we keep this love in a photograph

Chapter 1

The café was bustling with activity in Downtown San Francisco, wedged between a used bookstore and a bakery on a little side street that was shaded by the soaring skyscrapers that blotted out the sky. Jennie had stumbled upon it by accident, stretching her legs as she tried to shrug off some of the restless energy that had made it hard for her to focus from behind her desk.

Usually, she would've eaten lunch at the office, hardly taking a break from her work to shovel down whatever her assistant brought to her, but the day was unseasonably warm for early January, although not quite warm enough, and the sky was a cloudless pale blue overhead as it reflected off a thousand windows, almost painful to look at. Eager to escape the slight chill, as wrapped up in her layers as she was, Jennie had walked past the little café and backtracked before slipping inside.

Ordering a black coffee and an everything bagel, she'd managed to find a small table by the window, the pale sunlight slanting through the blinds and warming her hands as she unpacked her laptop and her Moleskine notebook, a manila folder of neat documents following suit, and she worked quietly, blocking out the noise of the café around her. Voices babbled on and the HVAC stuttered out bursts of warm air and Jennie drank her coffee and paid the screeching children no mind, trying to balance the chair with uneven legs as her work consumed her.

Content to stay for longer than she ordinarily would've, her attention solely on her work, Jennie finished her bagel and shuffled through the documents, looking for a particular one to cross- reference with the figures displayed on her screen, when a light tap on her shoulder broke her concentration. Forehead puckering with a frown as she glanced up, Jennie blinked in surprise at the sight of a blonde woman standing beside her table and raised her eyebrows.

With a sheepish smile, nervously fidgeting with her fingers, she spoke above the sound of the café to make herself heard, stooping down slightly. "Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you, but would you mind if I sit here? If the seat isn't taken, I mean."

The blonde woman rested a hand on the back of the empty chair across from Jennie and raised her eyebrows expectantly, biting her lip as her brown eyes filled with hope. Her voice was surprisingly sweet, despite the evident anxiousness to her words, and Jennie stared at her as she continued talking.

"Only, well, there aren't any other free tables."

Looking around the room, Jennie found her words to be true, every table occupied by someone else; friends chatting, college students studying, mothers with their children and businessmen in suits taking a coffee break. Realising that the woman was still waiting for an answer, Jennie's eyes drifted back towards her and she straightened up in her seat, scrambling for her paperwork strewn across the table as she neatly stacked it.

"Oh, yeah, sure. It's not taken."

Not the most approachable person in the world, Jennie was mildly surprised to have been asked but didn't want to be rude to the woman. She'd be on her way soon anyway, needed at the office for meetings and phone calls and even more paperwork.

"Thank you," the woman said with a bright smile, her eyes crinkling at the corners behind her glasses.

Nodding, Jennie shifted her laptop closer to her and rapidly typed out notes as the woman sat down, the chair scraping along the floor as she shifted it closer to the table. Pretending she was fixated on her laptop, Jennie surreptitiously eyed the woman over the top of the screen, watching as she pulled out a book and flipped it open to a dog-eared corner, slouching slightly in her seat as she silently started to read.

Satisfied that she wouldn't be disturbed, Jennie picked up her pen and made a note in her book before glancing at the woman again. They must've been around the same age, her blonde hair was pulled into a braid, strands breaking free and curling slightly around her temples, and a crease formed between her eyebrows in a look of deep concentration. Jennie found herself thinking it was endearing, a realisation that shocked her.