Polaroids

12| Luna

My eyes open to the empty left side of Julian and I's temporarily shared bed. I say temporary because even though we share a bed on the tour bus, I'm supposed to be down the hall in my own room where JJ and Amiah are.

The sheets are cold and messy, like he's been gone awhile but the sun is only just now rising. I run my hand over the silk sheets, my mind remembering the shape of his body as he fell asleep next to me hours before. I'm not sentimental usually but as I get older, I find myself reminiscing a lot more often. Recently, I've been reminiscing a lot more about him.

I roll on my back, my hair unwrapped and messy around me. Instead of being frustrated about the future tangles I will have to fight, I think about the mountains. I think about my pictures...I'm thinking about the pictures I took of him last night.

He looked so...angelic. That word is one I find myself constantly using to describe him despite knowing who he is, or rather, how he is because truthfully, I know nothing about him. I know he's moody and vulgar and enjoys the finer things in life despite his mostly simple attitude. I also know he's a beautiful singer and touches me softly, gently, even when rough. He's kind to me in bed even when he's not...it's a very complex thing about him and I enjoy it. I enjoy it more than I've enjoyed anything else in awhile, even photography.

Very odd...

I sit up and slide my bare legs across the sheets and my feet onto the ice cold tile. My feet slightly stick to the floor as I walk across and toward the open bathroom door across from the large walk-in closet.

The closer I get, the louder the soft sound becomes and I soon can make it out to be Julian's voice as he hums the tune of a song he previewed for us last night.

"What are you humming?" I speak up, my voice slightly echoing as he turns his head toward me and reveals his tired eyes.

I watch him as he pauses for a moment, "Blue honey," he speaks up. "The song I played for y'all last night. Something's wrong."

His eyes follow me as I walk to stand next to him, my back against the black marble countertop. "I thought it was great. What's wrong with it?"

I'm looking up at him but he's looking back at me like he doesn't have an answer...but wants to be upset.

His lips part, a shallow, dry breath that flattens his chest, releases from his lips. "How would you feel if your photos constantly had a black dot in the corner. All of them. You can't smudge it out, you can't blur over it, and you can't reposition so it goes away."

I hum my own tune for a moment as I lift myself onto the countertop and lean against the mirror. Everything is cold against my almost completely bare skin and my nerves are triggered like an after a cold shower. His eyes are still on me as I think, his own wheels moving in the back of his head.

I want to tell him that I'd ignore it or else I'd go crazy. Tell him that I would go crazy and I would feel incomplete. But I have a feeling he's already thinking that way, so I'm going to humor myself.

"I would write over it. Sign my name, make it a trademark...worst comes to worst, I'll just buy a new camera or get a new lens."

I watch the tiredness in his eyes slow the wheels of his brain, my response like a piece of gum stuck in the cogs.

"...so you'll spend money to try and fix it? I just said it won't go away. Are you going to keep buying new cameras and new lenses until it goes away?"

"Even if it was unfixable or unavoidable, it's not up to me. I can still try and make it a trademark but if it's just that one spot and my client still loves it, then that's all I can do. I did my job."