Behind His Lens

  “Are you okay?” Bella asks with a concerned look. I twirl my antique ring around my finger out of habit and try to sound genuine as I lie to her face.

  “Yeah. Probably just hungry.” Such bullshit. I’ve only felt genuine hunger a few times in the past four years and only when I’ve been with Jude. Isn’t that strange? What the hell is wrong with me? I don’t even know him. The more I consider it, the angrier I become. What do I think he’s going to do? Swoop in and save the day? Erase every memory that keeps me awake at night?

  Just then we cross the threshold out onto the porch and the hostess passes each of us a drink menu before excusing herself.

  “Hi, girls,” Ryan calls as we step down onto the open patio. The restaurant staff pushed a few tables together so that the entire crew could sit together. They arranged gorgeous orchid leis onto the back of each wicker chair and soft candles glow in a line down the long tablescape. Immediately, everyone starts shuffling around, clamoring for spots next to one another, but I hang back, taking in the scene from the top of the stairs.

  It takes two breaths before my eyes land on Jude.

  He’s stands off to the side with one hand wrapped around the neck of a beer and one hand tucked into his jeans’ pocket. He has on a white cotton button-down that’s half tucked into his jeans and a smooth smile, drawing me closer like a moth to a flame. I step closer with fluid movements and each inch seems to release the coil in my stomach until it dissipates completely. Just like that, he’s unraveled every worry I’d built up throughout the day.

  He narrows his eyes with intense focus as he watches me approach.

  “We match,” I smile, glancing from my white dress, back to his shirt.

  “Should I take it off?” He cocks his brow.

  My heart flutters wildly at the thought.

  “And send every girl here into heart failure? Let’s save that for dessert… at least.”

  He grins and then gives my body a once over. “I like when you wear white.” God, when he looks at me like that I feel as though I have nothing on at all.

  “Do I wear it often?”

  He squints and takes a sip of his beer, not willing to elaborate I guess because he changes the subject.

  “Did you have fun at the shoot?”

  Did I? Surprisingly, yes. “I felt like a vampire or something with that black swimsuit and crazy make-up.”

  He laughs gently. “I could see it. You aren’t pale enough though.” His gaze lingers momentarily on me before he takes another sip.

  My hand runs over my exposed shoulder, feeling the skin that’s darkened nicely since we’ve been under the Hawaiian sun. It’ll fade once we get back to New York, but for now I feel tanned and pretty, especially under his gaze.

  “You have some freckles on your nose,” I point out, and he wrinkles his nose in protest. They’re hardly noticeable, not with his mysterious eyes, tousled hair, and charisma distracting any girl within a ten foot radius.

  “Do I? Usually I get a few when I’m outside for a long time.”

  “I like them. You’re a manly-man, so the freckles seem… charming.”

  He narrows his eyes and reaches out to wind his hand around the back of my neck, tugging me toward him. His finger skims along the bottom of my hairline and my heart kicks into overdrive.

  “I’m not charming,” he protests as his fingers glide under my hair, sending a delicious shiver down my spine.

  “No?” I ask, pressing my hands against his chest and feeling the play of his hard muscles beneath the thin fabric.

  “Not usually.”

  “Mmm… I’m flattered,” I murmur watching his lips creep closer to mine.

  “I’m going to sleep in your bed again tonight, Charley.”

  “Okay,” I breathe, never looking away from his mouth.

  “But we aren’t going to sleep,” he whispers so that no one overhears.

  “Oh.” My mouth forms a perfect “O” and then hangs there, frozen.

  “So, let’s get some dinner in you so we can leave.”

  Can he feel my pulse riot from his declaration?

  “Let’s just go now,” I plead.

  “Charley, Charley,” he bends and kisses my neck so briefly that my skin aches for more. “You need food and we should be respectful of the rest of the cast.”

