Until Then Read online

  When Crew takes his hand away and reaches into his back pocket, he pulls out a few photographs from his wallet and flips through them tenderly, smiling a little bigger at each one. He turns one over to read the back then holds it up to me.

  “This is me and my mother at my 6th birthday party.” The woman in the picture has beautiful brown, wavy hair and kind green eyes. But what stands out is how she’s looking at the little boy with the shaggy hair who is holding a bubble in the palm of his hand. She looks like she couldn’t love that moment more. And the little boy looks like he’s happier than ever, fascinated with his bubble.

  “She’s beautiful, Crew,” I say, handing it back. He nods and smiles, pulling the picture back to his lap.

  “Photography,” he finally says, still looking at the pictures then glancing back up to me.

  I furrow my eyes indicating that I want to know more.

  “That’s how I stay connected to my mother. Through photography. My father took this picture of us. But my mother was snapping close-ups and actions shots, working on the shutter speed of her new camera. She blew the bubbles, and I caught one.” He finds another picture and shows me. It’s the bubble in his little hand, and he’s trying to kiss it. “She took this one,” he explains.

  “She’s really good,” I say, because I don’t know many people who could get a picture at the exact moment her son kisses a bubble mid-pop, especially with an old school camera. She timed it perfectly.

  “Yeah,” he says and smiles, and nods his head again. Then he flips through the pictures and tucks them back into his wallet.

  “Did you keep up with photography?” I ask, returning his earlier question.

  He shifts his body toward mine, putting his elbow back on the back of the seat and sitting cross-legged on the bench. Then he nods his head yes without any emotion in his face. His green eyes sparkle when he talks about her. It’s so endearing, how much he loves her.

  “Are you close with your dad?” I ask, the question even surprising me.

  Crew wrinkles his brows and takes a few moments to find his next words. “My father changed a lot since she died.” He looks down to his knees, takes a breath, then looks back to me. I can’t help but notice that his eyes grow duller, less brilliant then they were before. “My mother’s death was really hard for me and my brother, but it was hardest for my dad. He went from this playful, life-loving man to this…hard-ass, is the only word I can think of.” He shakes his head in surrender. “I’ve always loved photography, but he wanted me to give it up and focus on something more… ‘constructive’ was the word he used. He wanted me to go into law.” Crew smiles for a moment and glances back at the cemetery. “I didn’t. He gave me some crap about it, but I ignored him.”

  I have no idea what to say. I would give my left arm to have my father be a hard-ass on me just one more time. But saying that to Crew might make me a complete jerk.

  Crew looks back to me and continues. “My brother, Sebastian, got the worst of it. He was a little older when it happened. Fifteen. And he spiraled out of control after she died. My father had to deal with him, straighten him out. Lots of lectures, threats to take away baseball, groundings, yelling. My father even put handcuffs on Sebby once.”

  What?

  “My father is the District Attorney. He has his own set of cuffs, believe it or not,” he releases one chuckle to himself. “After my mother died, he wasn’t afraid to use them. Just once on Sebby. Never on me. I simply…floated by. Always the good kid. My father gave me some crap about my school work here and there but nothing as bad as Sebby. After a while, I became a little resentful. Instead of being sad all the time, I got mad.”

  “Why were you mad?” I ask him.

  He takes a resigned breath. “Because God took my loving mother away and turned my father into a bastard,” he shrugs his shoulders, as if to remind himself that he’s ok with his situation. “I think she softened him, nurtured him. She did the same with her boys. But after she died, my father didn’t know how to be a single dad with two reckless kids.”

  “I thought you said you were good.”

  Shrugging his shoulders, he responds, “I was. But I was still a boy. Still wrestled and played ball in the house and left my mess everywhere. I don’t think my dad understood how much my mother took care of her family, how much she loved us, how much we needed her.” When Crew looks down to his lap, it takes a lot of effort for me to stay in my seat and not slide over to place my arm around him.

