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She keeps a little place in Boulder for when she’s not on assignment and while Lee isn’t entirely sure that she thinks of it as home the way she’d always envisioned home when she was a child, it’s better than nothing at all, which is often all it feels like she has these days. There’s a weariness that has settled over her since leaving Portland, something Lee feels with the expansion of lungs that sting with smoke, with the taste of ash and blood on her tongue, with the movement of bone and muscle that ache more and more each morning she wakes up on the ground or car seat or a musty pallet of blankets. A defeat in her she isn’t sure she’s ever let herself feel before. Enough to make her say, on the evening when the former WF calls a tentative “cease fire” both with themselves and the New People’s Army, “I want to go back home.”
Lee isn’t sure the apartment is even still standing. Isn’t sure if the place and the small touches she’d forced herself into curating for a version of herself that she isn’t sure even exists is anything more than rubble strewn about the streets of downtown Boulder or if it’s a carcass picked clean by the desperate. Both seem more plausible than to think of the place waiting, patiently, for her return.
Still, Lee finds herself saying the words, finds that she can’t quite take them back, even when Joel and Jessie both look at her like she might have suddenly grown an additional head -Joel because he likely can’t remember a time when she’d ever brought a return home up herself and Jessie because it just might never have occurred to her that home was a thing Lee Smith even had.
What had been stranger, still, was the moment one morning when she and Jessie had been in a gas station bathroom -not the worst place she’d ever tried to pee but certainly not the best- and she’d been watching Jessie wash her face, cheeks sunburned and freckled, water dripping from her wrists and said, “There’s room for you, if you want. Until you figure out your next step.”
It had been the same phrasing Jessie had used later, when remarking that she, too, would be joining Lee in Boulder for a bit, to “figure out her next step” and to “get her head on right.” Whatever that might mean. Honestly, if she manages, Lee would love to know.
The night before they were due to reach Boulder, Lee had been stretched out across the back seat pretending to sleep while Joel and Jessie sat on the hood of the car, passing a joint between them, the air crackling with their exhales and the sound of crickets. “You could stick with me, you know,” Joel had said finally around an exhale, the smoke tickling Lee’s nose through the open window. “I could use a photographer.”
It had been embarrassing how Lee had waited in that silence, feeling somehow both annoyed and angry, both fearful and embarrassed at the way she cared about what Jessie might say next.
“Yeah, thanks.” Jessie had coughed a little and that, almost, had made Lee smile. “I think it’s good though. Taking a break.”
For a beat, there had been the crickets, the steady exhale of skunky, bittersweet smoke. Joel had been the first to break the quiet. “She’s a tough one, you know.”
“Yeah.” The car had creaked as one of them had moved. “But she’s not so tough.”
Lee still isn’t sure which one of them can see her clearly. If she even wants them to. If it wasn’t all some big mistake even making it this far: Jessie in the backseat of the car, craning her neck to peer out the window for an apartment building she wouldn’t be able to discern from countless others anyway. Not being able to take it back, the idea of Jessie walking into her house. Not sure if she would even want that either.
Boulder looks the same in so many ways, untouched in a way that warns of privilege, of murmured acceptance, of heads down and brusque interactions with suddenly untrustworthy neighbors. Another way to survive, one Lee isn’t sure she can begrudge anyone these days. It’s not her job anyway, to judge what people do when the world crumbles around them. She’s just there to take the pictures.
Joel follows her directions, taking turn after turn, the Twilight Zone- y feeling of quiet anticipation following them with each mile. A breath held, a constant waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe it never will. Maybe this cease-fire, this effort at a truce, will be the beginning of the end. Finally Joel pulls up alongside the curb in front of the building Lee feels like she remembers only vaguely, smudges from a dream of another life. But, much like the rest of the city around them, this, too, seems more or less untouched. A broken window on one of the lower floors, less cars in the parking lots, no one out at the astro-turf dog park. But still standing.
For a moment, there’s only the sound of closing doors, of bags being hauled from the trunk and dropped to the side walk. Of shoes scuffing asphalt as they shift, suddenly uncertain. Strangers, despite the life they’ve already lived together. Lee makes herself speak, giving Joel a smile she hopes doesn’t look as forced as it feels to her. She’s suddenly so impossibly tired and trying to fight the feeling that she’s somehow letting everyone down. “You know I’m not going to make it for long.”