  I narrow my eyes, mumbling under my breath, “To hell with them”, as he drags me over to the table so we can sit down. He chuckles and ignores my hollow threat.

  There are still a few people mingling around the porch chatting, but for the most part, everyone has started to sit and order drinks and food. Jude and I pull out chairs next to Bella. Ryan’s already relaxing across from her, nursing some kind of island cocktail with Victoria sitting beside him, hanging onto his every word. I wonder if she likes him or if she just wants to have fun the last night in Hawaii.

  “How’d you like your first cover shoot, Charley?” Ryan asks with a bright smile after we take our seats.

  Within seconds, I feel Jude’s hand skim the back of my thick wicker chair, barely touching my skin, but sending a clear message all the same.

  “I really enjoyed it actually. I liked your vision today. I haven’t seen anything like it before.”

  He nods, soaking in my approval. “I’m glad you liked it. We wanted the vibe to be different from any shoot we’ve done in the past. Did you see last years’ issue?”

  I nibble on my bottom lip and glance quickly to Jude and then back. “No, actually. I’m terrible about picking up magazines. Where was it shot?”

  His eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Oh, that’s a shame. You should find a copy. We filmed in Greenland. Do you remember how pissed the models were the entire weekend, Bella?” he asks, turning his attention to her with a mischievous smile.

  “Oh my god, I thought we agreed to forget that weekend all together!” she laughs, turning to me. “They expected us to pose in bikinis in like negative twenty degree weather. We were all threatening to sue.”

  “Jeez! That’s just cruel; I’ll take active volcanoes over snow any day.”

  Jude laughs next to me, “I felt pretty terrible wrapped in a parka when they were all shivering.”

  “What a tough job you have, Mr. Anderson,” I quip, eliciting laughs from Bella and Ryan, but Jude’s gaze clouds over in an instant and he turns toward the table to adjust his silverware. Did I insult him? He should be proud; he’s a great photographer.

  “Hey,” I lean in gently, wrapping my hand over his. “Everything okay? I was just kidding.”

  He nods distractedly, fiddling with his fork “Yeah.”

  “Would you guys like to order?” A chipper voice asks behind us, and we all mumble apologies, realizing we haven’t even looked at the menus yet.

  …

  “That was amazing! I would have never thought to combine pineapple and pulled pork,” I rave as we push the door open to my hotel room and pad across the plush carpet.

  “I’m glad you liked it.”

  “Mmm. I loved it.” I toss my purse onto an overstuffed armchair and splay back onto the bed like a sated princess. Jude stands a few feet away with his head cocked to the side and a smirk coating his beautiful lips.

  “Did you like the food?”

  “I think I liked our picnic yesterday better,” he hints, all amusement seeping from his feral gaze.

  I bite my lip nervously and mention the first thing that comes to mind.

  “Do you think there could be something going on between Ryan and Victoria?” I ask, propping myself up on my elbows and staring up into his blue eyes.

  His fingers run along his stubble as he mulls over my question. “Maybe. They’ve worked with each other a lot, but they could just be good friends.”

  “But they shared a meal and he offered to walk her back to her room,” I say, wiggling my eyebrows. “There’s definitely something going on between them,” I declare confidently, like a detective solving a crime.

  He nods slowly, ac
cepting the idea. Then his captivating eyes stare into me as he asks, “Is there something going on between us?”

  For a brief moment, the oxygen leaves my body and I’m left paralyzed.

  Yes, my subconscious shouts.

  But then my lungs inhale and my defenses are already gearing into motion. “Of course… I mean we shared a meal and you walked me back to my room too,” I joke, making light of his serious question.

  “Charley…” his tone is dark and deadly.

  I want to scream “What do you want from me, Jude!?” He can’t ask me questions like that unless he wants to hear answers he won’t like.

  “Why did you get upset earlier when I joked about your job being easy?” I ask with narrowed eyes. If he wants to make me feel uncomfortable then I’ll do the same and see how much he likes it. We’re both hiding demons, but he seems to have forgotten that fact since we’ve been in paradise. I thought we were having fun and forgetting about everything but us, here and now.

