Crushing On The Billionaire (Part 3) (3 page)

“We need to talk more about Shawn,” I said, hesitant.

“Agreed.” Patrick looked irritable. “I wish I could sit up for this.”

“If the doctor says no, then no,” I said. “You have to listen to your doctors.”

“I thought we were supposed to be talking about Shawn.”

“We are.” I sighed. “What’s going to happen with him? What happens after the three days is up and they make a decision? Where is he going to go?”

“He’s going to have to go to rehab in some form or fashion,” Patrick said. “There isn’t going to be an option beyond that. And as hard as it might be for him to go, and as painful as the things he might’ve said to the two of us were, we have to support him.”

I swallowed hard. “I know that. That’s why I think we should stop seeing each other.”

Patrick’s eyes fluttered closed, and I whipped around to the heart monitor, trying to figure out what was happening. The beeps didn’t give any indication that there was anything amiss.

I felt like I had to explain myself to him, even with his eyes still closed, his lips sealed. “Think about it,” I said. “If we hadn’t been together in the first place—if I hadn’t pushed you to give our relationship a chance, there wouldn’t have been a relationship for Shawn to get upset about. He wouldn’t have resorted to numbing himself with drugs and alcohol. He wouldn’t have gotten into trouble with the police. He wouldn’t have sold his car, bought that gun, taken those pills. And you wouldn’t be in the hospital with a bullet hole in your chest.”

Patrick still didn’t say anything. I wished he could’ve at least looked at me, but the man had been through a lot over the last twenty-four hours or so.

“I’m the common denominator of all of these problems,” I said. “It would be better if I removed myself—for Shawn’s sake. For your sake. And for my own sake. Because this is so fucking hard and I’m not even the one in the hospital bed.”

I readied my next comments to refute whatever Patrick was going to say. I was ready to tell him about my struggles at school, about the fact that I hadn’t been working on the senior project at all because Shawn was a vital component of its completion. I was ready to argue every point he possibly could’ve made…except for the one point he actually did make.

“I think that’s probably the wisest decision,” Patrick said, opening his eyes.

It was what I’d wanted, but I’d assumed he’d at least put up a fight. He’d tried to end things several times, talking about how good we had it but all the difficulties we faced. I’d always talked him out of it, convinced the good was better than the bad. But now that
I’d
brought up ending our relationship, he rolled over and accepted it. Maybe he was tired. Hell, I knew he had to be tired. Maybe he was putting up so many fights right now that he didn’t want to fight this one.

But of all the emotions I could have had in this moment, the moment when I proposed to end a wonderfully complicated relationship with someone I loved, I felt anger the most.

I realized I’d wanted Patrick to fight for us. I wanted him to assure me that everything—even this—was worth fighting for. The love was there. We’d agreed on that point profusely. We loved each other, but we were giving up. Things had gotten too complicated, too difficult, and we were giving up. We were throwing everything away.

Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe this whole thing hadn’t been worth fighting for. Maybe none of this meant anything.

There wasn’t anything left to say. I hitched my bag up on my shoulder and walked out of the room without another word, those green eyes on me, the heart monitor’s chirp the only sound.

Nothing made sense anymore to me. I hadn’t felt at home in school, and Patrick and I weren’t together. Where could I go? What could I do to feel normal again?

For the first time since I’d come to San Francisco, stars in my eyes about the opportunity to attend college here, I missed Los Angeles. I missed my foster parents and wished I could talk to them about my troubles. I didn’t want them to worry, though, and I didn’t want to take up any of their valuable time. I wasn’t their first—or last—foster child. They were career foster parents, the progeny of their hard work spread out across the country. They were raising a new needy boy or girl right now, and I didn’t want to distract from that.

Even when I’d turned eighteen, they’d both assured me that just because I’d aged out of the system, I could always think of them as my parents.

They weren’t though. I knew they weren’t; they recognized they weren’t. Somewhere, drifting along, were my real parents—the man who’d impregnated my mom, and the woman who’d given birth to me and decided she didn’t want to be a mother. It was hard to hate either of them. They might’ve been good people.
I didn’t know them, and I didn’t have any interest in seeking them out.

 Whenever someone in my life discovered that I was in the foster system, they invariably asked whether I knew my real parents. It was a rude thing to ask, in my opinion, especially since it implied there was something wrong with me only knowing my foster parents. My foster parents were good people. They had to be with what they’d chosen to do—giving kids like me chances.

 But didn’t I yearn—these nosy people would persist—to know my true roots, to know where I really came from? Never, except in times of crisis, like the one I was embroiled in right now. I wished I could have someone all to myself, like a mom. Someone I could call on to hash things out, to analyze every syllable of a conversation, to bounce ideas and thoughts and hopes and dreams off of.

But I didn’t have that. I never did.