This seems to work, causing Joel to crack a smile, shaking his head. “I give you a week, tops.”
Lee scoffs. “A week? Generous.”
This time when they smile, Lee feels it, and they hug quickly, Joel smelling of sweat and smoke and Lee doesn’t even want to know what she smells like to him. Now that home, with whatever that might mean, feels so close, she feels animal wild, unfit for human consumption.
Joel smirks, gives Jessie a jerk of the head that might pass as a nod. “See ya, kid.”
“Oh whatever.” Jessie gives him a light punch to the shoulder and they both grin and while they don’t do much than that it feels somehow more comfortable than the goodbye Lee feels still lingering in her chest.
She’s used to this part anyway, so why does it matter? The see you next time type of parting where reunion feels inevitable because people can’t stop killing each other. If it’s not Joel, it’s someone else that she’s saying goodbye to, other journalists or photographers or aid workers that she’s been thrown together with temporarily because they’ve all been drawn to the same diaster. Some people she knows she won’t cross paths with again. Joel she’s pretty sure will be impossible to shake.
He has been so far anyway.
As she leads the way toward the building, Lee finds herself unable to look at Jessie, as though even the smallest glance would give her away. The way her stomach is suddenly in knots. The uncertainty that has made her mouth taste sour, made her heart race. What is she doing? What has she done? What does it mean, bringing Jessie here?
It’s easier to ignore Jessie all together, to pretend keying in the entry code to the lobby requires all her attention. There’s no one waiting at the concierge desk, which seems to make sense, something that had already felt so unnecessarily lavish being fully unnecessary now. No packages waiting behind the desk either, papers scattered haphazardly across desk or floor. Lee doesn’t bother with the idea of checking her mailbox, doesn’t even pause, heading instead toward the elevator bay, a dry chuckle escaping her at the sight of the signs taped to the doors. Out of order. “Figures.”
Thankfully she’s only three floors up, and they walk in shuffling silence, and there’s a moment, still, when Lee thinks about changing her mind. Turning to Jessie and saying, “You know, maybe we should call Joel.” But when she reaches for the keys that she’s kept like a talisman in her pocket wherever she goes, Lee looks at Jessie finally and there’s a relief that flickers through her at the idea that she isn’t going to be walking in alone.
Lee unlocks the door, nudges it open. “Welcome to my humble abode.” She means it to be a joke but it comes out flat, almost nervous, annoyingly so.
Jessie smiles anyway, that curiosity she always wears so clear on her face, and doesn’t hesitate to wedge herself right into Lee’s space. Unsurprisingly.
Lee follows behind, locking the door, and she reacquaints herself with the place through Jessie’s eyes. The apartment is small, nothing to write home about, decorated is soft whites and grays, soothing colors that were all Lee thought she could stomach after the garishly bright flashes of human suffering she’d been staring at through the lens of her camera. The navy blue throw is still folded neatly across the back of the pristine white couch, the blue and gray pillows arranged so just on either end. There’s a build in book shelf, far from cluttered, home to a few books on photography, a novel or two she’d bought to read when she’d thought she would actually be taking a break, whatever that meant, but found her mind and body unable to quiet. She doesn’t keep many personal items around and she wonders what Jessie thinks of it, imagines for a moment that Jessie’s own space, wherever that might be, is overflowing with the detritus of a life tangles with those around her, so that her absence might be missed if Jessie was suddenly gone. Photos, souvenirs, relics of places visited and things done that Lee doesn’t have in her own home. Instead, among the few coffee table books or self-important texts about the philosophy of photography, there’s a generic vase without flowers, a paperweight in the shape of a globe, a bulky award she’d won years ago for some photo she can’t remember taking. Things that could almost belong to anyone.
Beyond the living room is the kitchen, one space moving seamlessly into the other thanks to the open floor plan. That, too, is soft whites and gentle, muted grays and blues. A place that almost looks unlived in, staged for someone’s viewing pleasure. No dishes in the sink. No crumbs on the counter. She’d been meticulous, as always, right before she’d left, dreading the idea of one day returning to a mess or the smell of something rotting. Instead, the apartment just smells slightly musty and vaguely of lemons from an air freshener that had burned out long before. There’s a small, circular, dining room table tucked by a bay window with gauzy curtains that hide the view of the city. Past that is the hallway that leads to the laundry room, the bedroom, the extent of the space that belongs to Lee Smith. She can’t decide if it feels homey and mature, the type of place a lauded photojournalist would live in, or a place obviously too small for two and belonging to a person who wouldn’t have anyone to fill it with anyway.
