Afraid of the Dark

Banner by YourFavoriteMistake. I got this a loooong time ago, but I don't think I ever got to use it, so I'm using it now. Thank you, darling! :D

Walking down the hotel corridor with Pete felt so strange, but I couldn't figure out why exactly. It wasn't until we walked by a couple with bags slung over their shoulders and suitcases dragging behind them that I realized why I felt strange: I wasn't carrying any luggage. I had never checked into a hotel room without luggage before.

After all, there's really only one situation that calls for two people to spend the night in a hotel room together without luggage.

I was a nervous wreck by the time we found our room. I imagined that every fellow hotel guest we passed was staring at my naked ring finger, or wondering why we weren't carrying suitcases. I imagined that every last one of them was judging me--assuming that Pete's wife was home so we had been forced to check into a hotel room for tonight's quick, casual fuck. Worst of all, I imagined that all of them recognized Pete, and by morning the tabloids would be screaming, "PETE WENTZ CAUGHT IN HOTEL ROOM WITH PALE, MOUSY, BROWN-HAIRED GIRL! WHAT'S NEXT FOR PETE AND ASHLEE?"

I wrung out my clammy hands as Pete unlocked the hotel room door. I watched him and realized that maybe this was how I would always remember him: sliding plastic hotel room keys into heavy wooden hotel room doors in New York City hotel rooms. How many hotel rooms had we been in together? We were always in hotel rooms--an appropriate setting for such a transient non-relationship.

This particular hotel room was smaller and less ostentatious than the rest, probably because the bill was coming out of Pete's pocket, not the record company's. Besides, "Declan MacManus" had to lay low; he didn't want to blow his cover. With our distinct lack of suitcases and Pete's too-tight girl pants and bright red Supras, we were drawing enough attention to ourselves as it was.

It was your average, ordinary hotel room. There was a big window and a small plywood table and a plush chair at one end of the room; there was a cramped bathroom stocked with bright white towels near the door; a queen-sized bed and a TV on top of a wooden dresser took up most of the center of the room.

My stomach churned at the sight of the bed, so I turned to inspect my reflection in the full-length mirror on the wall instead. Pete's reaction to the bed, however, was the direct opposite of mine: he shut the door behind us and locked it, then ran straight to the bed and flopped onto it, facedown.

"Ahhhh," he sighed. "This bed feels so fucking amazing." He rolled over so that he was lying flat on his back and patted the space at his side. "Come here and feel the bed. It feels great."

I looked up from my reflection to eye him cautiously in the mirror. I was tired and his expectant smile was so sweet, and that bed looked so inviting...but I was afraid. This was a very precarious situation. I couldn't deny my feelings for him any longer, but I could stop myself from acting on them, and I would. It was my moral obligation.

"Nah, I'll just take your word for it," I said.

"Aw, come on." Pete sat up and patted the spot beside him again. "Just sit down for a second. You're tired, I can tell."

"Well..."

"Come on."

Maybe if I just sat there... Surely just sitting next to him couldn't hurt anything. Right? "Okay," I agreed hesitantly.

I climbed up onto the bed next to him and folded my legs beneath me Indian-style, so gingerly that the bed hardly moved at all. Pete leaned back on his elbows so that he was half-sitting, half-lying down, and quirked an eyebrow at me.

"What? Do I smell or something?"

"What?" I laughed. But the look on his face was dead serious, and my laughter died in my throat. "What do you mean?"

"That," Pete said, jerking his head towards me--at my hands folded neatly in my lap. "Why are you acting like that? Like you're fucking scared of me or something?"

I couldn't stop the words from coming out. "Because I am scared," I murmured.

"Of what?"

The sudden harshness of his voice startled me, and I cringed away from him. At the look on my face, his own expression softened. He looked sorry, but he didn't apologize. Instead, he leaned back until he was lying down again, and he stared blankly at the ceiling.

I felt a little guilty then. So far he had done nothing to signify that he wanted to have any sort of intimate relationship with me. When he had booked the hotel room, I had immediately rushed to sordid conclusions--but only because, subconsciously, I wanted him that way, so I was predisposed to that particular train of thought. I had no idea if he actually reciprocated those feelings. And if he really had booked the hotel room with purely professional intentions, then I was making unfair assumptions.

