I remind myself of Kathleen.

Of our families.

Of my top commitment right now, which shouldn’t be Rory.

I rip the paper and ball it in my fist.

“Wait, let me take a picture…” She advances toward me, but it’s too late. I throw it into my mouth and swallow. She stops, her eyes flaring, the orange glow of the many candles making her look like a medieval witch.

“You’re insane,” she whispers.

I know.

I write down another sentence.

There’s life everywhere you look. Even in objects. But there is death, too.

“Come take a picture of this.”

“Your Photoshopped thoughts?” She shakes her head. “No, thank you.”

Aurora Belle Jenkins hates me.

But hate is a verb.

And I’m about to prove I hate her more.

Chapter 6

Present

Rory

The sun paints the sky lilac, its light dripping on Mal, highlighting the perfect arcs and planes of his face.

I take another picture. He hasn’t been writing a whole lot, but I’m not here to monitor his progress, or lack thereof.

I don’t know how many of them Ryner is going to use for the website, or album cover, or documentary, or whatever he has in mind for this project, but I can’t wait to upload these to my laptop and start working on them. I want to study Mal’s face alone, without him witnessing what the sight of it does to me.

I stand up and walk around his backyard, looking for my next perfect shot. Mal has been talking about the song “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette for ten minutes now, in a true Old Mal fashion.

“…literally none of her examples were truly ironic. Especially the one with Mr. Play it Safe, who was afraid to fly and ended up dying in a plane crash. It is not ironic. It would have been ironic had he died in a car accident. That’s the definition of irony. The expression of one’s meaning by using language that signifies the opposite. It’s like a bunch of people sat and worked on this song, and nobody—not one soul—bothered to tell her nothing about this song was ironic. Other, of course, than the fact that she wrote a song about irony that wasn’t ironic. Which is a big irony in itself, I suppose.”

I smile to myself, but don’t answer him. There’s something so deliciously sweet about seeing him in his element. It reminds me that under the bitter jerk he’s become is still a boyish, adventurous, wildly creative and witty man.

Who happens to be really good in bed.

“You love what you do,” he states, out of nowhere.

We’ve been talking on and off all night. It’s curt—barely civilized—but it’s progress. It’s still early to be optimistic, and the dynamics might change as soon as Kathleen gets back from Dublin, but I think the realization that I collect napkins defrosted him. I’m not even sure why Mal is trying to be an asshole. He’s terrible at it. He is one of the best, most exciting people I know.