Page 90 of Skating the Blue Line
After what happened last night, I wanted to give Chloe a confidence boost and to show her just how beautiful she looks while pregnant. I wanted to show her that even though her body was changing, it was changing for a good reason.
So I called Eliana, an old friend who happens to not only be a photographer but owes me a favor or two.
“I can’t believe that you would do that for me,” Chloe says, giving me a look of disbelief.
“I’d give you the world if you’d let me.” I tell her with every ounce of honesty that I got.
Chloe doesn’t get a chance to respond because soon we are being joined by Eliana.
“Sorry, I’m late. I had to go pick up one of my cameras across town.” Our photographer tells us, not even aware that she interrupted a moment between me and Chloe.
I break my gaze from Chloe and stand up from the bench and introduce the two women.
“Chloe, this Eliana. Our photographer, who apparently doesn’t know how to use her phone to send a quick text message,” I say, narrowing my eyes at the woman with the camera. “And Eliana, this is Chloe.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Chloe,” Eliana says, holding out a hand for Chloe to shake. “I apologize in advance if I try to strangle your baby daddy once or twice during our session today.”
Chloe lets out a laugh at our photographer possibly torturing me. “It’s nice to meet you too. How do you two know each other?” she asks, looking between the two of us.
“We met a few years ago at a team function,” I say, giving her the simplest answer.
Chloe nods and soon Eliana is talking to her about what she wants from the shoot.
The smile that takes over Chloe’s face at hearing every single detail is one that I want Eliana to capture just so that I can have it framed.
It doesn’t take long for the shot itself to start. The two women are laughing and Chloe is having the time of her life.
All the tears from last night about her clothes not fitting have been forgotten.
Somewhere through the halfway point of the shoot, Chloe goes to the bathroom and I’m left with Eliana, who is looking at me like a kid at a museum wanting to ask too many questions.
“What?” I ask, tired of getting stared at.
“How did you two meet?” She finally asks a question that I’m sure she wanted to ask since the beginning.
“At the ballet that you decided to skip.” I say, giving her a pointed look.
Eliana was supposed to be my date for the ballet all those months ago. In the last few years, we have gotten close and have had almost a brother and sister relationship. So when I heard that she was going to be in town that night, I asked to come with me.
Thinking about it now, I can’t help thinking about how different my life would be if she hadn’t canceled on me.
I would have probably spent the majority of the time talking Eliana and not been enthralled in Chloe as much as I had been or even at all.
I probably would have never met her, and there for sure wouldn’t be any baby two months away from arriving.
It’s a mind trip that so much would have not happened had I had a date that night.
“Damn. I shouldn’t have canceled. I could have been the one pregnant with your kid,” she says sarcastically.
Sarcastically or not, that would have never happened.
“Why did you cancel that night, anyway?” I ask.
Eliana is a flake, has been for as long as I have known her, so her canceling on me isn’t surprising. I got my hopes up that that night would have been different but it wasn't surprising.
I thought that she was going to cancel today, but here she is.
“My dad found out that I was in town and forced me to go to dinner with him,” she says with a tinge of anger in her voice.