Jessie seems to finish surveying the space right as Lee turns her head to take her surprise guest in and they meet eyes and Lee can’t tell if the crackle that rolls through her is nerves or excitement. Jessie smiles, the crooked tentative gesture she’d seen in the hotel lobby months before. “I like it.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
Stilted. Awkward. Strangers on a train.
And then Jessie sputters a laugh, nose crinkling. “Why is this so weird?”
Something about Jessie saying it out loud loosens something in Lee and she relaxes, shoulders coming down from their spot beside her ears. “I think we’re both just exhausted.”
She doesn’t say the other things running through her mind, like she’s regetting all this just a little bit, but not because Jessie is here but because there’s nothing to hide behind now, no veneer of the jaded, experienced war photographer to impress Jessie Cullen with now that she’s standing in her living room and looking at all the empty space. She doesn’t say that she doesn’t know how to do this part, never has, that it suddenly feels like the past few months with Jessie might have been born of the road and of a war and that it, like so many things in Lee’s life, might not thrive in the quiet.
That it’s one thing to wake up in a cheap motel beside Jessie and hurriedly get dressed and get into the car to hit the road once more but that she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do when she wakes up beside someone and has all the time in the world.
Jessie nods and that uncertain look as back and it’s that moment again, one Lee thought she had crossed for good and never had to think about again that now feels just as sticky and uncertain and it had been hard enough before, to admit that she felt something, that she wanted something, to lean into Jessie, to kiss her, to keep doing it again and again, to get into bed with her with intention, to undress and be undressed with shaking hands. And now it feels twice as hard, rather than easier, to do it all again.
But still, she swallows. She says, “Come on.”
And Jessie follows her, bags set by the couch, shoes left by the door.
The bedroom has the same stuffy, lemony smell as the rest of the house and Lee goes around the bed to push open the window, letting in the smell of the outside instead. The city seems to be standing well enough and the air doesn’t smell of ash and metal, so Lee figures that’s as much a win as she can hope for right now. The bed looks unbearably soft, the comfortable plush and white, the bed piled with decorative pillows -an indulgence that had felt as silly then as it does now. Still, she works on pulling the pillows off, tossing them onto the floor, while Jessie doesn’t bother to hide her curiosity as she pokes around the room. Much like the other space in the house, there isn’t much to see aside from the intimacy that automatically comes from the room where Lee falls asleep, where she showers and studies herself in the mirror and tries to remember where she is.
They’re both tacky with travel and the griminess that comes from washing only your face and arms in a gas station bathroom but once the sheets are pulled back there’s no hope of doing anything else. Lee pulls her hair from its ponytail, watching Jessie out of the corner of her eye as she shucks her jeans and socks, pulling her shirt over her head and leaving her standing in just a tank top. She strips in a similar way, feeling suddenly shy standing there with bare feet, bare legs, bare shoulders, like a Victorian maiden. Jessie seems equally bashful suddenly, pink dusting the tops of her ears and neither of them saying anything.
Lee climbs into bed and Jessie follows suit and they lay facing each other, swimming in white down, buoyed by a mountain of pillows. The sheets were clean the last time she’d left but the months away have left them like everything else in the apartment: stale and unused but they’re still soft and more inviting than the car she’s been trying to fall asleep in recently.
“Thanks for letting me, you know, tag along…”
Lee assumes the grimace on Jessie’s face is for herself, for the slumber party politeness in her tone.
Lee reaches out, letting her hand settle in the crook of Jessie’s elbow, the skin warm and soft against her fingers, rubs her thumb along the vein there instead of saying thank you for wanting to tag along.