  He misses his mother. I miss my father. We each still have a parent that’s somehow different than before.

  “I wish my mother nurtured us as much as yours did,” I say, blindly remembering how I need to get home soon to take care of her.

  Crew looks back up to me with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen on a grown man. And it tugs at my heart strings.

  “She’s in New York with me. We moved about seven months ago so that I could go to school there. I couldn’t leave her here alone. She’d be lost without me.” Crew tilts his head to indicate his confusion.

  “My mother is quite a dependent person. She’s always been dependent on someone. Not because of any medical reasons but because that’s just who she is. My father took very good care of her. They loved one another so much. Then when she had me, she almost died. She had to stay in the hospital for several weeks after I was born. My father took care of me single-handedly and visited her daily at the hospital for hours until she came home. Then he took care of both of us while she was recovering.” I smile, remembering my father’s reasoning. “He always said, ‘God wanted me to have you all to myself for a while so that I could introduce you to your talent.’ He played piano for me all the time, settling me to sleep while I was crying. It always did the trick.”

  Crew smiles a little. It’s so endearing. “Is that why you started playing? Because your dad wanted you to play?”

  I take a moment to consider his question. Why did I start playing? “I started playing because I didn’t know how not to play. The piano was the only sound I wanted, the only thing I could tolerate. I had to play it.” I smile at my father’s delight in telling me this story. “As soon as I could crawl, I’d teeter over to my toy piano and start banging on the keys. When I quickly learned that they didn’t make the real sounds, I made my way to the big piano and waited there until someone came and helped me get my tiny fingers on the big keys. I knew the difference.” I shrug my shoulders.

  Crew looks down to his wallet housing the pictures inside. “I know what you mean. For my seventh birthday, my parents bought me a polaroid camera. You know, with the pictures that slide out right away. It wasn’t a great camera. I wasn’t able to focus it well and take good photos. So instead, I snuck into my mother’s room and found her expensive camera. I played with it and took pictures until my father came to take it out of my hands. Later my mother developed the photos.” I love that he smiles at this memory. “She said they were really good. That I had a talent for capturing mood.”

  He pauses, lost in memory. But happily lost, thinking about his mother. I love even more how his eyes light up when he talks about his mother. “I’ve been shooting photos since then.”

  “She sounds wonderful, Crew.” He looks toward me with eyes full of gratitude. And he smiles wider, letting it reach his eyes that give a tiny squint.

  “So does your dad, Summer.” Crew pauses again, and it makes me wonder if he’s struggling to say something. His eyes search mine, as if he’s asking permission for something.

  “Do you still like taking photos as much as you always had?” I ask him, not afraid to turn his questions back on him. I figure these are safe questions to ask…safe enough to help me avoid the real questions I want to ask. How do you know me? Why are you so guarded? Why are you in the cemetery in the middle of the night?

  Crew is quiet for a moment, just looking at the trees around us. I can’t help wondering what’s going through his mind. But as I look at him, I also can’t help but feel for h
im, like I want to crawl inside of him and wrap my arms around him and share the loss that consumes us both. Maybe if I did that, I could push some of that loss outside, and it wouldn’t take up so much space in his heart. I know too well how the heart can become too crowded with an ache that grows daily.

  “I do,” he exhales loudly. “The problem is that I seem to be losing my edge.” He looks to me with those green eyes, and I’m the one who feels jealous…jealous of not knowing him sooner. Because all I want right now is to see Crew be happy and loving what his life is becoming. I imagine that happened long before he met me.

  “Why do you say that?” I ask.

  He stares at me for a moment, long enough to make me slightly uncomfortable in my own clothes. “The photos I’ve been taking lately are lacking.”

  “What are they lacking?” I wonder.

  He lets out a defeated exhale. “Heart,” he finally says.

  I don’t see how that’s possible. Crew seems like one of the most intense guys I’ve ever met, the way he is so careful with his words and how he can stare me down with the most expressive eyes I’ve ever seen. A guy like that has nothing but heart.

