Beautiful Things Never Last (9 page)

             
I eat lunch while I wait for the film to process, then go set up in the darkroom. 
I pull out the tray
s and line them up on the long table in the center of the room
, then measure out the developer, stop
,
and fixer. I secure the first strip of negatives in the negative carrier, slide it into the enlarger, and flip the light of the enlarger on. After adjusting the focus nobs, the first image comes into focus.

             
It’s Quinn. Caught off-guard the day we celebrated Christmas. Her lips are curled up into a snarky smirk that makes her look both annoyed and gorgeous.

             
Seeing her reminds me of the last time I was in this room.

             
I don’t have a chance to use the darkroom unless Ron is out of town. That weekend he was up in San Simeon for his sister’s wedding. Quinn and I had just finished finals that week and hadn’t seen a lot of each other, so she tagged along. She helped me mix the chemicals and wash the prints, but mostly just sat on the counter and talked to me while I worked. I asked her to refill one of the trays with fresh water for me while I worked on dodging the shadows in a photo of a couple of kids at the beach.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw Quinn leaning over the stainless table
and even in the dim, red light I could make
out all of her sweet curves, or maybe I just had them memorized.

             
“Why don’t you move that tray over to the left a little more, it’d be a better place for it,” I said.

             
“This one?” Quinn asked, pointing to the stop bath.

             
“Sure.” I smiled.

             
“Yes, or no, Ben
?
Sure
isn’t really a—” She shook her head and laughed. “Oh, I see what you’re doing there.”

             
Quinn walked toward me, that brow arched in the confident way that turned me on every single time. Once she was within arm’s reach, I hooked my arm around her waist and pulled her in to me.
Our lips easily captured each other’s, even in the near darkness, as if by instinct they knew just where to go.

             
My hands wandered under the back of her shirt, unhooking her bra and then across the soft skin of her flat stomach and up to her breasts. I pushed her shirt up over her head and then caught one of
her nipples
between my fingers
teasingly
. Quinn arched her back
and let
out a soft moan that made my body explode with desire and raw lust. Her hands worked their way down to my jeans
, unzipping them and pushing them to the floor as I alternated between sucking and tugging on those perfect, pink nipples.

             
“What are you doing?” I asked. Quinn’s mouth was on my throat, but her hands were fumbling with something behind us.

             
“This,” she said. The room was drained of any light that had been as Quinn flipped the dim, red light off. I ran my hands up and down the length of her tiny body, pushing the thin cotton shorts to the floor. I slid her panties out of the way and was finally able to feel just how ready she was.

             
Every touch was intensified
b
eing in the total darkness like this. I never knew where Quinn’s hands would end up next and the anticipation of the next kiss or touch was incredible. She would suck on my
neck one minute and then I’d feel her lips on my chest. I was quickly learning not to even attempt to guess where she’d be next. But I wanted her. I wanted her so fucking badly.
She pulled away for the briefest of seconds and I fe
lt myself ache for more of her and my body shook with want.

             
“Who told you to hold back?” she said.

             
So I didn’
t.

             
Fuck, I miss my girlfriend.

             
I miss her, but there’s still this part of me that feels like I need to let her go at this alone. I’m not ignoring her calls on purpose…I just haven’t called her back.
Yet.
I will.
It’s like hearing her so far away is harder than not hearing from her at all. It’s easier to pretend that she’s waiting for me at home or will be home from work soon than
to hear
the thousands of miles between us on the other end of the phone.

             
I decide to pack up my gear
and head home, but as I’m locking up, my phone vibrates in my hand.

             
“Hello,” I say.

             
“Ben, it’s Ron, how’s things?”

             
“Doing okay, just leaving the shop, I was up here using the darkroom. Is that okay?”

             
“Course,” he says. “Listen, I’m sure you have somewhere to be,
but quickly, I wanted to talk to you about the sunsets.”

