Page 30 of Overexposed

I should never have dated him in the first fucking place. Dad hadn’t wanted me to. He’d said he didn’t like Dillon’svibes, but that was nothing new. Dad never liked any guy I dated; it was basically in the Dad handbook to disapprove of any potential love interest. Torn between screaming and crying was not a state I liked to be in.

What I needed were solutions…

Think, Stella, I ordered myself.Think.

Crying wouldn’t replace the equipment or pay the mortgage or even get Dad another week on chemo. I paced away from the car and then back. I also needed to get my fucking car fixed too.

Asshole.

I raised my phone and lowered it a dozen times. Who was I going to call? I already had to go down to the police station. Did I file a report on the stolen equipment? If I did that, I needed to have them come back here.

That made the most sense, though, right? File a police report? Then I’d have that to file with insurance. You know, if I hadn’t let that insurance lapse to cover Dad’s far costlier procedures. Protecting my equipment or saving his life?

The choice was a no-brainer.

Tears burned behind my eyes. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I forced myself to breathe. Breathe. Think it through. What options were available to me? Short-term? Long-term?

My savings were tapped. The photos I’d taken the night before would have netted me a tidy sum. So I was not only out of money in the bank, but I would be short what I could have made from last night’s work.

Those were facts.

There were always events. I could go to another, get more shots, and sell those. I straightened and looked at my phone.

Yeah, even with all the improvements they’d made to smartphones, they couldn’t replace a telephoto lens or the clarity of high definition. Could I make it work? Possibly.

It wouldn’t be ideal and the struggle to get anything worthy of selling would be intense. So while it could fill in for the short-term, it wasn’t a good fix and it had no guarantee of fiscal return.

What I needed was my equipment back or new equipment. Those were the two best-case scenarios. No doubt existed within me: Dillon had taken it. If I was lucky, he kept it in one piece and back at his place. I’d have to go to him and probably beg to get it back.

I’d sooner fuck a fire hydrant.

Worst case, he’d already destroyed the equipment. It was far more likely. Shattered it, sold it, gotten rid of it. So even if I filed charges, well, that probably would take more time I didn’t have and not get me anywhere. I had no problems with filing the assault, but the robbery?

Did I have anything I could pawn to make enough to replace the equipment? My gaze landed on my car.

Oh, hell no…

Before I could follow that thought to its very negative conclusion, my phone rang. Dad’s face popped up and I answered it immediately. “Hey, Dad, I thought you were at an appointment.”

He coughed. “I was, but we got home an hour ago and I napped. Now I’m calling my Shutterbug.”

I winced.

“Someone didn’t come over this morning. Or go home last night.”

“Dad,” I said on a long sigh. “Are you checking up on me?”

The wheeze of his laughter pulled a reluctant smile to my lips. “I might be, but I’ll never tell. You know I protect my sources.”

“Yeah, you do.” Even as much as the answer terrified me, I asked, “How was the appointment?” They always took so much out of him. It was why he had in-home care and only went in for very specific appointments.

“It was a lot of poking and prodding. Your mother is fussing enough for both of you. We won’t know anything until the tests come back.”

I sighed. Mom was a huge help, as one of Dad’s paid home helpers, but they’d divorced when I was only eight, so she couldn’t be there around the clock. “Yeah, I guess I should have seen that coming.”

“Think you could see your way into coming to see me and—” The hesitation was deliberate. I could almost picture him scanning the area around him in the living room where we’d set up his hospital bed. “And,” he continued in a stage whisper, “bring some pizza for the inmate and maybe some of those garlicky breadsticks.”

“Mom restricting your diet again?” Not that I could blame her. He had a hard time keeping down food. The richer the diet, the harder it was on him.

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