Even as I despaired over not having anyone to confide in, I knew I wasn’t completely alone. Maybe I didn’t have access to my best friend or the man I loved anymore. But I did have access to something that was a true extension of my soul.

With both of the Paulsons firmly out of the picture, I ranged far and wide across San Francisco, venturing into places I’d been warned against, taking copious photos, giving myself to the lens and the shutter, letting the camera do my thinking and my feeling for me.

I took ferries and boat tours, snapping photos of the undersides of bridges, the shape of the chop in the bay, people taking their own photos of the sights we were supposed to be seeing. I went on a tour of Alcatraz, something I’d been meaning to do but put off because it was so touristy. It wasn’t. Alcatraz was like a manifestation of my current state, a prison isolated on an island, away from everything. I took photos of rusting bars, the concrete flaking off the walls of dilapidated cells, the patina of despair.

I walked back and forth across the Golden Gate Bridge, photographing it from all angles, at all times of day. However, the deepening evening was off limits to pedestrians. Too many people jumped in the privacy of night. I went so often that one of the patrol volunteers who kept tabs on the milieu who crossed its span took notice of my persistence.

“You’re here again,” he said, his task illustrated by the neon vest he wore.

“Again,” I agreed, taking several photos of him, people flowing around him like the water that ripped below. It was a frightening, dizzying view. For many, it had been their last.

“You’re not going to jump are you?”

I snorted at him. “Of course not.”

“Just checking.”

There was despair, and there was my brand of despair. I let the camera lead me. I set out each day without a plan of attack. I’d get on buses I’d never ridden before, stand at a certain point of the cable car routes and take the same photo again and again, letting the sun and weather and people change it. I’d re-imagine classic tourist shots—but with darker, more surreal angles.

Days stretched into weeks, and I rarely ate or slept. I left my phone in my apartment, but I rarely stopped by there for anything more than a shower, a catnap, and a change of clothes. I was well aware that I would miss moments the longer I stayed off the streets, and my camera would go hungry—meaning I would lose focus on my photography and start to think about other things, like whether Patrick was missing me, or how Shawn was doing, or if Patrick was out of the hospital already, or what treatment plan Shawn had settled on, or if he’d settled at all. I couldn’t fathom calling either of them for the details I craved, so I kept myself occupied and distracted.

School never entered my train of thought. It simply wasn’t my focus right now. I kept away from campus, knowing there wasn’t anything for me there. Mercedes would be breathing down my neck about the senior project, but I didn’t have anything to show her. Part of me wished that my camera would point me in the right direction to complete my project so I could graduate, but the majority of me just didn’t care. School had lost all of its appeal, all of its context. It simply wasn’t important anymore.

Ever so often, when I checked back into my apartment to try to eat a withered apple or a handful of peanuts, I realized that my phone had pinged with a message from my adviser. I never looked at them. I didn’t need the distraction.

Without any distractions—except for photography—my art boiled down to a science. I left my apartment as early as possible and stayed out as late as possible. I had to be there to get the shots. That was the most basic thing.

And I was getting the shots. I had never shot like this before—compulsively, like I had to in order to continue breathing. It became a strange manifestation of myself that I wasn’t altogether comfortable with. But Mercedes had told the studio class once that we were never supposed to be comfortable—it was the discomfort that would push us to the next level.

Well, I was breaking through to the next level, all right. That, or I was breaking—physically, emotionally, spiritually. I didn’t feel like myself; I didn’t want to feel like myself. I sought out alleyways and dumpsters and wild patches of asphalt no one took pictures of, and I featured them all in the best lighting of the day, saying something about the forgotten parts of this fair city. I took photos of people dressed up for galas, entering restaurants I would probably never be able to afford, and I took pictures of the people who rooted through the trash behind the very same restaurants, hungry, looking for any sort of scraps to sustain them through the next day. I traversed homeless encampments, talking with their residents, gaining their trust, and photographing them. I listened to them tell their stories, took notes, and got the camera to tell the rest of it.

“How long are you going to keep coming back here?” a grizzled old woman asked me after I distributed some sandwiches I made in the cafeteria at school, figuring no one would miss them if I carried out several shopping bags full of them.

“I guess until it makes sense,” I said, shrugging.

She patted my shoulder comfortingly. “Welcome, then. It doesn’t ever make sense.”

And it didn’t. She was right. We lived in such a beautiful place—one of the most expensive in the nation—and there was a significant population who didn’t enjoy a single luxury or perk here. I shot whole memory cards full of photos in these encampments, always friendly, always ready to listen or help in some way, always bearing sandwiches or whatever food I could cart out of the cafeteria. So much of it went to waste anyway.

It was through this incessant roaming through the back lots and side streets of San Francisco that I found the gallery.

