Part of her wanted to make a joke out of it, to brush it off as nothing and move on to something easier, but instead she nodded. “It was hard to hear. You made me mad.”
“I know and I’m sorry.” He gave a small half grin. “People don’t always like me very much. I’m sure you can see why.”
She shrugged. “You won’t win any etiquette contests, I’ll give you that. But I get it. And your push helped me, I think.”
“Then I’m glad I could help.”
She smiled. “Don’t take all the credit. Yes, I wanted to prove you wrong—and maybe prove myself wrong too. Prove that I really am supposed to be here. But I also just needed to find my footing. Something about The Bottoms—the ugliness, the desolation—it worked for me.”
“Like I said, you didn’t need to look far to find your creative eye. I knew it was in there. It just gets buried by life if you let it.”
She sighed. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Okay, here’s something you don’t know.” He sat up straighter and ran a hand through his hair, leaving bits sticking up in tufts. “I almost gave up photography five years ago.”
Jenna raised her eyebrows. “Why?”
“Why else do men make bad decisions? For a woman.”
“Ah. We do tend to mess things up.”
“Granted, she wasn’t trying to mess anything up—she just wanted me to stay.”
“And you wanted to go.”
He nodded. “I’ve been a photographer since my early twenties. I don’t put down roots. I never stay long in one place. I have an apartment in Atlanta, but I’m usually only there to catch up on sleep and pack for my next gig. I love to travel, so the life fits me well. But it’s hard on relationships, family and otherwise. Callie wanted me to stop traveling, to stay in Charleston with her.” He rubbed his forehead. “She actually wanted me to work for her dad at his investment firm.”
Jenna wrinkled her nose. “You don’t seem like the investment firm type.”
“Exactly. But I considered it. I figured Charleston had enough opportunities for photography and maybe I could travel some on the weekends.”
“So what happened?” She turned to the tray behind her to check the progress of the photos.
“Be patient.”
She faced him again.
“I was asked to mentor here for the summer. Then I was offered a freelance spot with National Geographic Traveler. I realized what I had going with work was too good to give up to sit in an office all day wearing a suit and drinking scotch with old men.”
“But you had to give her up too.”
He gave a slow nod, his gaze unfocused. “Haven’t talked to her since the day I told her I was leaving. I tried to call her a few times after I left, but she never picked up.” After a moment, he blinked and focused on Jenna. “All this to say I understand the pull photography has. Any art, really. Anything that lets you capture the world as you see it and say things you can’t say with words. Sometimes it’s more important than anything else.”
He hopped off the counter and peered into the trays where the photos floated in solution. The images were suspended somewhere between undefined blobs and what she hoped would turn out to be not terrible.
“Tell me something about you.” He set the dripping tongs back onto the towel.
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything. I just bared my soul.”
“I don’t like talking about myself. I’m better if you ask questions.” She leaned against the counter and crossed her arms.
“Okay. You’re not married.”
“That’s not a question.”
He smiled. “Okay. You’re young, you’re talented, you seem like a nice girl—why are you not married?”
“Why aren’t you?”
“I just told you. I’m elusive. Hard to pin down. But this isn’t about me anymore. And you told me to ask questions.”
She took a deep breath. “It’s kind of a long story.”
He gestured to the trays behind her. “We have nothing but time.”
She tilted her head side to side, stretching her tight neck muscles as if preparing for battle. “I’ll give you the abbreviated version. I moved to Wyoming with some friends after my freshman year of college. Worked, played, took pictures. Fell in love.”
Gregory shrugged. “It happens.”
She closed her eyes, then opened them again. “Jeremy was a photographer too, and a musician. Probably a better photographer, but he decided to make music his thing.”
When he packed up to join his band back home in Asheville, North Carolina, he’d asked Jenna to come too, and with nothing tying her to Wyoming, she went with him. Her camera continued to be good to her in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She sold her prints in galleries up and down the Blue Ridge Parkway and had a robust Etsy business, shipping her prints across the country, even some internationally.
“Etsy?” Gregory asked. “What’s that?”
“Are you serious?” She peered at him through the dim light. “It’s a website where people sell things.”
“Like Amazon?”
“No, not like Amazon. Just . . . look it up.”
“Okay. So you were in Asheville with your boyfriend and your thriving photography business. What happened?”
She held up her hands, then let them drop. “I got pregnant.”
She discovered she was pregnant on a Tuesday morning via a Clearblue Easy in the restroom of the Asheville Folk Gallery where she worked. Jeremy’s band had hired a publicist after a run of good shows, and the publicist had lined up a long string of gigs in the Northeast. Jenna waited until he returned from the tour before telling him. She was already three months pregnant by then, although still another month or so away from showing. He was a little excited but more hesitant. She saw it in his eyes right away: a baby didn’t have quite as much pull as the road did.
After that, his band went on longer and more frequent tours—up the