You're kind of full of yourself, too, I inwardly sneered at myself, if you think a celebrity like Pete Wentz would want to cheat on his wife with you. Yeah, right. Don't flatter yourself.

"I'm sorry," I whispered to Pete. I lay down on my side facing him, just to prove that I really did trust him. "It's not you. I just... I don't know. I don't even know what I'm doing anymore."

He laughed humorlessly, eyes still fixed on the ceiling. "Yeah, well, me neither. I never know what I'm doing around you."

My body reacted before my mind did. Heat spread all through my body, rushing to my face. My breathing hitched and my heart started beating faster. My hands were shaking.

What was he saying to me? Had my earlier assumption been more accurate than I thought?

"Pete," I breathed. I was still staring at him, but he was still entranced by the ceiling. "Why did you bring me here?"

He was very still and very quiet. There was less than a foot of space between us, so I couldn't figure out how he could have not heard me. Regardless, I was about to repeat myself when he said in a low voice, "Ask me a question."

"Um... I just did."

"Well, ask me another one."

"Ohhh-kay..." I couldn't understand what he was getting at. "What kind of question?"

"I don't know. You're the fucking reporter, aren't you supposed to be good at this shit?" he snapped.

I took a deep breath to calm myself in the face of his sudden rudeness. "Okay, I've got one," I said dryly. "Why are you swearing so much right now?"

"I always fucking swear. Especially when I'm frustrated."

"Are you frustrated right now?"

"Oh, no," said Pete. "Only one question at a time. It's my turn now."

I propped myself up on one elbow to glare down at him. "Oh really? Who made these rules?"

"I did. And I told you, no more questions. Wait your damn turn."

With a dramatic sigh, I flopped back down on the bed. "Fine," I grumbled. "What's your question?"

"When you were a kid, what was your favorite cartoon?"

That definitely was not what I was expecting--but in a good way. As I ran through all those old cartoons in my head, I was relieved that he hadn't asked me a question I didn't want him to know the answer to. I didn't think I had it in me to lie to him.

"Scooby-Doo," I decided finally.

"Really? Hm." Pete appeared to mull that over for a second before conceding, "Okay, your turn."

"Uh...okay...well...hmmm...."

I racked my brain for a question Pete Wentz would want to answer. It was my job to ask questions, but he was a harder case to crack than most; just when I thought I had him all figured out, he would come up with some crazy answer out of the blue. But tonight was different for us. Tonight wasn't about the magazine, my readers, the fans--it was just he and I. I wasn't asking the questions they (whoever they may be) wanted to hear the answers to: I was asking for the answers that I wanted to hear and he wanted to give me.

And honestly, in that moment, as we lay on the queen-sized hotel room bed side-by-side, staring up at the faint stains on the white plaster ceiling, I didn't care what message he was trying to convey through his band's new album. I didn't care where he grew up or if he was a geek in high school. I didn't care about the inspiration behind Fall Out Boy's latest kind-of-weird/kind-of-lame music video. I didn't care what stupid pranks he pulled on the roadies while bored on tour. I didn't care what he thought about fatherhood, or being a husband. I didn't care about his stupid shoes or his stupid hoodies or his stupid girl jeans, and I sure as hell didn't care about his eyeliner.

I had better questions than those. I had questions that maybe no one in the world knew the answers to, except for Pete. So I took a deep breath and asked the first one.

"If you had to pick one Power Ranger to be your best friend forever and ever until the end of time, which one would it be?"

Pete turned his head to look at me and his eyes were sparkling with absolute joy. "Oh, Sarah, I thought you'd never asked," he said, with a lot of enthusiasm and very little sarcasm. "That's easy..."

-----

"If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?"

"Hamburger Helper."

Pete raised his eyebrows at me.

"What? It's got meat and pasta and cheese in it--your basic food groups. It's delicious and easy and cheap. It's perfect!"

"Hmm," said Pete. He relented with a shrug and a slight nod of his head. "Interesting logic."

"I know. Whose side are you on: Bugs Bunny's or Elmer Fudd's?"

"Definitely Elmer's. Poor dude can't catch a break. What's the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to you?"

An hour had passed and Pete and I were still lying on our backs on the hotel room bed, staring at the ceiling and taking turns asking each other our burning questions. In that one hour, I had learned more about him than I had ever known about anyone else, and I had told him more than I had ever told anyone else, too. Some of the questions were trivial, some deeply personal, but I hadn't thought twice about answering any of them honestly, and he had never hesitated to answer mine. I had never felt so comfortable and open with another person before.