  He shakes his head, almost laughing at himself. “I guess I don’t have enough angst in my life here. Which is probably why it’s a good thing that I’m about to hit the road for a few months. See more of the world.” He smiles at me, but the smile doesn’t touch his eyes.

  I love that he seems indifferent to leaving. But even more, I feel a stab of disappointment. Not that I would expect to see him again. Or even stay in touch after today. But knowing that I can’t see him somehow makes tonight seem a little bittersweet.

  I think I’m beginning to like him.

  Damn.

  “What’s your last name, Crew?” I ask him.

  He furrows his brow, confused why I’m asking.

  “Well, I want to look you up so that I can see your photos and where you’ll be traveling,” I explain poorly to cover up the real reason I want his last name — so I can silently stalk the one person who has been clever enough to get me to talk about myself without feeling completely annoyed, someone who’s making me feeling something other than grief for the first time in the last two years.

  Crew chuckles to himself and looks down to the ground, shaking his head slightly at some private joke he shouldn’t say. “If you have something to ask me, Summer, just ask me.”

  “Did you know that I was a piano player?” I ask that question out of nowhere, surprising myself again. My mouth doesn’t usually have a mind of its own.

  I surprise Crew, too. He looks back to me for a few extra moments, green eyes boring into mine, carefully weighing the gravity of his answer. “Yes.”

  Wow.

  “Did you know that I would be here tonight?” I reply back.

  Tilting his head fractionally, he responds quietly, “Yes.”

  Holy hell.

  “Did you know that I love waffles?”

  He squints his eyes a tiny bit, then says, “No.”

  Jesus.

  “Why did you approach me tonight…twice?” I ask again.

  Geez, shut the hell up already.

  Crew leans forward, never breaking eye contact. He’s serious, and he’s pinning me to the bench with eyes made of jade. “Because I need your help.” He shifts toward me further. “And I can’t let you leave until you say yes.”

  4.

  Summer

  I am so confused. What could he need my help with? We just met.

  “How can you need my help, Crew? You don’t even know me. And I’m leaving in a few minutes.”

  “But I do know you, Summer,” he replies instantly, one of the few times he does. “I’ve known you for a while.”

  “Explain, please,” I demand, not giving him an inch to overthink his response.

  Crew searches the ground for his answer. Then he dives into his backpack sitting under the bench. He pulls out his camera and turns it on, working the camera so deftly, like it’s an extension of him. I’m in awe of how well his fingers are gliding over the buttons and changing the lenses. I find it mesmerizing, even though I’m not easily enthralled by someone else’s talent.

  After adjusting the camera, he hands it to me to look at the view screen. It’s heavy in my hands, a testament to it’s worth, I presume, considering that the best camera I own is my four ounce smartphone.

  “Here,” he points, “this is how to scroll through the images.” He presses the button with the arrow and demonstrates how to use it.

  I’m instantly captivated. The photos he’s taken are absolutely incredible.

  A sunset with a wild display of swirling blue, pink, and purple colors, like a sky painted with cotton candy.

  A black and white photo of a smiling woman consoling her sobbing child in the stroller.

  The photo of a rigid iron fence and pristine green lawn that contrast so harmoniously with a veteran man sitting on the sidewalk surrounded by signs of political protest.

  Photo after photo that have nothing but heart and passion and mood.

  “These are amazing, Crew. How can you say they are lacking anything?”

  I look to him as he carefully weighs his answer. “They’re fine. But keep going. The next ones are my best work,” he replies. And I can’t help but notice him shifting in his seat, visually uncomfortable.

  I keep scrolling, seeing exquisite images with incredible coloring.

  Until….

  Me.

  He’s taken photos of me. Not from today. These photos are from when I was here last year, on the one-year anniversary of my father’s death.

  What. The. Hell.