When Lee opens her eyes, everything feels strange and heavy, eyes gummy and head swimming. Nothing makes sense, nothing feels the way it should: the world too soft, too quiet, too comfortable. She rolls over to see the bed empty beside her, her mind struggling through molasses thick thoughts to figure out why such a thing is strange. When she reaches out, absent and curious, to touch the space, it’s cool to the touch, sheets smooth, but she remembers anyway the memory of the person she had fallen asleep beside, the two of them too exhausted to do much more than just let themselves sink into the softness around them. But now Jessie is gone and the room is dark, so dark it suggests that she’s lost more than just a few hours, and Lee forces herself to sit up, to push her hair from her face, to look around. The city lights are on, blurry through the curtains that flutter in the breeze coming through the half open window, and the bedroom door is cracked in a way that lets in on the faintest sliver of light, the suggestion that she might not be alone after all.
Slowly, Lee eases herself out of bed, pressing her toes into the rug. She feels a bit like a stranger in this space but that’s not entirely unusual, not when she’s been gone so long, not when there’s a part of her that always expects to never come back at all. Maybe the place will start to feel like home again or maybe it won’t, not before she leaves again and starts the whole cycle over. Rather than tugging back on her wrinkled jeans, she grabs a pair of sweats from a bottom drawer, trying to push aside the feeling that she’s rooting through someone else’s things, helping herself to someone else’s life. And instead Lee heads out into the living room, to the sounds of someone helping themselves to her space with more comfort than Lee things she’s ever been able to manage.
Jessie is clean, wide awake and freshly showered if her bright eyes and still damp hair are any indication. She’s wearing a loose t-shirt and shorts that Lee hasn’t yet seen and it takes Lee a second longer to realize the clothes are hers, that Jessie has helped herself to the same drawers Lee had felt so awkward digging through moments before.
At the sound of her footsteps, Jessie turns around, looking both excited and apologetic as she holds up a frying pan, the bottom of which seems to already have a layer of burnt something clinging to it. “Okay, so, you don’t have a ton of groceries so I’m doing my best.”
Lee looks at her, at the pan, at the plate sitting on the counter of lopsided and burnt pancakes, and tries to remember when she’d bought the things to even make pancakes in the first place. “It’s…fine.” She still feels a bit like she’s underwater, blinking through the cobwebby thickness of a particularly hard sleep, one that makes it hard to imagine that you’ve woken up in the same world you left. “Sorry I…I don’t really shop before I know I’m going to be gone.”
“Yeah, totally. Make sense.” Jessie steps to the sink, attempting to scrape some of the charred remains of pancake off with a spatula. “I hope…sorry. I didn’t mean to just…take over.”
“It’s fine,” Lee assures her quickly, stepping further into the crook of space that has defined itself as a kitchen. Everything exists on in a nice little box set apart by the countertop -on one side are the bar stools she’d bought but has yet to have reason to actually use, the other more practical with the trashcan and recycling bin tucked underneath- and watches Jessie move from the sink, to the stove top once more. “Sorry I slept so long.”
Lee winces, looking at the clock. It’s past nine on what is presumably the same day, the sun gone, leaving the apartment warmed by the lamps Jessie had turned on at some point. The worst part is that she thinks she could go back to sleep, that she’s half tempted to just turn around and crawl back into the covers.
“I got up not too long ago.” Jessie applies a liberal amount of cooking spray to the pan, seems to attempt to measure out a bit of batter before just dumping the whole scoopful into the pan and watching it spread. “That shower is amazing, by the way. And maybe it’s just because we’ve been staying in places that have cockroaches crawling up the walls but I think I’m in love with your towels.”
Lee lets out a laugh, smirking. “Just make yourself at home.”
Jessie looks at her, suddenly uncertain, eyes searching Lee’s face to parcel out the joke. Or lack thereof. You’re always so serious, Jessie had told her once, when they’d been walking through the ruins of an old shopping mall, intent on taking photos of the graffiti and shattered glass. I never know when you’re joking.
“I’m kidding,” Jessie assures her quickly, both that past version of Jessie and this one in front of her now. “I’m glad you…I don’t mind.” Before Jessie has the chance to respond, Lee tips her chin in the direction of the pancake, which is starting to smoke just a bit. “Need a hand?”
Jessie turns back, eyebrows lifting, and she grabs for the spatula. “No, I got it. I’m not giving up,” she assures Lee as she wrangles the pancake enough to flip it over. “I’m going to make the perfect pancake. I think.”