  His hands run through his hair forcefully, tugging on the dark stands as he stares out over the ocean.

  “It’s not a story I’ve told many people,” he offers vaguely, as if that’s enough to end the conversation. Like hell it is.

  I scoot back over the duvet cover until my body rests against the headboard. I don’t say a word; I don’t goad him into speaking. Honestly, it’d be easier if he shut off like I do, closing the subject so we can move onto the physical side of our “relationship”. That way there wouldn’t be any confusion about what our arrangement is. A part of me desperately wants him to open up and reveal his secrets, but I know it’ll complicate things. We should just stick to what’s on the surface: our chemical attraction. Plain and simple.

  He doesn’t move and he doesn’t look at me. His hands are folded around his chest and his eyes are glued to the ocean beyond my room’s window.

  But then he starts talking, and my heart slowly crumbles under the weight of his words.

  “After college, I went to work for a popular Magazine as a war photographer. It’s the goal most photojournalism majors aspire to: covering real news in areas of the world that need exposure. I’d interned at the magazine through college and when they offered me the position, I would have been insane to pass it up.”

  I had no idea he was a war photographer. He said his current job was easier than the last, but I just assumed it was something else, something lighter.

  “We were stationed in various villages inside Iraq. My assignment was meant to last a month, but they ended up extending it a few times and I stayed for a little over eight months in total. That was the longest eight months of my life.” As he speaks, his eyes darken and his jaw clenches tight. “The war we fight over there is different than the wars of the past. Today’s conflicts aren’t fought on battlefields. Instead of marching troops toward your enemy with rifles at the ready, modern militaries engage in urban fighting. We had to keep our eyes peeled every moment because the enemy could have been anywhere. There was no separation between war and life, only constant paranoia of what could be waiting around the corner.”

  My hand clasps over my mouth, but I don’t make a sound.

  “At first, I tried to focus on what I could control: the exposures, saturation, and white balance of my photos. I was taking photos that were meant to shock the western world and was doing a great job at it. I followed marine units, protesters, and civilians step-for-step— through decaying neighborhoods and crowded markets so that I could take photos of the combatants and the afflicted. Civilians suffering from food shortages, hospitals overflowing with the sick and injured, and entire villages burning beneath the weight of war.”

  “Every night as I scrolled through photos, trying to decide which to send to my boss, the tragedies of the day would hit me. I’d push everything away during the day, internalizing the overwhelming suffering. But at night the disguise would slip and I’d start to contemplate the darkness surrounding me,” he pauses and takes a heavy breath. “But it wasn’t until I met Ali that everything fucking collapsed.”

  A tear rolls down his cheek and I’m taken aback by all he’s had to endure. What could have happened to him?

  “Jude. You don’t have to keep going.”

  He wipes the tear away forcefully and continues his story. I think it might be easier for him to say it all at once. If he stops now, I wonder if he’d ever want to bring it up again.

  “Ali was a little boy that lived in the village we were stationed in during the end of my assignment. I’d see him every morning, begging for food with the rest of these orphaned boys. We were taught to keep the civilians at a distance, to remain unbiased observers.”

  “I couldn’t begin to understand the culture of that village. Hunger will do crazy things to people, but I didn’t know. I had no clue what the consequences would be.” The anguish behind his confessions overflows my eyes with sad tears. What could have possibly happened?

  “Charley, he was so fucking skinny I could see every bone in his body.” Finally Jude looks at me and my heart splits in two. “I couldn’t just ignore it. Every day it weighed on my conscience. To be a good war photographer you have to be willing to get as close as possible to the subject without feeling a goddamn thing. What kind of bastard can do that?”

  “Jude,” I plead through quiet tears. I want to assure him he did the right thing, but I don’t want to interrupt him.