The gallery was an unassuming exhibit space tucked into a row of retail spots and eateries. It wasn’t in the more booming blocks of the art district, but it wasn’t in a bad part of town either. I hadn’t expected to see it where it was, and that was what made me wander inside.

A friendly employee let me peruse the show currently on display—a conglomeration of digitally-altered photography. I didn’t know how I felt about the display. I liked photography for its rawness, its unflinching reality. Photoshop seemed to rob it of its soul. I couldn’t discount the power of the medium if it was well done. I’d been enchanted, after all, by Mercedes’ work online, when I hadn’t even suspected that photography was something I could pursue after high school.

“What do you think?” the employee asked, flipping her hair. “Good exhibit?”

“It’s good.”

“But not great, is it?”

I blinked with surprise. “Aren’t you supposed to support whatever’s on these walls?”

“It’s not that kind of gallery,” she explained. “We’re allowed to disagree with the owner.”

“But not tell the clients about it.”

We both whirled around to see a woman dressed fashionably—in dark grays and blacks, a wispy material making it seem like the fog would whisk her away if she didn’t hold on to something.

“I’m sorry, Mere,” the employee said, cowed. “I didn’t think you were still here.”

“Sorry,
” I offered, thinking it might help the hapless employee. I didn’t want someone to get fired on my account. “We were discussing the display.”

“And?” Mere raised her eyebrows, waiting for an answer.

“Good, but not great,” I said, smiling. “You can apparently disagree with the owner on the assessment of the exhibition.”

“Well, if I knew it was good and not great beforehand, I would’ve shot for great instead,” she complained. “Suzette, you have to tell me your honest opinion when I ask for it. Everyone is different. You and I are very different. I value our differences of opinion because they challenge me. Does that make sense?”

“Yes…yes, of course. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the exhibit was good, but not great. It won’t happen again.”

Mere shook her head and waved her hand as if to dismiss the entire situation.

“Hopefully, the contest will get us that great exhibit I’m looking for,” she said. Seemingly for the first time, she took note of the camera looped around my neck and at my side. “Are you a photographer?”

“What gave it away?” I asked, laughing. It felt good to laugh, though foreign. Was this the first time I’d laughed since the incident? It made me uneasy to consider it.

“Take this, then,” she commanded imperiously, offering me a postcard. “We’re still taking entries for our contest. The winner gets a solo show right here at the gallery.”

I examined the postcard for a few minutes. The theme was “My San Francisco.” I felt a building rush of anticipation. That was what I’d been shooting all these weeks, trying to define my place in this city. I actually had a strong body of work to submit to this contest.

“You know what?” I announced, stowing the postcard safely in my bag. “I’m going to enter the contest.”

“Perfect,” Mere said. “Are you a great photographer?”

My face colored, and I shrugged. How could I define myself like that? If I said yes, I’d come off as arrogant, self-centered. If I said no, then why would they even consider my submitted work?

“You must know,” she said. “Is your work great?”

I thought about all the glowing praise Mercedes and the rest of my professors had given me over the years, the cutting, jealous glances from my fellow students, the fact that I’d gotten a full scholarship to the institute because of the value of my work on social media. All of that was proof, validation that my photos were great, but I searched harder inside of myself. Why did I need validation? Couldn’t I know in my heart that my photos were great, and that I was a great photographer? What was so bad about understanding it and admitting it?

“You know what, my work is great,” I finally announced. “My work is great, and I’m a great photographer.”

Mere’s lips lifted in a smile. “There. Was that such a hard thing to say? I look forward to reviewing your entry.”

I left the gallery feeling buoyant, joyful. It was as if saying out loud that I thought highly of my work and of my skills as a photographer really made me own everything. I was going to be a photographer. I didn’t need school or Mercedes or anyone else to tell me that. I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and I didn’t need best friends or lovers or anyone else to make me who I was.

I returned to campus immediately, dashing off to the library to use a computer to examine just what I’d captured on my camera these last few weeks. I recognized some of my classmates from my studio class giving me weird looks, but I ignored them. I figured it was simply fallout from the meltdown I’d suffered when Mercedes pushed me too hard.

I examined the contest rules on the postcard that Mere had given me. There were too many photos that could apply to the specifications. I decided to print out the ones I thought were best and examine them at home. There were more than two hundred, but I had the balance to do it.

I gathered up my printouts and was ready to be on my way when I noticed that one fellow photography major hadn’t stopped staring at me.

“What is it?” I snapped, tucking the sheaf of papers into my bag as neatly as I could.

“It’s just…I thought you dropped out,” he said, shrugging. “Just surprised to see you, I guess.”

I snorted at him and strode out. Dropped out? The idea was ludicrous. I used to be the one who was early to almost every class, more prepared and eager to learn than anyone else there.