Normally, I would have shied away from telling anyone about my most embarrassing experience, but I didn't mind telling Pete.

"Once, back in high school, I came out of the girls' bathroom with my skirt stuck in my underwear. I heard people laughing behind me, but I had no idea what they were laughing at. I walked all the way to my next class until someone finally told me."

Pete winced. "Ouch."

"Yeah," I laughed, "no shit. Have you ever done drugs?"

"Yeah, I've tried a few. Didn't like it. You?"

"I tried pot once in high school. I don't get what's so great about being stoned. It's just, like, how I feel when I first wake up in the morning. Nothing special."

He laughed really hard at that. "That's true! I never thought about it that way."

"I don't know." I shrugged. "Maybe it just doesn't affect me the way it does everyone else. Anyway... What's your favorite holiday?"

"Halloween, duh," he scoffed. Pete pursed his lips in thought. "What was the best Christmas present you ever got?"

"I got a Polaroid camera when I was eight."

"Oh, seriously? Those were the shit, man," said Pete, smiling wistfully to himself.

"Yeah, I know. I carried that thing around with me everywhere. I was obsessed."

"Do you still have it?"

"No." My heart sank--and his did too, judging by the look on his face. "I don't know what happened to it. I think I lost it back in high school, when we moved."

"Aw. Bummer. You can't even find those anymore." He looked away, his gaze growing distant, and frowned as if in deep thought.

"So anyway... What was the best birthday you ever had?"

He shrugged, his expression still vacant. "I don't know. I've had a lot of shitty birthdays. The least shitty one would be... I don't know. Maybe the last one." He sighed and looked up at me. "Who was your best friend when you were a kid?"

"Harvey Cromwell, this kid who lived down the street from me. We played baseball all day, every day in the summer. He dropped out of high school in the tenth grade and I haven't heard from him since. What was your favorite pet when you were a kid?"

"This bat I found and caught in a jar when I was ten. He was sick, or dying, or something, and my mom wouldn't let me keep him because she thought he had rabies. Then she made me get rabies shots--six shots in the stomach."

"Ouch."

"Yeah, no shit. Who's your favorite family member?"

I cringed. "Uh...I don't know. No favorite," I said, a little too quickly. He eyed me with curiosity, but said nothing. "Have you ever been expelled?"

"No. I got suspended once though." He paused thoughtfully, and I was sure he was going to ask me another question about my family, but he didn't. Instead, he asked, "What's your favorite part of New York?"

"Times Square." He quirked an eyebrow at me in surprise. "It's so cheesy and touristy and crowded. There are a million flashing lights there, a million people. It's never dark and lonely there, you know?"

And, bless his heart, Pete smiled quietly back at me like he understood.

"What's your favorite part of New York?" I asked him.

"This hotel room," he said without skipping a beat. "Were you a troublemaker when you were a teenager?"

"No. I was a goody-goody." But I knew he was never a goody-goody, so I asked, "Have you ever committed a crime?"

"Yes. If I suddenly gave you an unlimited supply of money, what would be the first thing you would buy?"

"I don't know. Probably chapstick," I muttered, running my tongue over my dry, cracked lips thoughtfully. "My lips are really chapped and left my chapstick back in the other hotel. Have you ever been arrested?"

"Yes. Do you have any tattoos?"

"No. What did you get arrested for?"

"Vandalism. Why no tattoos?"

"I don't like needles. Or blood. Or tacky cartoons permanently etched into my skin. Were you one of those juvenile delinquents that ran around spray-painting the f-word on stop signs when you were a teenager?"

Pete laughed dryly. The bed shifted beneath us as he reached up to scratch his head. "Yeah, something like that. Do you think my tattoos are tacky?"

Without thinking, I reached over to grab his arm and get a good look at the aforementioned tattoos. He clearly wasn't expecting it, and he jumped a little in surprise at the sudden move. A moment later, his arm relaxed completely in my grasp and I inspected it sheepishly.

"No. They're not tacky," I murmured, trailing my fingertip along the elaborate black-and-white designs that covered his entire forearm. I rolled over on my side and reached across his stomach to take his other wrist in my hand and pull his arm towards me. "Except this one." I pointed to an obnoxious owl plastered awkwardly on his wrist. "This one's tacky."

