Page 55 of Safe With You

Then Rachel again, this time at the microphone.

Her shoulders were still tense, but her chin was lifted. The audience behind her had blurred into soft shadows, leaving her at the center of the frame as if she belonged there.

“He captured her beautifully,” I murmured.

Naomi nodded. “He did.”

Every photograph seemed to pause on a moment I hadn’t known existed: Rachel’s nervous smile before her name was called. Denise’s quiet exhale after finishing her poem. A woman brushing away tears. Friends leaning into each other. Naomi laughing so hard she had to brace herself against the espresso machine.

Ellis hadn’t just captured Open Mic Night.

He’d captured what it felt like to be there.

I continued scrolling.

It was me.

I stood beside Rachel near the stage, one hand resting lightly on her arm while she looked down at the pages she’d nearly dropped. My mouth was open mid-sentence. Rachel’s brows had loosened, the panic from moments before no longer pinching her face.

I remembered telling her to take her time.

That no one in the room wanted her to fail.

What I didn’t remember was Ellis standing close enough to capture it.

Naomi went quiet beside me.

I enlarged the photo.

My curls had started to frizz around the edges from moving around all evening, and one side of my blouse had come untucked. I wasn’t posed. I wasn’t looking at the camera or thinking about how I appeared.

But I looked happy. Settled, like there wasn’t anywhere else I would rather be.

I hadn’t realized that was what I looked like when I was doing the thing I loved most.

“That’s a really good picture of you,” Naomi said.

“It is.”

Her head turned sharply toward me. “Look at you accepting a compliment without arguing.”

“I can admit when a picture is good.”

“Mhm.”

“It’s not even really about me. Look at Rachel.”

“I’m looking at both of you.”

I closed the enlarged image and continued through the gallery before Naomi could say anything else.

There were more pictures of me than I expected, though not enough to feel strange. In most of them, I was somewhere in the background—greeting guests, speaking with Denise, carrying an extra chair through the aisle. He had captured the parts of the night I had been too busy to notice.

By the time I reached the final photograph, the man near the window had closed his book and was making his way toward the register.

I locked my phone and slid it beneath the counter.

“Hi,” I said as he approached. “Find everything okay?”