             
“The sunsets?” I toss my camera bag into my back
seat and
start up my car.

             
“When you applied for the job with me, you brought in a portfolio of sunsets,” Ron says. The ones I took for Quinn while we were apart all of those months.

             
“Right,” I say.

             
“I have a friend up North here, that is looking to acquire a sequence of photos of sunsets, he wants to have them made into a collage and sold as posters. I vouched for your work, told him it’s exactly what he’s looking for. What do you think?”

             
I put the car back into park, trying to replay what Ron has just said, trying to process it.

             
“So, he wants to buy my work?”

             
“Yep.”

             
“All of them?”

             
“Yep,” Ron confirms. “So, I told him I’d check with you and give him your contact info, he should be in touch soon, he’d like to get this all wrapped up in the next few weeks.”

I swallow hard and get a handle on my voice, which I know is going to shake with excitement. This is exactly what I’ve been waiting for. One tiny part of me is disappointed that Quinn isn’t here, waiting with wide eyes and bitten lips for me to fill her in. She won’t be here when I click off to kiss me and offer her congratulations, to celebrate the changes that are coming.
For both of us.

But this is happy. This is awesome news. And I’m legitimately happy when I say the next words. And maybe it’s a good thing that Quinn is in Italy and this moment has already lost some of its luster. I exchange uncontrollable excitement for the kind of calm professionalism that might help me line up more jobs in the future.
Which is the ultimate goal anyway.

             
“That sounds perfect. Yes, tell him that I said yes.”

Seven

QUINN

             
“
Buonasera!”
I call into the tiny house before opening the door the rest of the way.

             
“
Buonasera!”
Amalea’s now familiar voice replies. I’ve been in Italy for just over two weeks now. I love it here and can’t wait to come back someday with Ben. Maybe even bring Carter and Shayna along. But school is rough. The courses aren’t hard, necessarily, as much as I feel out of place. For starters, I’m the only girl in the classes
, which is fine.
I tend to relate to guys much better, but these guys are different. There are three of them, and their senses of humor are severely lacking. One of them, John Paul, he’s from the United States, too, he says
“ci, ci!”
no less than one hundr
ed times per class, and I’m pretty
convinced that that phrase doesn’t mean what he thinks it means. None of it is bad, it’s just not comfortable. I’m much more content in Amalea’s kitchen, helping her bake or clean, or just watching her conjure up these delicious meals all from recipes passed down to her from her family, never a written recipe in sight.

             
The kitchen is exactly where I find
her now
, stretching a large piece of dough out onto her simple, wooden counter top. “You’re finished for the day already?” she asks.

             
“Yep. I have an early class tomorrow, though.
What are you making?
”

             
“Sfogliatelle.”
She lifts the
buttery
dough up, stretchi
ng it from underneath until it’
s paper thin
and so beautiful
.
Like
magic.
“Have you eaten?”

             
“I nod. We made gnocchi with wild boar sauce.”
             

             
“Ah, Chef Baldassare’s favorite.” Amelia doesn’t look up from the dough she is tediously working when she says it.
Maybe it’s my imagination, but I think she works it a little harder.

             
“You know Chef? Of course you do, there’s like, twenty people
total
in this town.”

             
Amalea bites her bottom lip
.

             
“I like him, which is saying something, because I don’t like most people.”

             
Amalea glances up, her brows pulled together. I’m either confusing or offending her.
I rush to erase my social blunder as best I can, but I’m like a little kid scrubbing so hard on a mistake that I just wind up tearing the paper.
“I mean, I like you. I just, crap, I don’t know. I’m getting better about it. I think.”

             
“Getting better at liking people?” she asks.

             
“Yeah. Something like that. Anyway, Chef is pretty amazing, he really knows his stuff.”

             
“He makes terrible sfogliatelle,” Amalea says
smugly. She
slap
s
a
nother layer of butter onto it. And I’m no expert, but it seem
s
a little extra forceful.