"Yeah," said Pete, his voice uneasy. "That one was a...bad idea."

I laid his arm back down on the bed at his side. "Do you ever regret your tattoos?"

He shrugged. "Some of them, sure. I regret a lot of things." It was his turn now, and I waited for him to ask me a question, but he was a quiet for what felt like a long time before he finally said, "Don't you regret a lot of things?"

My heart pounded against my chest, but not in the anxious way I was used too--its rhythm was slow and steady, a warning. "Is that my question?" I breathed.

He shrugged again, and the rustling of fabric as his shoulder blades moved against the bedspread was so loud in that small room. "Sure."

"Yes. I do regret a lot of things." I bit my lip as I tried to decide whether or not to ask the question I wanted to. And then I did. "What's your biggest regret?"

I had expected--or maybe just hoped for--some massive confession from Pete then. Remembering how, drunk on White Zinfadel that first night, he had told me all about how Ashlee wasn't what he wanted, it seemed to me that this what the end he had been working towards all along; this was what the past five days had been all about. All along, he had been just dying to tell me how unhappy he was, how much he regretted, how he wished there was an undo button he could push to make everything go back to the way it was supposed to be. He was on the verge of telling me everything, I could tell.

But he didn't. He just laughed cynically and muttered, "I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?!" I winced at the sound of my own shrill voice. I hadn't meant to sound so whiny, but now that he wouldn't give me a real answer--to question, of all questions--I felt cheated somehow.

"I mean, I don't know."

"Well, you have to know. What's your answer?"

"I don't have an answer," he said.

"But you have to have an answer!" I insisted. "There's always an answer!"

Pete snorted. "Listen to yourself, Sarah," he said, and his tone was so biting that I actually flinched.

"What?" I asked defensively. "What do you mean, 'listen to myself'--"

"I mean, listen to yourself," he snapped. "You sound ridiculous."

The hotel room was dead silent as the sharp sting of his words set in. At first, I didn't even understand what he meant. I had to rewind the conversation all the way back to my original question before I realized he was talking about my reliance on answers, demanding them--insisting that "there's always an answer"...

He didn't understand. He didn't realize how much comfort there was in cold hard facts for someone who grew up in a home full of inconsistencies and uncertainties.

Pete let out a deep sigh, and I know it sounds silly, but I sensed his apology in the sound somehow. When he spoke again, his voice was hard, but also kinder, more forgiving--almost as if he were afraid to let that softness show through, so he had made his voice sound gruff and harsh to mask the tenderness at its core.

"Have you ever been in love?" he barked at me.

I gaped at him, but he wasn't looking at me anyway--he was staring at the ceiling with this brooding stare that I knew he really wanted to direct at me, but wouldn't allow himself to. I let out a little gasp of surprise. "I--I... Yes."

I didn't know where the answer came from, and I didn't have time to take it back before he fired off another equally loaded question.

"With who?"

The game we were playing was Pete's variation of "twenty questions"; the only two rules were that you answered honestly at all times and that we took turns asking each other questions. He also violated the rules of basic English with that question--instead of "who," he should have used "whom."

But I overlooked both indiscretions due to the fact that I was sure my heart wasn't going to make it to the end of this conversation. How could I possibly respond to that question? Either I would be outright rejected, he would ignore it and things would be awkward between us, or I would unwittingly instigate something that I definitely never wanted to be a part of. Contrary to what I had said just minutes ago, there was no answer here...or at least, no right answer.

So I didn't answer him at all.

He accepted that--maybe he even expected it, I don't know. He just kept staring at that ceiling and he asked me in a monotone, like a robot going through the motions, "How old were you when you had your first kiss?"

"In the fourth grade, this kid kissed me on the playground and I threw a dirt clod at him." I smiled at the memory, and that calmed me down. "Does that count?"

"Yeah. How old were you when you had your first boyfriend?"

"Fifteen."

"How old were you when you lost your virginity?"

He probably didn't expect me to answer that one either (frankly, I didn't expect myself to answer it--I was having some kind of out-of-body experience, apparently), but I did. "Nineteen," I replied automatically.

And then Pete did something that shattered the somber atmosphere that had closed in all around us: He snickered.

