Full Exposure

by Jerry Cole

  Scott blinks, shoves his hands in his pockets. “I’m looking for someone, actually. I think he lives around here.”

  The woman smiles, a twinkle in her eye. “You’ve come to the right place, then,” she replies warmly. “I’ve lived here my whole life, and I know just about everyone that comes in and out of this place. Who’s your man?”

  “He’s—” not my man, Scott wants to say, but stops himself before the words leave his mouth. “—a photographer,” he finishes lamely. “He’s a photographer. Moved here sometime in the last five years.”

  “He got a name?”

  “Evan. Aldridge.”

  She brightens almost immediately, bustling out from behind the counter and pulling a map off the display as she goes. “You mean that nice young British boy?”

  Scott shrugs, sheepish.

  “He lives down the coast a little,” the woman continues, ignoring Scott’s lapse. “Comes into town maybe once a week for groceries, and he always stops in here to buy biscuits when I put them out on Sundays.” A hand comes down on Scott’s shoulder, and he starts a little before realizing she’s trying to show him the map. “Take the coast road south for about twenty minutes. You’ll see the house when it comes up. It’s got a pink front. Right on the water.”

  ***

  “I’m not buying anything, sorry,” is the first thing Scott ever hears from Evan Aldridge’s mouth.

  He opens the door wide when Scott knocks, contrary to his skeptical tone, draped with a soft, overlarge cream sweater and a posh accent that sounds like it could have come straight from the royal palace itself. He looks like he’s never seen a hairbrush in his life. Scott’s heart goes tight and nervous, pounding in his throat now that he’s here. It’s a strange, heady combination of nerves and excitement, the awkwardness of meeting a stranger for the first time at their own home mixed with the strange, surreal rush of finally being able to put a person to the face in the photograph. Evan is shorter than him by nearly a head, although that isn’t saying much. Scott is a lanky beanpole of a person and he knows it. He’s nearly eye level with Evan in this position, though, standing a step below with Evan perched just over the threshold, one hand on the doorframe, fingers brushing the wood paneling of the house’s exterior. It really is violently pink. He seems to realize he’s standing a little too far for conversation and takes a step forward, stubbing his bare foot against a plant pot sitting conspicuously along the side of the front porch.

  “Ow, fuck,” he hisses, and it’s the second thing Scott ever hears him say. He heaves himself up on the railing, hops around a little on his unhurt foot in an attempt to readjust his center of gravity. Scott nearly reaches out to steady him, but holds himself back at the last moment. Evan still doesn’t know who he is, but he won’t be able to introduce himself with his tongue cemented to the roof of his mouth like it is now.

  Scott settles for hovering his hands awkwardly in Evan’s direction, braced to catch him if he falls over, then reaches slowly down to his bag when he’s sure Evan can remain upright. “I’m, uh—” he starts, eyeing the way Evan’s gaze snaps up when he starts talking. “I’m Scott.”

  Evan huffs a laugh, and it sounds like bells. “Oh, all right, that changes things I guess, let me get my wallet—”

  “No, no, I’m not a salesman.”

  Evan seems to relax a little after that, running his hands through his unruly mop of hair and shifting to lean more heavily on the railing next to him. “Religious kid, then? Cookie seller? Not many people come all the way out here.”

  That’s an understatement, Scott thinks. The house is tucked away in the middle of nowhere, nestled right into the foothills of the mountains on one side and pushed right up against the waterfront on the other. It’s a wonder Evan’s lived out here on his own for five years. It doesn’t seem like there’s any civilization around for miles. “I’m one of Frances’ friends,” he says, carefully, watching the way his face morphs from wariness to surprise to something pained that Scott can’t quite put his finger on. He steps back, pushes the door open a little wider, motions for Scott to come inside.

  “Did something happen to her?” asks Evan, his voice wavering a little. Scott shakes his head rapidly, trying to reassure him.

  “Everything’s fine,” he says hastily, “I just have something of yours.”

  “Oh? Consider my curiosity piqued.” His accent is a strange, heavy blend of foreign and native, his vowels long and drawn out and the ends of his words clipped off, like he ran out of air halfway through saying them. It leaves him sounding rounded, vaguely European, not quite here and not quite there. “Come on in. I can get you a drink. Tea or coffee?”

