“Elijah?” Again, my brain was slow to process what she was saying. “Wait, did he take this?” I pointed to the picture.
“He did. He has an artistic eye. Did he show you his room?”
“He didn’t.”
She smiled a sneaky smile, then looked outside as if making sure she had time. “Do you want to see it?”
“Absolutely.”
She led me up the stairs to the second floor and then to the end of the hall.
“He doesn’t live here anymore, but I haven’t wanted to change his room because it’s so beautiful.” She paused at the door as if giving me a moment to anticipate the reveal, then she opened it.
The first thing that caught my eye was the large beach scene taking up the entire wall. But not just a photo of thebeach, a scene made up of hundreds of photos. When I stepped closer, I could see each picture featured the color required for its position in the overall image. A light brown dog as a piece of the sand. A blue sweater, the water. All different. I couldn’t imagine the hundreds of hours this must’ve taken.
“Why doesn’t he do this for work?” I wasn’t sure if she’d heard me. I’d said it so quietly.
“He tried,” his mom said, proving shehadheard me. “Nature photography is a hard thing to make money in. Especially with the rise of AI art. People just tell the internet what they want and it provides. Why would they pay?”
Maybe that was true, but it felt like a sin that Elijah was stuck in a boxing gym all day when he had this ability. If he liked the boxing gym that would be one thing, but he didn’t. “Wait, did he actually have a photography business?”
“Before the gym he—”
“How did I know this was happening?” a deep voice said from the doorway, cutting off whatever his mom was about to say.
I turned with a smirk to see Elijah leaning against the frame of the door. “You’re a psychic now?” I asked.
“My mom was supposed to be getting a corkscrew, and you were in the house. I put two and two together.”
His mom held up the corkscrew. “I got it. I was sidetracked.”
“She’s hard to say no to, isn’t she?” he asked his mom, nodding toward me.
My mouth opened, ready to protest, when his mom said, “I offered to show her the room when she was admiring your Yosemite photo over the mantel. She did not ask.”
He narrowed his eyes at me like he wasn’t sure he believed that.
She squeezed my hand, then headed for the door. “I have a corkscrew to deliver or the wine-starved people are going to protest.”
“Yes,” Elijah said, pulling her into a hug as she passed and kissing her on top of the head. “You do. No more bragging about my rusty hobbies.”
“I will never stop bragging,” she said, and left us there alone.
After a few beats of silence, I said, “She offered, I did not put up a fight.”
He nodded, studying my face. “You okay? Tara wasn’t exactly thinking before she spoke out there.”
“It’s whatever,” I said. “She was being truthful.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You don’t need to be sorry. You didn’t do anything.”
His gaze traveled to the beach scene. “It was my photography final my senior year in high school.”
“It had to be incredibly time consuming. I hope you got one thousand percent on it.”
He smiled. “Close.”