"What?" I turned my head to the side to see what was so abruptly funny to him, and found him mirroring my pose. He just smirked back at me. "What's so funny?"

"I beat you."

"What?"

"I lost mine when I was seventeen."

I rolled my eyes at him. "Yeah, probably to your second cousin Gertrude after prom."

"Hey," said Pete sharply, "I did not take my cousin to prom. I know how you mountain folk do out there in West Virginia, but--"

I reached up behind me to grab a pillow and clocked him in the side of the head with it, cutting him off mid-sentence. He sat there, dazed, for a moment--and then he lunged towards the headboard, grabbing the other pillow and rolling onto his back in the defensive position as I came at him with my pillow again. He blocked my hit with his own pillow and then delivered a brutal blow to my arm.

We sat there on the bed together, attacking each other with our pillows, for maybe five or ten minutes before Pete threw his pillow across the room. It hit the wall and bounced off into the floor, leaving him defenseless. Before I could take advantage of his disarmament, he grabbed my pillow and tried to wrestle it away from me, but I put up a good fight. I never let go of the pillow, but eventually he had forced me to lie down on my back on the bed. He swung one leg across my body to pin me down and then he was hovering over me, the overstuffed pillow braced between our torsos.

We were both panting and sweating after our pillow fight, and as I found myself suddenly face-to-face with Pete, I couldn't help but notice the healthy flush of his cheeks, the mischievous gleam in his eyes. We just lay there looking at each other for a while, trying to catch our breath, and gradually his expression turned serious. I knew he would get up off of me any minute now--once the reality of the situation set in, once he realized we weren't kids and maybe our little games could lead to something much more sinister--and I didn't want him to. I had never been this close to him before, and my first instinct was to hold him there, to never let him go...but of course, I couldn't do that. All I could do was be close to him while he allowed me to.

I knew I didn't have much time; even then, I could see the look in his eyes dim as he started to pull away. But as he pinned me with that intense stare, I thought about what he had said earlier--when he had called me ridiculous--and suddenly all I wanted was for him to understand.

"I just like having all the answers, you know?" I whispered. "It makes me feel...safe. Is that ridiculous?"

He stopped pulling away and shook his head twice, the look in his eyes softening as he leaned into me again. He rested the top of his forehead against the side of my temple, so that our heads were sort of perpendicular to each other, and then he moved closer until his whole face was pressed against the side of my face. It wasn't exactly a kiss, I guess, but his lips rested against the hollow just above my jaw, right next to my earlobe, and when he said the words, "No, Sarah. That's not ridiculous," he breathed them into me.

And I knew that even though it was so wrong, it was his way of saying sorry.

"Come on," he said as he rolled off of me and got to his feet. "Lets go to Times Square. I'll buy you some fucking chapstick."

As we walked down the hallway towards the elevator, he worried aloud about me getting cold with only a light jacket on, but I shrugged off his concerns. In actuality, I was dying to get outside in the freezing December air. From the moment his lips grazed my jaw, it felt like my whole body was on fire.

-----

Times Square wasn't far from the hotel. Pete hailed a cab and we drove four or five blocks to Times Square, where the cab driver let us out on the corner. It was almost one o'clock in the morning, but there were people everywhere--some dressed up to go out, some tired and harried, some hookers, some homeless, some street vendors. In the middle of this huge mass of people, Pete stepped close to me and inconspicuously looped his arm through mine.

Just like back in the hotel, I immediately wondered if the people around us thought I was his girlfriend. I hoped so.

"Are you hungry?" he asked as we approached the first two-story McDonald's I had ever seen in my life, fully equipped with flashing neon lights and wedged in between all the gift shops and boutiques that lined the street. It looked more like a casino than a fast food restaurant.

"No thanks," I laughed.

We kept walking past street vendors selling knock-off designer purses, watches, and, jewelry. Pete pulled me along with the flow of the crowd as the vendors tried to reel me in, thrusting knock-off Coach bags and fake Rolexes at me with fervor. It wasn't until we reached a long table covered with huge prints of photographs that I stopped and looked.

Pete tugged at my arm without looking to see what had caught my interest. "Hold on, I want to look at these," I said, and he let go of my arm.

"Okay, well, I'm going in this store real quick. Don't leave. I'll be right back," he said.

"Okay."

