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48. Photos

I'm waking up to blinding light and the repetitive sound of something banging against a wall.

"Paige?" I turn around on my side and am met with empty pillow.

The banging stops and then I hear her walking across the house. She stands hesitantly in the doorway and then bounds towards the bed, flopping down onto it.

"I couldn't sleep," Paige turns on her side and runs her fingers through my hair, "got a head start."

"So I heard," I smile at her and watch her cheeks flush quickly.

"Oh, Landon, I didn't meant to wake you up." Paige purses her lips in disappointment and I shuffle up to rest on my elbow.

"You didn't," I get a whiff of her vanilla perfume and rest my lips on hers comfortably.

"Want to see what I've got so far?" Paige smirks at me when I pull away from the kiss, her fingers trailing down the column of my neck.

"Of course," I climb out of bed and let Paige take my hand.

On the wall where the pictures of distant relatives used to be is loads of pictures in different styled frames. I wiggle my hand from Paige's grasp and walk closer to the wall.

On my left is pictures of Paige and I when we were younger, giggling and not paying attention to the camera or messing with a puzzle on the ground.

Towards the middle, some when we we're teenagers, before we split up, so to speak. Watching a movie on the couch, playing Mario Kart on my Nintendo. I smile at the pictures.

And then, my right- pictures from recently. Lots of me, driving and staring at the road, sleeping, laughing. Then there are several littering the space of Paige and I. The ones where I look like an absolute fool, and Paige is a goddess in all her beautiful glory. An idea hits me.

"You like?" Paige steps beside me and gives me a shy smile.

"Can we go back to Walmart?" I look down at my boxers and then to Paige.

"Why?" She furrows her eyebrows and her eyes flicker to the wall behind me.

"I have pictures I want to print out too," I lift my hand to Paige's hair and twirl a piece of it around my finger.

In a few minutes, we are on the road again to Walmart. Paige drives as I scroll through the pictures on my phone. There's hundreds of Paige. Lots of her sleeping with the shadow of light on her cheeks. Then there's her laughing and-

"Here," Paige announced after she parks the car. Her grin is blinding.

"You two again? What can I do for you?" The older woman who helped us at midnight directs me over to the machine and instructs me how to plug in my phone.

"This is my favorite," I poke Paige's side as she stands beside me and looks through all the pictures I've taken of her.

In this one, she is reading something, sitting in the chair in my bedroom, her chin her her hand and a crease on her forehead. She looks so studious and effortlessly beautiful.

"What did you call me? A creepy fiancée?" Paige rests her head on my shoulder as I drag pictures along the screen into a folder.

"And you're all set, here you go," the woman hands me a receipt from the purchase and Paige and I walk out of the store.

"Since when do you take pictures of me?" Paige turns to me once we are both seated again in her car. I drop the envelope holding the pictures into my lap and smile.

"When you aren't around, I have something to look at," I pull my phone out of my back pocket and unlock it, searching my home screen for the camera icon. Paige looks at me with a smug smile.