Page 55 of Maybe You

Two women, two men, and Quinn and Steph are standing on the street during Pride. One of the women has a flag thrown over her shoulders, and one of the men has his tongue stuck out at the camera. Arms are thrown over shoulders. Smiling faces everywhere.

Two guys riding bikes in Central Park, feet held out away from the pedals and legs extended.

In one of the photos, Steph is in a bodega, looking over his shoulder, straight into the camera, smiling widely, middle finger raised.

Quinn is flipping a pancake with an intense look of concentration on his face.

The woman from the photo with the infant is standing in the middle of the street with a phone at her ear and an armful of lilacs in the crook of her elbow.

Quinn is sitting on the grass, Steph’s head in his lap. They only seem to have eyes for each other.

I stare at the photos, mesmerized. I go through them once more when I’m done, then I look up at Sutton, who’s still standing.

“These are lovely,” I say. It seems like the right word when there is so much love in those pictures. Both in the photos themselves, but also behind the camera. The person who took those photos clearly loves the people in them.

Sutton doesn’t say anything for a long while.

I’m desperately curious about who all these strangers are to him, but I don’t think I have the right to ask that.

“How long have you been doing this?” I ask instead. “Taking photos.”

He stuffs his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, then he pulls them out. There’s a repeat of the earlier hesitate-hover-falter cycle, but then he comes and sits down next to me.

“I was thirteen when I got my first camera. I was spending a few weeks with Quinn at his family’s camp in the summer. One day when we walked past a garage sale, I saw a camera, and bought it on a whim.”

“Like fate,” I say.

He raises his brows at me. “You believe in that?”

I have to think about that for a little, while because it’s an unexpected turn to something way more serious than what we’ve exchanged so far.

“Uh, I don’t know. Not really? I think… I’d like to think we each write our own story. But I also want to think that everything will work out the way it’s meant to in the end.”

“You’re an optimist.”

“Hey!” I poke him in the side with my finger. “What’s that tone?”

“What tone?” he asks innocently while he tries to wiggle and avoid my poking finger. In the end, he just catches it and holds it steady while sending a mock scowl my way.

“That tone you just had,” I say. “‘An optimist. 'Oh, you believe good things will happen. Oh, how precious.’”

He snorts. “Is that what I sounded like?”

“To a tee.”

The music has stopped, and the apartment is quiet now. It feels extremely intimate, sitting here on the floor with this man I don’t really know, gazes locked. Not weird, though. I’d go so far as to say I feel pretty comfortable, which usually never happens.

It’s probably better if I move this thing along now that the nerves seem to have calmed down and gone into hiding.

“So. Sutton.”

His enigmatic smile stays in place. “Wren.”

“We should probably get to the fucking now.”

“Ready whenever you are.”

Right.

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