CHAPTER 32
"Tonight?"
His tone did not make me jump. I'd felt him before I'd heard him—Tony had a presence like that. He took up a room before he spoke.
I stood in the darkroom, shoulders propped against the drying rack, eyes fixed on the wet print hanging between me and the red light. My hands were coated with developer, the smell of chemicals still on my hoodie like a stain.
I did not turn around. "No," I said. "It's old."
A lie.
It was three hours previous—him on the bleachers, forward-sloped, knees on elbows, a shadow cutting across his face. Half light, half dark. The position he always took when he believed he was alone.
I was never alone, though.
He approached slowly, as if I were an animal and would run. I turned finally when he stood beside me.
His eyes did not travel to my face. They went directly to the print.
“You’re good,” he said, voice softer than I’d ever heard it. Almost reverent. “Like… haunting good.”
My throat tightened. “It’s just light and shadow.”
“No,” he said. “It’s truth.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. No one had ever talked about my photos like that before. Not even Queens. Not even my dad.
Especially not Tony.
He came closer, but not close enough to touch. Just stood beside me, gazing at the picture drying as if it would disappear.
"It's weird," he said. "To look at myself like that."
"You don't recognize it as you?" I asked.
He shook his head. "I see how I look. But it's not how I feel."
I swallowed. "How do you feel?"
He leaned against the table, tucking his arms. "As if I'm playing a role that I can't exit. As if I built a monster costume and lost the zipper."
I observed him beneath the red faint light. "Then take it off."
"It's not easy."
"Why not?"
He gazed into my eyes. "Because everybody needs me to be a monster. So I provided them with what they desired to buy."
Silence. Thick and thick.
I looked back at the photo. "You don't look like a monster in this."
His voice dropped. "Because you saw me when I wasn't acting."
A beat hung out.
And then he breathed softly, "Thank you."
I blinked. "For what?"
"For looking at me."
It struck harder than I was ready for. Like a weight, but not a crushing one. The grounding kind. The kind that reminds you you're here. You're important.
My chest ached.
\---
We didn't speak for a minute afterward.
We just stood there, the silence not heavy or strained, but warm. Safe. Neither one of us was trying to win for once.
He reached down and picked up another photo from the line sometime later. One he had no idea was him too—soft, in flight, arms loose, profile lit up by the streetlamp's glow.
He tilted his head. "Who's this?"
I paused. "A friend of mine."
His lip twisted into something small. Almost a smile. "You have a way of making people look like art."
"You're not people," I breathed before I could catch myself.
Which made him glance at me.
And it was in that moment—no smirk, no fire, just him and me in the red light—that I realized how close we were standing.
And that I didn't want to back away.
He sensed it too.
I saw it in the subtle tilt of his head. In the long inhale he took. In the tension his fingers tightened around the table's rim.
When he leaned in toward me, it wasn't sudden.
It wasn't hungry.
It was guarded.
As if he was asking a question with his body.
And I answered.
Our mouths touched, slow and hesitant. Not the kiss you take. The kiss you earn.
No pressure.
No fury.
Just the slightest brush of skin against skin, like we were both too scared that we'd break it by yearning too badly.
My body went rigid—not because I was afraid.
Because it was true.
And the truth is always scarier than hurting.
\---
We stepped back, and neither of us spoke.
I looked at him. He looked at me.
And something shifted.
Not broke.
Not snapped.
Shifted.
As if the air had changed around us and we were fighting to breathe the new air.
He clasped his hands into his jacket, eyes dropping to the floor. "I didn't come here to—"
"I know," I snapped out.
Because I did.
This was not a game.
This was not part of the show.
This was the part no one was supposed to see.
\---
He stepped back toward the door but paused before opening it.
Do I still scare you?" he asked without looking back.
I thought about it. Thought about all the times he had scared me.
But now?
Now I was scared for him. Scared for what we might do to each other if we didn't start telling the truth.
"No," I said. "But real things always do."
He nodded once.
And then he disappeared.
\---
The darkroom grew quiet.
Just the hum of the dryer. The red light.
And the photos.
The ones that could kill him.
The ones that could save us both.
\---
I didn't sleep that night.
I was in bed staring at the ceiling, the memory of his kiss still on my lips like a burn of heat.
I remembered the boy in the photographs.
The boy on the pitch.
The boy who had kissed me as if he were remembering what tenderness felt like.
And for the first time in weeks, I didn't cry.