Charlie felt a lump rise to her throat and shook her head. “You don’t need to tell me,” she said. “There is nothing going on with me aside from the fact that Brett still doesn’t understand that we are over, and he is irrationally jealous of Jake, someone I am just friends with.” It didn’t sound true when she said it, and she could tell from the way Walter cocked an eyebrow at her that he didn’t believe her.
“Sure, whatever you say, boss.” Walter picked up the camera Jake had left behind. All morning, Charlie had been doing her best to ignore the camera—a reminder of Jake. “Hey, did he take those photos for the website?” Walter had turned the camera on and was scrolling through. “Awesome! He’s really good . . . and, yep, as I expected, these are great. Have you looked at them yet?
“Wow.” He glanced up at her.
“What?”
“This is a great picture of you.” He handed her the camera. She accepted it and stared at an image of herself from the night before. Jake must have snapped it while she wasn’t paying attention. The photo was of Charlie working on proofing the bread: her face was makeup free, her hair in a messy bun, and she was wearing the bakery’s nonfussy “uniform” of an apron and simple long-sleeved T-shirt—which couldn’t be more different from the expensive, flattering outfits she wore on set in L.A., yet she had never looked as good in the production stills.
She hit the power button on the camera, shutting it off, and the image disappeared. “It’s just a photo,” she said, but her throat had gone dry.
Walter was watching her closely. “I never said it was anything more than just a photo. Taken by a good friend.”
“Exactly,” Charlie said. But even that brought with it a pang, because she and Jake weren’t even friends anymore, let alone good ones.
“You know what?” Charlie picked up the camera. “I’m just going to take this upstairs and put it in my apartment so we don’t spill anything on it. I’m sure Jake will notice he left it here and be back to pick it up later.” She felt another pang as she said this—but this one was more hopeful. The idea of seeing him, even just to return the camera, lifted her spirits. Except, she reminded herself, there wasn’t much to be hopeful about. He doesn’t really know you. Imagine if he knew the truth, that you’ve been lying about who you are this whole time?
She walked around the back of the bakery toward the entrance to Cass’s apartment but paused in the doorway, camera still in hand. Charlie couldn’t help herself: she wanted to look at the picture again. Leaning against the wall she scrolled through the images of the bakery until she found it again. When was the last time she had looked that relaxed? She had seen many photos of herself in this whirlwind of a year, but she had never looked so herself in any of them.
The truth was, Jake really did know her. It was just . . . he had no idea who he knew.
Charlie looked at the picture again but realized what she wanted was to see a photo of Jake. Ignoring the voice in her head that reminded her she had no business scrolling through Jake’s photos, she pressed the arrow again, and the setting changed from the bakery, to landscape shots from Starlight Peak, to a few photos of Faye, sitting beside a hearth with Jake’s dog, Bonnie, beside her. Charlie was unable to stop scrolling, even as her hands began to sweat and her heart raced and she knew she should. She sped past a few photos that had clearly been taken for Brett, of the interiors and exteriors of staged homes, before the landscape changed again, this time to mountain ranges with no snow—which meant, Charlie realized, that the seasons had changed and this was clearly summertime in Colorado.
Her heart pounded as she stood in the chilly entranceway, continuing to scroll—she knew she couldn’t stop now. There was a dog in a few of the photos, but it wasn’t Bonnie. It was a German shepherd with one floppy ear.
In the next photo, the mystery dog was by the side of a dark-haired woman. She was looking down at the dog in the first photo, but in the next she was grinning at the camera—or, rather, at the person behind the camera. At Jake. Photo after photo of the same woman, laughing openmouthed, then putting her hands in front of her face, or waving them about, as if to say, “Would you stop taking pictures of me already?”
This woman was beautiful, with long, dark, and glossy hair. Her eyes were wide-set and her lips were full and pouty. Hand shaking, Charlie turned the camera off again. But instead of heading up to Cass’s apartment, the way she had intended, she pivoted on her heel and strode toward Cass’s car, calling over her shoulder, “Walter, I just have to run a quick errand!”