The harbor through the window: pier lights stringing across the black water in long broken trails. A fishing boat rocking at the end of the dock, the outrigger swinging through a thirty-degree arc with each swell. A man in oilskins working the deck under a halogen lamp, a silhouette inside a halo. I'd shoot it at f/4, slow shutter, blur the boat, keep the dock lights sharp. Two colours in the whole frame: sodium yellow and the deep cold black of the January water.
"Holly?"
I drag my eyes back. Tyler watches me with an amused half-smile, fork suspended over the scallops.
He asks me about lenses and shutter speeds and admits he wouldn't know an aperture if it bit him, and somewhere between the second glass of wine and the breadbasket I realise I've talked more about my photography in twenty minutes than I have in the last two years combined.
Then, over Tyler's shoulder, I see them.
Two tables back: an orc woman and her human husband. She's broad-shouldered, tusks bare without caps, a small gold hoop through her right earlobe and a boatneck sweater. Her husband's human, smaller than her by a head, his arm drapedalong the back of her chair. Their daughter's maybe four. Dark hair, the bud of a tusk pushing up through her bottom gum, tongue tip poking out at the corner of her mouth while she colours a placemat in bright green.
The mother says something low and the kid laughs, a high full-bellied laugh, and the father leans across the table and puts the green crayon back in the cup. He kisses his wife on the temple.
That's the shot.
Not the harbor. Not Tyler. That family.
My fingers itch for my camera with a physical ache.
"Hey." Tyler's voice is gentle. "Where'd you go?"
"Sorry. I'm bad at this. I keep seeing things I want to photograph and forgetting I'm at dinner."
He glances over his shoulder, sees them, gets it. Doesn't tease me about it.
"You're a hard woman to keep at the table, Holly Summers. But I love that you're so into your photography."
"Thank you. That's a nice thing to say."
I mean it more than I want to. Tyler smiles and waves the waiter for the bill.
We leave Morretti's at nine forty. The wind off the harbor cuts straight through my coat. I pull my jacket tight at the collar, and across the street, outside Betty's Diner, I see Knox's truck.
I see Sarah first. She's coming out of the diner with the carrier in one hand and a takeaway cup in the other, baby Reeve bundled under a knitted blanket so deep that only the small dome of his head shows. Knox holds the door for her, then the truck door, then takes the carrier from her hand and lifts itinto the back seat in one practised motion. His other hand finds the small of her back, palm flat against her spine, settling her into the seat. Knox says something low into her hair and Sarah laughs, head tipped back, her whole face lit up.
Knox grins. The grin takes ten years off him.
I look away.
Tyler hasn't seen them, or has and is pretending he hasn't. He puts his hand on the small of my back to guide me toward the car, and the touch is light and considerate and means nothing.
We drive home in another quiet, but this one isn't companionable. It's full of the things I haven't said.
Tyler pulls up at the curb. The Anchor's neon is still lit, low Saturday-night crowd through the fogged windows, and the side stairway up to my apartment runs along the alley. Tyler walks me up. He stops on the second-to-top step, hands in his coat pockets, shoulder against the railing.
"Thank you for tonight."
"I haven't been taken out to dinner in a long time. So thank you."
He smiles. "Then I won the night."
I laugh. He's funny when he isn't trying to be. That's most of what I like about him, and most of what isn't enough.
"Can I see you again, Holly?"
The honest answer sits behind my lips. The dishonest answer's easier and I'm full of bad wine and bad ideas.
"Yes."
