When Summer Ends

Chapter 14

2-25-2022: It was incredibly hard to come up with a name for this chapter, so it's going to be boring for now lol. Random question for y'all, how do you feel about Joey King? I, personally, cannot STAND her, but I don't know why haha. I would love to get some more opinions on her hehe. Anyway! Enjoy:)

Monday and Tuesday thankfully pass quickly, and both Rylie and I feel good about the finals we'd taken so far. I only had two left on Thursday, but Rylie still had five. She was currently finishing up one while I got ready to head to her dad's house. We were going to spend the afternoon with her brothers visiting the new baby, and then I was planning on a small photoshoot afterwards at the marshes since we'd be near enough for it to make sense.

Plus, the beach or marshes were my favorite places for photoshoots. I was really excited for this shoot with Rylie as my model. The plan was to get there an hour before sunset, which was also known as Golden Hour. That would give plenty of time for the type of lighting I was used to. After golden hour is over, the less commonly known Blue Hour appears, but we only had 20 minutes of that, so I would need to work fast. I'd never worked during blue hour before, so I was a little bit nervous about that.

After grabbing my favorite camera bag from the closet, I scan my equipment to see what I'll need. Obviously, my camera is the first thing to go in the bag. Deciding which lenses to take was always my biggest issue. This time, I decide on two of my portrait lenses and one zoom lens. I throw my folded board reflector and a couple extra batteries in the bag before strapping my tripod to the bottom and calling it good.

It's nearly 10:00 am, and I quickly check Rylie's location on my phone to see if she's on her way back yet. Thankfully, she is.

"You gonna be okay hanging out here alone, buddy?" I ask Harvey. He was currently munching on his new bone that Rylie brought home last night. I wasn't too worried about leaving him alone. He always had food and water, and a place to use the bathroom, if needed. Makade, Cassie's boyfriend, had added a little doggy door to the balcony door, and we'd made a little litter box type thing for Harvey. It sounded silly, but it worked to keep him from going potty where we didn't want him to while we were gone.

When Rylie opens the door several minutes later, I'm all ready to go. "Do you have to pee?" I ask her. She glances between me and Harvey.

"Me or Harvey?" She laughs hesitantly, scrunching her eyebrows.

"You."

"Um... yes?"

"Okay. Hurry and go, and then we'll leave. I don't want to risk being late at all and missing golden hour."

"But that's not for another..." I cut Rylie off with a glare and she snaps her mouth shut and tries to hide her grin. "Got it. Be right out!"

Maybe I was more than a little bit stressed about time.

We had a three hour drive to Rylie's dad's house where we would pick up the boys, and  then drive another half hour to her mom's house. That meant that we would hopefully get to her mom's house right around 2:00pm. It was a lot of driving for one day, especially during finals week, but I knew this was important to Rylie so I didn't mind.

Rylie comes out of the bathroom a minute later and I growl when she walks into the bedroom instead of back into the kitchen.

"I heard that!" She calls in a singsong voice. "Patience, Aspen. I'm just changing." When she appears a moment later wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, she surprises me by pulling me towards her and pressing her lips to mine for a long, sweet moment. When she pulls away, I bring her right back for another long kiss. When we finally break apart, she smirks at me.