ignore me.
I hook my camera to my strap and scroll through the last dozen shots. A haze of smoke, a halo of backlight, hands in the air like a congregation, the moment before a grin.
A bottle sets down beside my thigh. I look up. Dean is already past me, strides long, hair damp, shirt clinging in all the wrong, helpful places. He doesn’t look back.
“Thanks,” I say out loud. The beer is the only one listening though, and suddenly I’m the kind of girl who talks to liquids. I shrug as I open it and take a long drink. It’s cold and it’s earned. I watch as he halts five paces out, pivots, and then returns like the floor told him to. I lower my beer, eyes moving up to catch his.
He nods at my camera. “You get it?”
“Depends what it is.”
He scratches his jaw slow. “Everything.” I know he’s asking about the moment Luc and Lily reunited.
“Some of it.” I nod. “The rest isn’t mine.”
He studies me like he’s trying to decide if this is a trick. It’s not. I know where to draw a line and when not to cross it. “You didn’t shoot the sign.”
“I shot his face,” I explain. “It said the same thing.”
The corner of his mouth considers softening. It doesn’t. He taps the top of my bottle with his. “You were rooting for them.”
“I’m not a cold-hearted bitch,” I deadpan. “And I’m not stone.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” he taunts, which probably means more than it should, so I bite back. “Don’t get attached,” I warn him. It’s a joke that isn’t. His eyebrow tics like he didn’t expect me to know how to cut. “To me,” I clarify, because I don’t mind being specific. “Or the camera.”
He looks like he has three answers and none of them are safe. He goes with, “Don’t confuse me with someone who gives a shit what you do, with or without your camera.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Romeo.” The nickname lands and I watch it bruise. He deserves it and he doesn’t. He tips his chin at the beer like that makes us square and disappears down the hall.
I sit there with the brown glass sweating into my palm as I let my pulse calm. The room is a tide. People rush in, people rush out, voices crest and fall. Someone yells for more towels. Someone laughs too loud and then apologizes into their own hand.
I could follow the noise to the party. Instead, I find a quiet stairwell and sit on the middle step with my knees up, camera in my lap, the door propped open with my boot. It’s the kind of nowhere space you only learn if you live in buildings like this. It smells like dust and old tape and a memory I haven’t decided to keep yet.
I scroll through the night of captured moments. A fan crying into her friend’s shoulder on the barricade. A pick mid-air. Hayden’s mouth around a note, eyes closed. Mikey’s hand outstretched, drumstick pointing toward the crowd. Dean’s profile out of focus, the shape of him exactly wrong because I didn’t ask the camera to love him yet.