Lee shakes her head, stepping around her toward the fridge to study the contents. It’s worse than she’d thought, the cabinets equally as bare, and she’s impressed that Jessie had managed to even find the pancake mix. While Jessie works on her perfect pancakes, Lee finds what she can -bagels that haven’t gone stale thanks to her foresight to store them in the fridge, jam to cover them with- and she puts her hand against the small of Jessie’s back as she reaches around her for the toaster. It’s the first time they’ve really touched, Lee thinks, since she’d invited Jessie to stay with her.
Jessie turns her face and they’re close enough that Lee can feel the exhale of Jessie’s breath, can see her freckles, soft and delicate, excavated from the grime.
“We can get some more stuff tomorrow,” Lee says, moving back with the toaster in hand. “I’m sure there’s a place around here that’s still open.”
Jessie nods, smiling. “Okay. Sounds good to me.”
We, Lee thinks. Tomorrow.
It’s more of a plan than she’s allowed herself to make in a long time.
Jessie manages a trio of pancakes that are more golden than burnt and between those and the bagels it’s enough to satisfy the aching pinch in Lee’s stomach. They take the plates to the couch, sitting with the stack of pancakes between them, both leaning against opposite sides of the couch, legs crossed. Jessie takes one of the pancakes, tearing it into pieces, seeming unbothered by her lack of prowess in the kitchen.
“When was the last time you were here?” Jessie asks, when they’ve done the best they can to scrape off the blackened bits, leaving behind what neither of them are hungry enough to stomach.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Lee blows out a breath, tipping her head back slightly as she thinks. “It was…before the Florida Alliance took Atlanta, I think.” She shakes her head, shrugging. “It’s hard to remember. Sometimes I think the time I spend out taking pictures is more real than the time I spend here.”
Jessie looks around, taking in her surroundings once more, the empty shelves and frames with pictures of people Lee hasn’t talked to in years. “It’s nice,” she says. “Quiet.”
Lee nods, brushing her fingers absently along the folded blanket along the back of the couch. “I…that’s usually what I need when I come back. Something quiet. Just a…place I can be alone.”
A place that feels stable under her feet. Clean. Everything soft and gray and nonthreatening. A bed that swallows her up so that the dreams don’t stand a chance.
“So you don’t make a habit of dragging annoying amateur photographers back home with you?” Jessie smirks, lifting her eyebrows.
“Ah, no. You were the first.” Lee pauses, giving her a look. “And you’re not an amateur. Unless you’re talking about your cooking skills.”
Jessie laughs and Lee watches the arch of her throat, the way her damp hair spills past her shoulders. “Yeah, sorry about that.”
Lee shakes her head, feigning indifference as she reaches for the mostly empty plate, setting it aside on the coffee table. “No, it’s fine,” she assures Jessie. “I love my pancakes blackened.”
Jessie huffs out a breath, affecting a pout. “See if I ever cook for you again.”
Lee manages to wrestle back her smirk. “Promise?”
Jessie tosses a pillow at her and Lee catches it with a laugh, dropping it to the floor, and when she looks at Jessie, Lee finds that she’s grinning, her cheeks flushed, and tendrils of warmth spread through her chest, twisting down her ribs and into her stomach, and as she moves closer to the opposite side of the couch, she realizes she can’t remember the last time she’d had cause to laugh in her own living room.
As it turns out, Jessie is not wrong about the towels. If Lee happens to spend an embarrassingly long amount of time standing in front of her foggy bathroom mirror, face buried in the softness of the life she’d left behind, well, no one needs to know.
Between the rest, the shower, the clothes that haven’t been hastily washed and rewashed too many times to count, and maybe even the company, Lee feels more human than she has in longer than she can remember. Despite her previous misgivings, waking up the following morning beside Jessie without the demands of the job to urge them forward hadn’t been nearly as terrifying as she’d imagined. It had been easy to slip herself closer, to press herself into Jessie, to reach for this thing, this person, that she wanted. Easier still to pretend that nothing else existed beyond the walls hiding them away from the rest of the world. The quiet city, the quiet sounds of breathing, the quiet of Jessie’s gentle, sure touch, all of it had been enough to make all the rest of it seem momentarily unimportant.
