Heart Bones - Colleen Hoover Page 0,41

it’s because he almost kissed me.

Would he try it again if I gave him the chance?

I want to give him the chance. I want that kiss almost as much as I don’t.

I do have his memory card. I could take it back to him. I haven’t looked at the pictures yet, though. I really want to see them before I give it back to him.

Sara has a computer in her bedroom, so I fish the memory card out of my backpack and go to Sara’s computer.

I wait several minutes for all of the images to load. There are a lot of them. The first ones to load are all pictures of nature. All things he said he takes pictures of. Countless sunrises and sunsets. Pictures of the beach. But they aren’t necessarily pretty pictures. They’re soothingly sad. Most of them are taken with the focus zoomed in on something random, like a piece of trash floating in the water, or seaweed piled up on the sand.

It’s interesting. It’s like he puts the focus on the saddest part of whatever is in view of his lens, but the picture as a whole is still beautiful.

The pictures he took of me begin to load. There are more than I thought there would be, and he apparently started snapping pictures of me before I even moved to the front of the ferry.

Most of the pictures are of me on the side of the ferry, watching the sunset alone.

He put the focus on me in every picture. Nothing else. And based on all the other pictures he took, I suppose that means he thought I was the saddest thing in his frame.

There’s one picture in particular that strikes me. It’s zoomed in and the focus is on a small rip in the back of my sundress that I didn’t even know was there. Even with his focus on something as sad as my dress, the picture is still striking. My face is out of focus, and if this were a picture of anyone else but me, I’d say it was a beautiful piece of art.

Instead, I’m embarrassed he paid such close attention to me before I even noticed he was there.

I scroll through every picture of me and notice there isn’t a single picture of me eating the bread. I wonder why he didn’t photograph that.

That says a lot about him. I regret reacting how I did when he tried to offer me money on the ferry that day. Samson may actually be a decent human and the pictures on this memory card back that up.

I remove it from the computer and even though I’m still in pain and kind of want to crawl in bed and go to sleep, I head downstairs, outside and across the yard. Samson always uses his back door, so I head in that direction. I walk up the steps and knock.

I wait for a while, but I don’t hear his footsteps and I can’t see the kitchen from this point of view. I hear something behind me, though. When I turn around, P.J. is sitting at the top of the stairs watching me. I smile a little. I like that he’s still around.

Samson eventually opens the door. He’s changed clothes in the time I was watching him from my window to the point of me knocking on his door. He’s wearing one of Marcos’s HisPanic T-shirts, which seem to be the only shirts he wears, if he’s wearing a shirt at all. I like that he’s supportive of Marcos’s vision. Their friendship is kind of adorable.

Samson is barefoot, and I don’t know why I’m staring at his feet. I look back at his face.

“I was just bringing your memory card back.” I hand it to him.

“Thanks.”

“I didn’t delete anything.”

Samson’s mouth curls up on the left side. “I didn’t think you would.”

He steps aside and motions for me to come in. I squeeze between him and the doorframe and enter his dark house. He flips on a light, and I try to hide my gasp, but it’s even bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside.

Everything is white and colorless. The walls, the cabinets, the trim. The floor is a dark wood—almost black. I spin around in a circle, admiring it for what it is, but also recognizing how unlike a home it feels. There isn’t any soul at all.

“It’s kind of...sterile.” As soon as I say it, I wish I hadn’t. He didn’t ask for my