Page 65 of Little Bird
As long as I can stay free that long.
In the end, I decide I don’t need anything more than my Nikon for the moment, but promise myself that if Gunner and Gabe go for the plan I’m building in my head for their business, I’ll come here and get something bigger. I chat with the owner, a guy who majored in photography at a big school out west and then decided to move home instead of going out on the road to shoot, for a while, and find out that he does regular nature photo shoots.
“Every weekend, almost,” he says, immediately falling into the glee of discussing his hobby with someone who understands. “I hike out, find a spot, and shoot everything I see. Then come back and develop it by hand.”
My mouth drops open. “You have a darkroom here?”
He leans closer, a smile growing on his face. “Two of them. You’re welcome to come around whenever you want to develop by hand.”
I’m so excited I can hardly get the words out, but Gabe yanks me away.
“She doesn’t need to develop by hand,” he says roughly.
I jerk my arm away from him. “How do you know? I can do so much more with the photographs if I’m developing them myself. Increase the exposure. Let them cook longer. Create effects.”
He takes my arm and pulls me toward the store. “And you can do all of that. But I’m coming with you. I don’t want you in a dark room with Braedon Dash.”
I look up at him, surprised. “Who the fuck is Braedon Dash?”
His face darkens. “That guy you were just talking to.”
I laugh, both surprised and weirdly delighted at this insight into Gabe’s character. “And what do you have against Braedon Dash? You don’t like him? Is he secretly a serial killer? Cannibal?”
He turns on me, and if I thought his face was dark before, I didn’t know what I was talking about. He looks like he’s about to murder someone.
“I don’t like the way he was looking at you. And if you think I’m going to let you go into some dark room with a guy who already looked like he wanted to devour you whole, you have another thing coming, little girl.”
This shocks me right into silence, for a number of reasons, and I’m staring at him, dumbfounded, when his face changes and he starts to look both charming and excited.
The mask, I realize. I look around, wondering who he’s wearing it for, and see Jon, Miller, and Simon striding toward us with Sammy and a boy I’ve never met. They’re all talking loudly and laughing like someone has just told a joke, and when I look back at Gabe, he’s already laughing with them, his body leaning away from me and toward his friends.
Right. One glimpse of them and the Gabe I was talking to is long gone, replaced by Charming, Flirty Gabe.
The guy who tells people I don’t matter.
“I’m going to hang out with my friends for a little,” he says without bothering to look at me. “You can do the rest of your shopping by yourself, right?”
I jerk like I’ve been shot and then grow very still. I knew this was coming, because this is how he is around his friends now, but the pain of it still catches me by surprise. When we were in high school, he and I were practically attached at the hip. We did everything together, always chose the other first.
Except when it came to Sally Hennings. Whenever she was around, I was a second-class citizen.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that he still flips that switch so easily.
He tosses a look over his shoulder as he walks away and his steps stutter for a moment, like he’s just registered the hurt and betrayal on my face. After everything he told me the other night, and the long absence, I guess I expected him to value me more than this. And my face must be saying that loud and clear because I see the shadow of a frown cross his brow.
Then one of his friends calls him.
He shakes his head as if to clear it of the thoughts he’s been having, lets his expression relax into an easy grin, and turns back around, heading for his friends and a life that must be so devoid of expectation it’s practically all sunshine and rainbows.
I watch him for a moment, then turn and take my complications and storm clouds in the other direction. I don’t like that version of Gabe. It’s not who he really is. And as long as he’s wearing that mask, he’s not my Gabe. Hell, as long as he’s wearing that mask, he doesn’t seem to want much to do with me at all.
Which means I’ll be better off finishing my shopping on my own. And then finding another way back to the house.
I get approximately three steps before someone takes my hand, and against all my better judgement—against all the experience I have—I think for a moment that it’s Gabe, that he’s come back for me, and my heart lifts and expands so quickly I think it might explode.
When I look over, though, I don’t see the big, burly lumberjack who was once my best friend.
I see a tiny girl with curly black hair, gray eyes, and a grin that means nothing but trouble.