It had been just as easy to remember to simple steps of being human: finding her car keys from where she’d stashed them in the junk drawer, getting behind the wheel, letting her memory guide them toward the overly expensive boutique grocery store close to her apartment. “I hate shopping here,” she admits to Jessie as the pull into one of the many empty spaces. It feels better to get ahead of the thing rather than let Jessie think of her as the type of person who is okay with paying five dollars for a loaf of bread when there isn’t a war going on. “But it’s good in emergencies.”
How quickly her definition of emergency has changed after one night of being home.
The parking lot is empty by standards of the place but they are by no means the only cars in the lot. Jessie’s eyes roam as they head toward the entrance, something about her that Lee has had plenty of time to notice over the months, the way Jessie always seems to be looking for something, framing a shot in her mind. Lee thinks she used to be the same, until she started spending more of her time cataloging all the things around her that could kill her.
“I feel like I’m just learning so much about you,” Jessie remarks as they grab a cart and head into the quiet store. “You don’t like syrup on your pancakes, your shampoo smells ridiculously amazing, you hate organic-”
“I don’t hate organic,” Lee corrects with a laugh. “I just hate overpriced grocery stores. Things are already expensive enough.”
Lee is learning quite a few things herself, like how soothing the sound of the shower in the other room can be, how Jessie hums when she thinks maybe no one can hear, how shockingly intimate it is to be pushing a cart down mostly empty aisles beside someone else, comparing likes and ideas for shared meals.
It’s been so long since she’s had to factor someone else into the mundane moments of a life she only has in pieces that Lee isn’t sure she’s ever done it at all.
The shelves are patchy at best, most of the tags handwritten with prices crossed out and adjusted here and there but there’s enough quiet normalcy about the place and the city around it that Lee can’t imagine she’ll be haggling with the man behind the counter about which currency carries the most weight and how much she’s willing to pay for a box of cereal. Instead, Lee just watches as Jessie picks up a box of pasta, the dried noodles inside rattling as she tosses it into the cart. “So do you think things are just going to be normal now?”
Lee trails behind her as Jessie continues down the aisle. “What do you mean?”
Jessie gestures, the sweep of her hand taking in the store. “Is this just it? The war is over and we just go back to grocery shopping and…what?”
“I doubt the war is over.” Lee can’t help the scoff that accompanies the words, the weary jadedness.
But that’s something she’s learned, something Jessie will too. Wars never end. They just change shape.
“Okay, well, so what’s next?” Jessie lifts her eyebrows, looking at Lee like she really wants to know. Like she is expecting an actual answer. “You just…wait until people start blowing shit up again and get your cameras and…go?”
“I…I guess.” Lee nudges the cart forward, pretending to seriously contemplate the different types of red sauce on the shelf. “I feel like I spend more time out there, watching people blow shit up than I do-”
“Buying overpriced pasta sauce?”
Lee smiles faintly, nods. “Yeah. Exactly.” She looks at Jessie, shrugs. A confession of sorts. “This isn’t really the part I’m good at.”
Jessie only stares back at her, unflinching. “What part?”
Another shrug. Lee glances around, as though the empty shelves will have a different answer than the one she knows she’s going to give. “The rest of it, I guess. The normal stuff.”
In another version of this moment, Lee knows she would be at home alone. Toasting another bagel or maybe just debating how long she can survive on what is still in her cabinets, if it’s even worth it to try and fill them up, contemplating already where she will go next. What flashes will imprint themselves onto her mind so that when she closes her eyes and presses her face to the soft towels she’d so indulgently bought as another version of herself all she sees are the faces of men as they bleed in the streets, trying to figure out how they got there, their confusion over whether it’s all worth something somehow reflected back at them from the lens of her camera. In another version of this moment, she would be determinedly moving forward, busying herself, shark-like, certain if she stopped moving she would simply drown in it all. In another version, she might have just fallen asleep on the couch with the throw draped over her shoulders, mind too busy for anything but an approximation of rest.
She isn’t sure how to say all this to Jessie, though she thinks she might know anyway. That it would be impossible to miss.
Here, in this moment, there’s Jessie looking at her, the cart between them, Jessie’s fingers loosely curled around one end while Lee holds the other. “I don’t think you’re so bad at it.”
Lee wants to scoff, to make a joke, dry and brittle. But she just looks down at the contents of their mostly empty cart so that Jessie can’t see the look in her eyes.
“So you don’t think the war is over?”