There were plenty of photographs to keep me interested while Pete was gone. Most of them were vast panoramic shots of the city skyline; some in the deep red and orange hues of sunset, some of the city shrouded in fog at dawn, some of the city lights sparkling against the dark night sky. Others were shots of New York on a small scale: a homeless man curled up on a bench; a woman sitting on her front stoop with a popsicle in the summertime; a black-and-white photograph of kids playing hopscotch in the middle of a deserted street.

After maybe five or ten minutes, Pete reappeared behind me, looking over my shoulder as I examined the photographs. "Hey," I said, glancing at him over my shoulder.

"Hey. Anything you like?"

Almost simultaneously, a voice from the other side of the table asked me, "Like what you see?"

I looked up to find the street vendor who worked this particular table watching me from the other side. He was very skinny and pale, with dark circles beneath both eyes, and he smiled at me in a hollow sort of way.

"Yeah, they're beautiful. Are they yours?"

"Yep, all mine." He placed his hands on the edge of the table, palms-down, and leaned forwards towards me, holding my gaze with his own. "I take my own pictures and sell them myself. It's cheaper that way--you're getting a better deal. No middle-man."

"You want one?" asked Pete from behind me. I jumped at the sound of his voice. For a moment, I had forgotten all about him.

"Oh--I don't know..." I pointed to a photograph of Times Square at night--the very place we were standing then. "How much is this one?"

The street vendor bit his lip and cocked his head to the side, as if sizing up the photo, and then he eyed Pete and I a little more stealthily. "Thirty bucks," he declared at last. His eyes darted back and forth between Pete and I with an animalistic sort of fear, as if he were waiting for one of us to explode in outrage at the unreasonable price.

I didn't think it was very unreasonable, though--and, judging by the man's skinny arms, he could use the money. "Okay," I said, "I'll take it."

The vendor sighed in relief, but tried to play it cool. "Okay, great."

I dug around in my pocket for the fifty-dollar-bill I knew I had left over from dinner earlier, but Pete beat me to it. Before I could hand over my own money, he had produced a wad of cash that made the street vendor's eyes go wide. He leafed through the stack of bills until he found the one he wanted, then handed it to the vendor.

"Pete, you don't have to--"

Pete silenced me with a simple wave of his hand as he returned the rest of his cash to his back pocket. Meanwhile, the street vendor was staring at the bill with absolute despair.

"Man, I'm sorry," he mumbled, staring down at his feet in shame as he handed the money back to Pete, "I don't think I have change for this."

Pete shrugged. "Don't worry about it. Keep the change."

"Holy shit, man." The vendor stared. "Are you serious?"

"Sure, dude. Merry Christmas."

"Holy shit! Merry fucking Christmas to you, too, man!" yelled the vendor after us as Pete tucked the print under one arm and pulled me away. I glanced back at the skinny young photographer just in time to see him wave goodbye, the money Pete had given him flapping back and forth in the cold night air. And then I understood the street vendor's absolute joy: Pete had given him a hundred-dollar-bill.

"You ready to go back to the room?" Pete asked me once we had passed the neon McDonald's again.

"Yeah."

It wasn't until we had hailed another cab and slid into the backseat that Pete revealed yet another gift for me. "Look what I found," he said, and he reached into his heavy coat to produce an old school Polaroid camera, just like the one I used to have when I was a kid.

"Oh my God!" My hands were shaking as I took the camera from him, touching the hard plastic worshipfully. "Where the hell did you get this?"

He just shrugged, a knowing smile stretched across his lips.

I knew he would never tell me where he got it, and that was okay. It would forever remain a mystery to me; it was just one of those Pete Things. I accepted it.

"Thank you so much!" I threw my arms around him in a hug so unexpected that even I was surprised--but after a moment, he wrapped his arms around my waist and held me back.

"No problem," he muttered. His voice cracked. He cleared his throat uncomfortably as I finally released him.

After turning on the camera and lifting the top flap, I leaned back against the car door and raised the camera to my eye to take my very first Polaroid picture of him. He just gaped back at me, stunned, as the flash went off, and then he laughed nervously.

"I can't believe you wasted a picture on me," he said.

"Oh, shut up." I gave his shoulder a little shove and balanced the photo on my thigh while I waited for it to develop.

