Page 34 of Familiar Things New

If you are still interested in giving me a photography lesson, please write back with the precise date and time when I should come to your studio. Working at the conservatory provides me with a lot of flexibility with regard to my schedule. Whenever it is, I will make it work.

Your friend,

Edwin

Andrew ran his thumb over Edwin’s signature. He’d lost count of how many times he’d read the letter by now. It must have been more than thirty. Rereading it so often had helped him make it through the rest of the holiday season, though all of it had still been relatively lonely on the whole.

Soon, though—within the next thirty minutes, to be exact—he’d be able to forget about his loneliness for a little while. Because he’d be seeing Edwin again.

Andrew’s eyes scanned the letter. He paused once he reached his favorite part. I thought of you. Goodness, those had to have been the most beautiful four words to have ever been penned in the history of mankind. Andrew could only hope that what he’d written in his response—I cannot wait to see you—had been as impactful for Edwin, hinting at what was blossoming between them without stating it outright.

After refolding the letter, Andrew placed it inside his armoire, where there were four crumpled-up copies of the reply he’d sent to Edwin, each of them containing at least one mistake. Perhaps he’d show them to Edwin eventually. Edwin would probably laugh at how ungraceful he was, even when it came to letter writing.

Andrew left for his studio. Just as he was getting settled, someone knocked. He rushed to the door, hoping it was Edwin. Sure enough, when Andrew opened it, Edwin was standing on the other side.

“Good morning, Andrew,” Edwin said. “I know I’m a little early.”

Andrew’s chest swelled. “I was hoping you would be.”

Edwin’s expression became slightly bashful, and he looked at his shoes for a moment before peeking up at Andrew again.

“May I come in?”

“Sorry,” Andrew spluttered before moving aside. “Yes, of course.”

Edwin came in and slipped off his hat. Andrew hooked his hands behind his back as he waited for Edwin to remove the rest of his outerwear.

Edwin proceeded to take off each item very slowly, as though he was trying to stretch out the amount of time the task would take. Finally, after Edwin was finished, he turned to face Andrew with a look of relative unease, his brows upturned and mouth a thin line. Andrew racked his brain for something to say that might help. But he was plenty nervous, too. He had never liked a man so openly before. He’d liked plenty of men in the past, of course, but he’d either only liked them from afar or they’d never been interested in him in return. Not that Andrew had ever been so brazen about his feelings in the past, either. Still, only one man had ever even looked at him like they desired him in this particular way. And that man was Edwin.

How were they to navigate this?

“So . . .” Andrew rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Should we begin the lesson?”

“That sounds good,” Edwin said. “Did you ever print the—”

“Oh! Yes!” Andrew rushed over to his worktable and retrieved the two prints of the conservatory he’d been keeping in a paper-board folder. He handed them to Edwin, who began studying them intently. “I think they turned out well. But I still like the wet plates a smidge better.” He came closer and pointed to one of the plants in the image, hovering his fingertip above the print. “Do you see how it’s a little . . . fuzzy here? I mean, the photograph isn’t bad, but it’s not as crisp as it might have been had I created it using a wet plate. Obviously, that wouldn’t have been as convenient, though. And we probably wouldn’t have had that, ah, that opportunity to be next to each other beneath the, uhm, beneath the . . .”

Edwin looked up from the photograph. Andrew’s face burned, and he lowered his voice to a whisper when he continued.

“Beneath the focusing cloth,” he finished, his softly spoken words coming out with a slight tremble. “And I liked being in there. With you.”

Edwin stayed quiet, his striking hazel eyes fixed on Andrew. Andrew’s breath shook on his next exhale. He could barely believe he had been so bold.

After a few more long seconds of Andrew being tortured by Edwin’s unbroken stare, Edwin took a large and clearly very purposeful step backward, away from him.

“Andrew . . .” Edwin’s throat bobbed. “We . . . can’t.”

Andrew’s chest pinched.

“Can’t what?” he asked, even though he knew that was an asinine question.

There was no use in pretending now.

“Andrew,” Edwin replied, his tone stern yet pleading.

Nausea curdled in Andrew’s stomach, and he immediately began to chastise himself. He had taken the looks that he and Edwin had shared, along with the vaguely sentimental words they’d exchanged, and he had twisted them in such a way as to delude himself into believing that, regardless of how things were for men like them, there was still a chance that he and Edwin might be able to become something.

For most of Andrew’s life, he had craved closeness with another man. And when Theodore had rejected him—not even romantically but as a friend, as a person—he had promised himself that he’d never again tell another soul about his proclivities.