  I feel a surge of bile rise up past my lungs as I stare at myself: sobbing, stoic, tucked into my curled-up knees, smiling through tears, brushing my fingers on my father’s tombstone.

  There must be 12 of them. Each of them stripped bare. Each of them conveying a distinct, raw emotion.

  “Crew,” I swallow his name, still looking through his photos.

  “Summer, before you jump to any conclusions —”

  “Please don’t show these to anyone, Crew,” I interrupt. I can hear the shock of my request hit him, as he’s now holding his breath. I don’t want people seeing these candid pictures of me because then any facade that I’ve worked to create will not only become real, it’ll become true.

  My parents have worked hard to spotlight my talent. Photos of me being anyone but a piano player would shred my reputation.

  I feel his eyes boring into my face while I continue to scroll through more images. He’s right. Some of his images don’t have the same feel as others. But the ones of me are raw, artistic talent. Crew is so damn good.

  “That was never my plan, Summer,” he finally says.

  “Then what is your plan?” I ask while never taking my eyes off the camera screen.

  I hear him force a breath. “To take your picture. With your permission.”

  I pin him with my hard stare and hand him back his camera. “Why? You’ve done it without my permission. What’s stopping you?” I sound snarky, but I don’t care. He has things to atone for.

  Crew looks awkwardly down to his camera and tinkers with it. I have no idea what he’s doing, but I’m completely intrigued by how well he’s doing it.

  “I want you to look at me this time,” he says quietly, unable to make eye contact.

  I shouldn’t like the way that sentence makes me feel. It feels all wrong and too right at the same time.

  “Why, Crew?” I ask, my lungs bound by what he says next.

  When Crew looks at me with those bright green eyes, time stands still. It may be precious, but right now, it’s made of iron.

  “Because you’re the only thing I want to see.”

  Breathe, Summer.

  “For the past year, I’ve taken image after image, and they all seem sort of blurry to me. Like I’m looking at the focus and not getting back what I try to create. Except you. You’re so eas
y to capture. You have so much emotion and character. You’re luminous. And I want to preserve that.”

  He swallows hard past an obvious lump in his throat.

  I’ve been called many things in my life. “Luminous” has never been one of them. I don’t feel luminous, especially not sitting here at my father’s grave. I don’t look luminous, not after the last few years of hell I’ve had to endure.

  “You’re my muse.”

  Holy hell. I love that sentence more than any of his other sentences so far. But any trace of faith gets squandered when I realize something: I’ve never been a muse. I don’t know how to be a muse. I don’t even know how to be a friend. I only know how to play the piano.

  “Crew,” I start, “Thank you for the compliments, but there’s no need to —”

  “I’m serious, Summer. You’re captivating.” When he moves closer to me, I can feel my insecurity stirring up enough to make me want to run away. But I can’t. I remain glued to this bench because as much as Crew seems to want this, I want this, too. I want to be seen by another person as real instead of simply talent. Somehow Crew makes me feel like I’m both. “Please. Please let me take your photo…with my mother’s camera,” he begs.

  I feel myself soften at his words, unable to resist his request. He’s been nice to me, and if I can help him navigate his way back to something that preserves his relationship with his mother, then I sure as hell want to do it.

  Besides, it’s feel fantastic to be needed by someone other than my mother.

  If I want to know why Crew was here last year taking photos of me, I’ll need leverage. Or at least a favor.

  “Ok,” is all I can say, and that one word makes Crew’s face beam. Now he’s the luminous one.

  And now I feel something wonderful swell inside my heart. Something I thought had died a long time ago.

  “But you only have a few minutes,” I add. “My car will be here soon.” I’m lying. My car should’ve been here two minutes ago.

  He doesn’t ask me to pose. He doesn’t position me. He doesn’t ask me to smile or look at him. He just lifts his camera to his face and snaps a picture. Another snap. And another snap. He takes 11 pictures. In between each snap, he looks at the screen to see the result. He smiles each time.