Reunited

2. Meeting His Friends

The next week I started to really pay attention to my expenses, really pushed my business since it was becoming summer when most people did engagement sessions and weddings.

I ended up booking two weddings, two engagement sessions, two pregnancy reveals, 3 senior sessions, and a family reunion.

Along with these I also signed a contract with a small business to create their summer ads for Facebook, where I'd go to their business to take pictures and also design posters for their website and to hang up around town.

After calculating everything, by the end of the summer I would have enough money to stay in LA for two years. My hopes were definitely high.

In the same notebook that I recorded my balances, I was also writing down safe and affordable areas of LA that would be suitable for me. Along with that I wrote down how much photographers out there charged for different sessions, was quite a bit more than where I lived.

Lots of influencers paid the same amount I would charge for engagement photos just to have a random photoshoot. If I could get into that field and do a bunch of small sessions that could spread my name around fast. I knew it would be a lot of work, but I was ready for it.

A couple weeks after my birthday I got a random FaceTime call from Colby. It made my heart skip to be honest. Just knowing he was making an effort to talk to me more made me so happy, and I honestly wasn't expecting it to be that soon.

I was just sitting in my apartment editing some photos, so after quickly fixing my hair I answered the call. His screen popped up and he was laughing and looking past the camera, which told me that he wasn't alone in the room. When he saw I answered he smiled even bigger.

"Hey, sorry if you're busy" he said.

I smiled, and I could hear someone whispering behind the camera. I was curious as to who it was, but I ignored them.

"No you're good I'm just sitting here editing, what's goin on" I said with the big smile I couldn't hold back.

Colby had a black sweatshirt on and a SnapBack on his head, and he had a bit of stubble on his face which I found kind of attractive.

"Well I called you cause I was talking about you" he started, his smile curving into a cute shy one, "and some of my friends wanted to know if you were actually real since I've never introduced you."

I did find it a bit weird that he had never let me meet his friends. I knew we had drifted apart a little and he was allowed to have a different friend group, but it just made me feel like he really did have a new life that I'd never be apart of. I felt my heart warming as I smiled and giggled.

"Well I'm real" I said, and Colby gestured for everyone to come around and be in the camera.

Suddenly a bunch of people came around next to him. I saw Sam, who had dyed his hair since I last saw him, a girl with a bubbly smile stood next to him. A taller guy with dark hair and a really short girl also with dark hair stood behind Colby, and to his right was another guy and a girl with glasses.

Everyone started waving and saying hello, the girl with dark hair behind Colby yelled that I was so pretty. I giggled and waved.

"Hey guys, nice to finally meet you."

Colby introduced them all, and they were all really nice. The two other boys along with Sam were all really funny, I could tell just by the short conversation we had. Sam asked how I've been, and his girlfriend the bubbly one, mentioned how Colby talked about me all the time and she had been wanting to meet me.

I felt so welcomed by his friends and I wondered why I had never met any of them before. After a while Sam left to carry on with what he had been doing, and so did Jake and Tara, the ones behind Colby. Kat stayed and sat down next to Colby, and so did Devyn and Corey, the couple to the right of him.