  “After I’d thought about it for days, one morning I packed an extra protein bar and some bread in my camera bag. I went to the village center to find him like I did every morning. He’d picked up a few words of English and he would ask me my name and if I had a ‘family in America’. He asked me that every day, and every day I’d say no and keep walking. That morning, I told him to follow me over to a side alley. I had to pull him away; there were too many people starving, not just these orphans, but the entire village. The UN was trying to send aid, but it wasn’t getting to these small villages fast enough.”

  “I gave him the food and he started crying. He tore into the bread as quickly as he could. But I couldn’t stay; I’d already been gone from my crew for too long.”

  With slow movements, I crawl off the bed and wrap my arms around him, not knowing what else to do. I want to reach in and take away every ounce of sadness; wipe him completely clean. He doesn’t deserve to feel any of this.

  “I should have fucking stayed. I’ll regret leaving him with that food for the rest of my life.” His sob breaks through the room, and I feel his heart beating wildly against my ear.

  “Jude, you fed him. He was so hungry and you gave him food.”

  I feel his head shake above me. “They found him. A group of teenagers found him with the food, and they tried to steal it. The other orphaned boys saw it happening. They said he wouldn’t give it up and they beat him. They killed him to get that fucking protein bar. Because I couldn’t just do my job and stay the fuck away, Ali died.”

  “No! Jude!” I pull back to look into his eyes, but his gaze is focused on the bed just over my head. “If you didn’t feed him, he would have died anyway. You did the right thing, Jude.” I know my words fall on deaf ears. It’s like I’m looking at him through a two-way mirror; he’s so far away, but I can see every emotion etched across his beautifully sad features. He hasn’t forgiven himself and nothing I say will get through to him now.

  “It doesn’t matter, Charley. Even if there was no Ali, the war changes everyone. I watched soldiers, coworkers, and civilians get injured or die every day. It wears you down. Having to constantly be on watch turns your body into a bundle of nerves. They diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder when I got back and I went to therapy for a while. But even therapists can’t quite grapple with the trauma. Soldiers have a mission: to eliminate the enemy. They have their own set of difficulties, and I can’t image what it would feel like to kill someone. But the lines are blurred for journalists and photographers. We have to get close, too close to the tragedies. The closer
we get, the better our photos, and the more fucked up we become.”

  He shakes out of my tight grasp and steps away to take a few calming breaths. “Now I’ve just come to live with the night terrors. They’ve lessened over the years. And the more I fill my life with meaningless photography jobs, the less I have to think about what happened over there.”

  “That’s why you never dated.”

  He shrugs. “It wasn’t a conscious decision. It fell into place. Girls were a means to an end. I’d learned how to compartmentalize every demon when I was in Iraq and it seemed easier to keep everyone at bay.”

  “I’m glad you let Bennett in.”

  He nods and I see his features starting to relax. “Bennett has been my friend since we were kids. He knew me before I went overseas and he could see how much it changed me. I’ve talked about it with my family briefly as well. Other than that I’ve just learned to live with it.”

  “Jude. I’m so sorry.” Those are the only words I can say. Everything else that springs to mind seems cliché and trite.

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about. I’m alive and I truly enjoy most parts of my life. Ali is dead and that knowledge will forever haunt me.”

  We sit in a long period of silence. The kind of silence that wraps around your body and freezes you in place as you try to process the intricacies of the world we live in.

  I tuck my head under his chin and wrap my arms around his chest. “Thank you for telling me.”

  “I’m glad I did. I want us to be honest with each other, Charley.”

  I close my eyes, inhaling his scent and pretending I didn’t hear his last sentence.

  “Let’s go to bed, Jude.”

  “No,” he demands, his grip tightening around my waist. “I don’t want to go to bed. I want to be with you. I want to feel you moving under me. After everything that’s happened, you make me feel alive, like the last four years don’t have to be what the rest of my life looks like.”