“Wanna come to my room so I can show you that Polaroid camera I thrifted with Olivia and her family last week?” I ask, wanting some alone time with him before he has to leave.
“Leave the door open,” Papaw adds. I groan and roll my eyes at his comment. I don’t miss the way he smirks at us before we rush up the stairs.
Once we’re in my room, I close the door just a bit but leave a crack. Ryland takes a seat in the chair by my vanity, and I hop onto my unmade bed. My room is very girly. I decorated my bed with bright pinks and purples. A few of Mamaw’s paintings hang on the light-cream walls as well as photo collages I made from magazine cutouts and photos I’ve taken with my small digital camera. It’s my happy place. At my mom’s, I’m notallowed to decorate my room, and it feels more like a prison cell than a bedroom.
I push the dark thoughts away and grab the shoebox from underneath my bed. I set it on my lap, and Ryland moves over to sit in front of me. He removes the lid, and I pull out the light-gray, boxy camera.
“I love that I instantly get a photo when I use it.”
“And you’ve used it a lot,” he adds as he starts to sort through the photos in the box.
“It’s been fun. Oh, I need a photo of us together,” I add and scoot closer to him.
I hold the camera out and bring my face closer to his. Butterflies make their appearance in my stomach as I catch the scent of sunshine, earth, and peaches from Ryland.
We say cheese at the same time, and a bright light blinds us for a moment. The film moves out of the camera, and I shake it until the image starts to bleed through. It’s a good photo. We both look happy. He pulls it from my hand and studies it for a moment before placing it into the box.
He goes back to sorting through the photos as I peek out my bedroom window to see if his grandpa is here yet. The weekends fly by too fast. I always dread saying goodbye.
Suddenly, panic zaps through me when I remember that I snapped a photo of him this morning without him knowing, and it’s in the box. I have to find it before he sees it, or I’ll be so embarrassed.
“Hold on!” I yell, his eyes snapping to mine in confusion. I leap and grab the box from his grasp. I start digging through the images, and I feel him watching me.
Thankfully, I find it. I remove it from the others and stand up to hide it from him, but he’s faster than me. “What are you hiding?” He laughs and jumps on top of me. My back hits the mattress, and my nostrils are filled with the scent of him again. His hot breath hits my face, and I would enjoy this if I wasn’t so worried about hiding this photo from him.
“Nothing. Ryland!” I squeal and try to hide it behind me without wrinkling it.
His hand squeezes behind me and is able to grab the photograph before he jumps away from me and turns around to look at it. I attempt to jump onto his back, but he dodges me, and I fall onto the floor with a loudthump.He starts laughing, so hard that he has a few tears in his eyes, and all I can do is cross my arms and pout.
“Everything okay up there?” we hear Papaw shout from the bottom of the stairs.
In unison, we both reply, “Yeah!” and share a laugh. I use it as a distraction to try to steal the photo from him again, but of course, he’s much faster than me.
“What’s this?” he asks as he studies the photo, his smile dropping slightly.
My face is burning hot. I try to hide behind my hands and curl into a ball on the floor. Why did I take that stupid photo in the first place? And why did I forget that it was in the box?
“When did you take this?” he asks, and I spread my fingers so I can peek at him but keep my hands over my face. He moves down until he is sitting with me on the floor and tugs my hands free from my face so I can look at him.
“This morning. I just thought it would be a cool photo, like artistic or something.”
He raises a brow like he doesn’t believe me and goes back to studying the photo. He had his shirt off, dripping with sweat from the heat of the sun and the hard work he was doing with Papaw. I wanted to freeze that moment in time, and once I caught him looking away, I snapped the photo quickly from the kitchen window and ducked down to hide. In my haste, I tossed the photo in the box with my others.
“Cool,” he says and hands the photo back to me.
I take the photo from him, glancing at it for a moment before I look up at him. He stills, waiting for me to do or say something. I notice how close we are onthe floor. He’s only inches away from my face, and I catch his eyes drop to my lips for a split second before returning to my eyes. What isthis?
It’s like we have this magnetic pull between us, and I’m completely absorbed in him.
“Raine,” he whispers. The sound of him swallowing fills the air between us, and all I can do is stare.
“Ryland. Your Pops is here!” we hear Mamaw shout up the stairs, breaking our trance, and as much as I love her, I’m so mad at her right now.
Ryland blinks away the cloudiness within his eyes and pulls away from me. He clears his throat and stands up. As he extends a hand to help me up, I panic and push myself up, and rush out of the bedroom without a second glance at him. I take the stairs down, skipping a step to get to the bottom faster, and run outside. I need air. I desperately need some space.
Did we almost kiss?
Was I reading into things that weren't really there?