"Here," said Pete, "let me take a picture of you." And before I could protest, he had grabbed the camera and snapped a picture of me staring back at him blankly, like the idiot I was.

"Stop it!" I glared as I snatched the camera away from him. "I'm not very photogenic."

"Sure you are. Oh, and here--I almost forgot--"

I looked up and he was holding a small tube of chapstick out to me in his outstretched hand.

"I didn't know what kind you liked so I just got you cherry. Is that okay?"

I smiled back at him as I took the chapstick out of his hand and twisted the cap off. "That's perfect."

In fact, could you get anymore perfect? I was screaming on the inside.

When the first two photos developed, we were both gaping at the camera like idiots, with all the lights of Times Square streaming by in the windows behind us. Those pictures were beautiful. Perfect.

-----

We went back to the hotel room and ordered two bottles of champagne and took pictures of each other all night long, both of us getting more and more drunk by the hour. I took pictures of him in the simplest poses: crouched down on the bed, leaning against the wall, standing in the bathtub, lying in the floor, sitting on the television, and on and on and on. He took it a step further. He would actually grab my arms and legs and pose them for me; he would nudge my cheek to move my face to a certain angle; he would knead his fingers into my scalp, arranging my hair in a way that appealed to him. I guess he was more familiar with all this photoshoot stuff, but the truth was, I was afraid to touch him that way.

While we took pictures, we kept asking each other questions. Questions we probably wouldn't have asked--or answered--if we hadn't been so drunk.

"Why did you get married?" I asked him as I took a picture of him sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Because Ash got pregnant and it seemed like the decent thing to do." He stressed the word decent as if it were filthy. "What would you have done in my situation?"

I sat on the bed next to him and took a picture of him from the side. "The same thing, I guess. Were you scared?"

"Yes. Still am." He flopped down on his back and I took another picture of him in this new pose. He turned his head slightly to look at me. "Why did you become a journalist?"

"Because it pays the bills. Because I meet cool people. Because I get to travel."

"Because you don't have to be home alone all the time that way?"

I narrowed my eyes at him, handing him the camera. "You're not supposed to answer the questions for me." It was a mark of just how drunk I really was at that point that I had the strength to ask him then, without flinching or wincing or inwardly tearing up, "Do you love her?"

But my voice did shake a little.

"Who?" said Pete, but I knew he knew who I meant.

"Ashlee," I whispered.

He turned the camera over in his hands. "Yeah...in a way," he said quietly. "I mean, she's so sweet...and so good to me... There's no reason not to love her. It's just that... I don't know." He sighed. "I don't know what it is."

Pete turned the camera on me and took a picture. When he pulled the camera away from his face, he was frowning.

"Why did you ask me that?"

I shrugged and looked away, hoping and praying he didn't notice the tears I could feel springing up in my eyes. "I don't know. I just...wondered."

Without warning, he sat straight up on the bed and grabbed the side of my face, gently forcing me to face him. "Look at me," he said. I did. He took a picture of me.

Then he inspected my face as if searching for something in my expression. I stared back at him with what I hoped was a blank expression.

He finally gave up, looking down at the camera in his hands again instead of at me. "It's your turn," he murmured.

"Oh," I said faintly. "Why--why are you so nice to me?"

"Because I like you. A lot." He looked down at the camera again and reported, "There's only one picture left."

I shrugged. He was quiet for a long time, just fiddling with the buttons on the camera, so I finally asked, "Are you going to ask me another question?"

"Yeah," he breathed, and when he looked up at me then, my heart lurched in my chest and my vision swam. "Why are you so beautiful?"

The silence that came after his question seemed so calm and clear and real. "I'm not," I said.

"But you are." He reached up to cup the side of my face in his left hand, moving his thumb against my cheekbone so softly, like I might shatter into pieces at any moment. "You are..."

Then he raised the camera and snapped the last picture: a photograph of just my face, with his hand touching my cheek reverently. It came out beautifully.

He put the camera on the bedside table, alongside stacks and stacks of all the pictures we had taken, and turned out the lights. We fell asleep side-by-side on the queen-sized bed, both fully dressed and lying on top of the comforter, not touching. I don't remember falling asleep, but I remember the rhythm of his breathing, the pale blue light coming in through the window, and the feeling of lying in bed next to another human being for the first time in a long time. And I felt more at peace than ever before.