They’re studying the scant variety of fresh produce when Jessie asks this question so casually it takes Lee a beat to catch up, to pull her thoughts away from where they’ve been rooted since the previous aisle. The woman carefully checking the bruises on a crate of apples looks up, scowling in Jessie’s direction. Not that Jessie seems to notice.
“I…don’t know,” Lee hedges. “Maybe they’ll be better at transferring power than I think. Maybe I’m just being cynical.” She shrugs. “It’s happened before.”
“What about you?”
Lee pretends to misunderstand. “What about me?”
Despite her best judgment, Lee has come to enjoy the way Jessie looks at her. Or, rather, how it feels to be seen by Jessie. The weight of her stare that is as forceful and gentle as her touch. “What will you do next?”
Lee hums rather than answer, noncommittal and avoidant, and Jessie lets her.
“Okay, so. What about this one?”
Jessie is sitting cross-legged on the end of the bed, photos spread around her, her hair falling past her face in twists that could be called messy or sloppy but one her seem like just the right brand of chaotic, bringing to mind the image of someone so easy in their appearance that they barely remember to run a brush through their hair on the way out the door.
Beautiful, Lee thinks, as she has thought so many times before. It makes her feel better to pretend she’s looking at Jessie through a photographer’s eye, makes it a little less terrifying to note the way the sunlight falls across her curves if she blames it on framing and composition. Though that does little to explain away some of the other thoughts that crash through her mind.
It’s been a few days spent like this. The two of them together without pause, Lee getting used to seeing Jessie wearing her clothes, sitting on her couch, waking her up with a half-sung song in the shower or by relaying some bit of news or ridiculous story she’d seen online, delivered without any sort of introduction as Lee blinked sleep from her eyes. She’s gotten used to having someone in this space with her, so much so that she imagines the place might be achingly empty without her.
Lee reaches out a hand from where she lays stretched on the bed, propped among the pillows, feeling half asleep thanks to the thick afternoon light coming through the windows and the lazy day they’ve already been indulging in. A heavy ease pulling her to the mattress. Jessie passes over the photo and Lee cracks an eye to study the print. Sudan, she thinks, a few years ago. She tells Jessie this and then adds, “I was only supposed to be there a few days. Ended up staying almost a month.”
Jessie looks at her with interest, the way she has been doing for hours, for days, studying her with rapt attention while coaxing Lee to reluctantly unspoil the memories not only of her traveling, of the photos that seem as burned into her mind as they are onto the film, but of her years before all that. Life on a farm only a few hundred miles from here. A day or so ago, Lee had asked Jessie if she wanted to take advantage of the temporarily dependable phone signal and call home, to tell her parents where she was, that she was still alive, only to have Jessie shrug, brush the idea aside. Jessie is a talker -in the kitchen while they cook; in the living room over the sporadic news reports; in bed- the absence of her wanting to talk about this standing out starkly. Lee hadn’t pressed, had only given up a few more slivers of herself in hopes that Jessie might too. She isn’t used to asking questions, isn’t used to wanting to know the answers. It’s strange, this feeling of wanting to pull it all from Jessie.
“What happened?”
“Well.” Lee pauses, considering. “What didn’t happen, I guess?” She shakes her head, putting the photo aside, where the violence of it stands out in sharp contrast of the softness of the bed beside her. “There was a problem with our flight and then our guide was killed one night when the hotel we were staying at ended up being targeted by members of one of the more aggressive factions. We had to make ourself scare for a little bit…definitely not according to plan.”
“It wasn’t all bad though, right? I mean you got these great pictures.”
“Hmm.” Lee picks up the picture once more. Studies it. The magazine she’d sold the photos too had reached out later to tell her how much engagement the piece had received online. How people couldn’t stop talking about it. She looks at the photo of the dead and dying men and wonders if the amount of clicks and comments had balanced it all out. “I think it helped people understand some of what was going on over there.”
Jessie nods, her attention on one of the other photos from that trip. Lee studies her instead, the wistful longing that Lee thinks she’s worn once upon a time too. The idealistic belief that taking the right photo was going to make a difference. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s the point, right?”
Lee doesn’t answer, not that Jessie seems to be looking for a response anyway. Instead, she shuffles through the stack of photos, catalogs, eventually pulling out a magazine Lee had reluctantly allowed herself to be featured in, gracing the cover with a stare that always unsettles Lee when she catches sight of herself, wondering if that’s what she really and truly looks like to those around her.
