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Therese stared at the the photograph that sat on her desk. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
She should have thrown it away when she had the chance. It was a good photo, a perfect photo. The values were right, printed perfect and center. Carol looking off into the distance, at something, unnamed. Another photo, where Carol looked down, her hair covering her face. She looked pleased. The composition was perfect. Therese’s heart panged at that moment. It was because the picture was so perfect that she was reminded, raw and knowing, that she’d loved. Carol didn’t deserve less than perfection (yet, had she not chosen Therese?). It’s why the photos turned out so well.
“You’re about as weak as this match, but given the right conditions you could burn a house down, couldn’t you?” Carol asked at some point (she despised how the words clung to her brain, how she simply couldn’t force herself to forget). The flame in her heart grew ever slowly, until it was a raging blaze that threatened to consume her. She wanted to burn the photo. She wanted to burn the whole damn stack.
Yet she couldn’t bring herself to do it. God. She didn’t even know where the matches were, didn’t care to look. There was a time when Therese thought that she would not be able to survive a week without Carol, because she was desperate and needy and young and stupid stupid stupid . Now it’s been a year since their first meeting. Or somewhere close to it. The days had whirled by so fast. How was she supposed to remember? Stupid. Idiot.
Instead, she put the photos in a drawer under a stack of other rejected prints. The first photo in the stack had an edge that creased as she tried to shove it under. “Fuck,” Therese muttered. She tried to convince herself, for even a half-second that the only reason she was upset at how the photo had been ruined was because she cared for all of her photos. But even as she had that thought, she knew that wasn’t the case at all. Photos of streets and buildings could be taken again at any time. The world always changes, but concrete does only seldom. Carol was different. Therese could have taken photos of many people, of groups and would never care less.
She had to step back. Shakily, Therese stood and looked around. Surrounded by foreign photos and foreign ideas and yet there was only one woman on her mind. Why couldn’t Carol get out of her mind already? She had already ruined the idea of Christmas. She had already ruined the idea of going anywhere West (though both were childish thoughts, and Therese knew that within another year, give or take, Therese would be fine, she would have gotten over Carol and everything would be fine).
Carol was still in her mind because she was still in love. Therese knew that. It was obvious. She could try to convince herself for minutes, hours, days and weeks but it was true. Easier it was to just admit it rather than feign a cold heart.
If Therese tried to put it into words, she would say that her love for Carol had first been naive, innocent. She had longed for too much and expected too much. Her love had been childish and hopeful yet so, so good. And though she wondered if she would have been better off without having ever known Carol (would she be married to Richard now? To live a life as boring as the Kellys?), she knew that if she was given the chance, she’d jump right back into all the ugly stuff over and over again.
To be both unnecessarily bitter and yet so full of love.
It would be wrong for her to seek out Carol again. To ask for forgiveness (though what had Therese done wrong?), to lay down at her feet (would Carol ever want her back?). It would hurt her more, and then what, then what? She willed herself to move away from her photos. Therese would try not to think of Carol again, and she would inevitably fail. Again.
She shuffled to the curtains and opened them, let the sunlight filter through. And for a moment, she looked down to the streets of New York. People laughing. It was odd that the world would continue to spin, regardless of whatever it was that Therese felt. A sobering thought. Therese walked away from the windows.
The photos laid in the drawer, forgotten only until New Years, when Therese rediscovered them and felt the emptiness that had gnawed at her grow even more.