Page 41 of You, with a View

My gaze follows Theo, tracking across his shoulders, looser this morning. I get the feeling he’d do anything for his granddad. It’s becoming an uncomfortable soft spot, the place where our kinship roots deeper with every detail Paul feeds me.

Paul pulls me out of my spiraling thoughts. “It’s okay if it takes time for photography to feel right again.”

“What do you mean?”

We stop next to Theo, who’s perched on the wall. The wind ruffles Paul’s hair back from his forehead, and he squints against the strengthening sunlight.

“After Kat left school, there was a time when I didn’t touch my camera. I felt disconnected from my love for it. Disconnected from life, really. When I picked it back up, it took me time to get reacquainted. I had to figure out what I wanted to find through the lens.” He squeezes my shoulder gently. “You’re old friends who haven’t talked in a while, Noelle. Get to know each other again.”

I nod, fumbling with my camera as I move to the edge of the lookout.

Theo backs up toward Paul, making space for me.

“Don’t choke.” He gives me a crooked smirk. It’s what he’d murmur when he passed me in the hallway on match days. Hearing him say it in a low voice was like hearing my opponent yell it across the court, except more delicious. Below the taunting tilt of the wordswas the assurance that Iwouldn’tchoke. He may have thought he was better than me, but he knew I was really fucking good.

Want and fear have been battling it out, but with Theo’s words, the want wins.

I check the ISO and aperture settings, adjust my shutter speed. Then, for the first time in six months, I put my eye to the viewfinder. My finger smooths over the shutter release, as light as the breeze that winds through my hair.

My mind goes blank, even as nerves dance under my skin. There are people around, but it’s a hum of energy, a soft buzz until it’s nothing. Until there’s no sound but my own heartbeat.

The last time I did this, I was with Gram. Somehow, I’m doing it now, and she’s here again. Or still.

I expel my emotion in the form of a watery exhale. Out of the corner of my eye, Theo rocks forward on his heels, but Paul cuffs his elbow.

It scares me. But I’ll do it anyway.

I catch a solar flare in my lens and microscopically shift my weight on my right leg, leaning so it slices more fully into the shot. I press the shutter release. The gentle click of the lens sounds like a firework.

Like that, the anticipatory anxiety is gone. I take a few more shots. My arms crawl with goosebumps. I pull back to watch the hairs rise, the skin under turning textured, and wish I could capture that, too. Then I turn to Paul, who’s lowering his own camera, beaming, and feel my smile spread across my mouth like the sun over the valley.

I shift my gaze to Theo. He comes up behind me, curving over my shoulder like he did in his kitchen. It’s equally distracting, but not nearly as annoying, and that makes my heart beat with a thrill and fear.

“Let’s see if these are TikTok approvable, Shep.”

I press the playback menu and scroll through the pictures I just took, the ones I’ll eventually share with thousands of people. Ones they’ll hopefully love.

I wait for the voice in my head telling me I’ll never amount to anything, but it doesn’t come.

Instead, I hear my own voice, assuring me that, though these photos aren’t the best I’ve ever taken, at least Itookthem. Maybe it doesn’t have to be my best to still be enough.

We spend the morning exploring the valley and drop in to the Ansel Adams Gallery. Paul waxes poetic about his technical skill and use of previsualization, as well as his enduring conservationist beliefs. Theo catches my eye at one point, his mouth twitching.

Fanboy, he mouths, and I bite against a smile.

We eat lunch on the Ahwahnee Hotel’s patio and the temperature climbs with the sun. Before my sandwich arrives, I’m peeling off my thin fleece pullover. I’m wearing a cropped tank underneath, nothing special, but Theo’s eyes linger through the rest of lunch, sending a shot of electricity down my spine.

Not happening.

I drain my iced tea, but it does nothing to quench this specific thirst.

On our shuttle ride to our Mirror Lake hike, Paul insists on sitting across the aisle from us. I spend the entire time staring down at Theo’s thigh nearly pressed against mine.

Thighs should not be so beautiful, especially smashed against a plastic seat.

Besides the continued struggle with my attraction to Theo,though, the day has been perfect. I’m trying to remember the last time I felt this content, but I can’t. There’s no small amount of shock in the realization that some of that contentment is directly tied to Theo’s company, though I don’t dwell on the reason.

Paul’s hiking sticks tap against the hard-packed dirt as we get onto the trail. “I can’t believe I haven’t asked this yet, Noelle, but have you ever been to Yosemite?”

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