An empty expression and a thousand yard stare.
Jessie flips through the magazine until she finds the article in the center, readjusting so that she’s stretched out beside Lee, their heads sharing the same pillow, shoulders pressed together. “‘Lee Smith sees the darkest parts of the world and, through her sharp, unflinching gaze, invites all who look at her photos to do the same.’”
Lee grimaces, half-tempted to tear the magazine from her hand and toss it across the room, to put a stop to this absolute drivel. But she likes the feeling of Jessie’s sharp edges pressed to hers, is too heavy and comfortable there beside her to do more than groan. “Please. No more.”
“‘Smith has taken some of the most important images of the past twenty years, capturing both the beauty and the horrific nature of-”
Now Lee does reach for the magazine, plucking it from Jessie’s fingers and earning herself a laugh. “I can’t believe I actually let them write that crap,” she mutters, tossing the magazine over the side of the bed. “There’s no beauty in any of this.”
“You don’t think?” Jessie looks at her earnestly, that curiosity shining back at Lee. The sycophant different from the friend, the lover, the companion. All things Lee is starting to become intimately familiar with in a way that has her preemptively lonely for the inevitable ending.
The question settles over Lee, sticking to her bones, leaden. “Do you?”
Jessie seems to seriously consider the question, the thoughts playing so clearly across her face. In her eyes. She’ll learn, Lee thinks regrettably, to hide that one day. But in this moment, Lee can see it. The dying men. The tacky stickiness of blood in the creases of her palms. Sammy. The cyanide sweetness of the relief you feel when you survive after others have died.
Finally, she seems to settle on her response, voice steady as she says, “It’s important.”
Lee nods, letting her hand cradle Jessie’s face, thumb brushing the sweep of cheek. “That’s not the same thing.”
This, Jessie doesn’t argue with. She just accepts touch and words without comment, closing her eyes, leaning into both.
Lee wakes to find the bed beside her empty and she goes, half-dressed and half-asleep, into the living room to find Jessie squinting at the television. The footage on the screen is muted by Lee still has enough experience with these moments -detonation, a sudden explosion of violence- to fill in the gaps.
Without thinking, Lee settles a hand on Jessie’s shoulder, Jessie’s skin warm against her palm from where the shoulder of her shirt gapes wide enough to slip down. The news reporter talks over the continued footage, playing on a loop. The bombing of the building where they peace talks were reportedly happening, where the people who imagined themselves in charge were trying to reassemble the country they had so eagerly torn apart.
So much for that.
Lee doesn’t realize that the thought isn’t hers until a beat later, when she realizes that it’s Jessie who has spoken the sentiment out loud, her voice wry and resigned.
“I guess you were right,” Jessie adds and Lee frowns, watching the footage, feeling herself slip into the skin of a person who can stand there amidst the wreckage and record it with steady hands.
Jessie doesn’t seem to mind Lee’s silence or the intensity with which she’s still staring at the screen. “I guess we’ll probably be hearing from Joel soon,” Jessie remarks instead, almost as though to herself. “I’m sure he’s going to want to be there as soon as possible.”
Lee looks at her, Jessie’s striking profile all that she can see from this angle, and her face is expressive as it ever is. The eagerness in her eyes makes Lee feel like she might have gone back in time somehow, like she might have seen the Jessie Cullen from so many months before, when she had decided she was going to take her cameras and go. Or maybe she’s seen herself too from years before, a girl who looked at scenes of war and felt a duty that feels brittle and heavy to Lee now.
They’ll go, she knows. Joel will call and the three of them will head out to California once more and soft towels and meals cooked with elbows and shoulders brushing will just become memories, something less real than what she’s walking into.
Lee could stay. Could reject the call. Could give herself a breather, a break, a rest that she’s never allowed before. Never admitted to even needing. But Jessie never would. Jessie wouldn’t stay, not with such a noble reason to throw herself right into the thick of it once more.
Lee can feel the soft beating of Jessie’s heart through her skin, can feel the flutter of it against her palm. It feels like a reason enough to stay, this, the two of them. The soft towels, the warm apartment.
It’s a nice thought, at least. But Lee knows exactly what she’ll say when she picks up the phone.