  “Coffee sounds nice, actually,” Scott says, following Evan inside. The faint scent of cloves and vanilla hits him as he steps closer, sweet and heady.

  Despite the peeling and violently pink exterior of the house, the inside is cleanly furnished. It looks expensive, all done up in brassy metals and clean black and white, overflowing with potted houseplants that spread their vines out over every horizontal surface. It’s clean, too, in a lived in sort of way. Books are stacked on the coffee table, jackets hang neatly on a coat rack by the front door, and the lingering smell of cooking wafts through the air as Scott passes the kitchen.

  It strikes him, all of a sudden, that he doesn’t really know Evan. It had felt so simple, at first, to drive to the ocean and return a photo album when the only thing he had ever known about the photographer was a single picture and half a month’s worth of stories from a mutual friend, but now – now, Evan is a real person, flesh and blood in front of Scott, close enough to reach out and touch if he wanted to.

  Not that he does, of course.

  Evan sits him down at the coffee table, bustling off to the kitchen to make some coffee, presumably. Scott gets a look at the books piled on the table in front of him . Classics mostly, stuffy literature he pretended to read for class in high school, interspersed with a couple large, scrapbook-type anthologies of famous photography. One of them is open about halfway, spine bent and pages laid flat to show wide lens landscapes of a mountain range. The caption identifies the photos as Les Alpes, Chamonix, and the mountaintops are capped with snow.

  “Milk and sugar?” Evan calls from the kitchen, and when Scott turns, he can see the top half of Evan’s head peeking out sideways from around the edge of the wall. “I’m not as good at making coffee as my sister is, but I know the basics.”

  “Just milk,” replies Scott. “How did you know I know Mitchell?”

  “Just an educated guess.” There’s a light clang from inside the kitchen, followed by a hushed expletive, then Evan steps daintily out from the kitchen with two mugs in hand. “If you know Frances, you probably know Mitchell.”

  “I met Mitchell first, actually,” Scott says, taking the cup from Evan. It’s warm in his hands, the coffee caramel colored against the white ceramic. It smells like heaven. Evan steps around the arm of the couch, pushes the stack of books to the side and perches himself cross-legged on the table. It takes a bit of maneuvering. Evan isn’t anywhere near as tall as Scott is, but he isn’t short, and his knees jut out at awkward angles, just shy of poking into Scott’s space with how close they are. “She helped me get in touch with Frances when I found your photo album, and then Frances found you.”

  Evan chokes on his drink, coughing sharply for a moment. “Sorry, what?” He rubs at his chest, tapping it a couple times with his fist to clear the cough. You have that? Frances knows where I am?”

  It takes a second for Scott to reply, blinking for a moment then turning to rifle through the bag at his side. He pulls out the book without fanfare, watching the way Evan’s eyes go wide and panicked for a moment before he manages to school his expression back into something more pleasantly neutral. “She found the town, that’s all. I had to ask a shopkeeper if anyone knew a British photographer.”

  Evan gives him a wry smile, there and then gone. “How were you so sure it was me?”
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  “Is there more than one here?” Scott retorts, raising an eyebrow teasingly.

  “Fair enough. So, you made friends with Mitch first, Frances later.”

  “Stumbled into her coffee shop, more like.”

  “Was that before or after you found my book?”

  “Before, technically. I ran into her and Frances both the morning before it was sent to me, and went back the next day, after I recognized Frances in the photos.”

  Evan flushes a little at the mention of the photographs, averting his eyes. “Ah.” he takes a sip of his coffee, coughs lightly again. “So you saw those.”

  “I wouldn’t have found Frances again if I didn’t,” Scott defends, chuckling. Then, as an afterthought: “Or you.”

  That manages to get a smile out of Evan, the flush still high on his cheeks. “Well,” he says, raising his mug in a mock toast. “Thank god for that. Still, it’s a little embarrassing, isn’t it? Did you read the letter?”

  Scott flushes, nods into his cup. “I thought it might have been an address. Or at least a name.”

  Evan doesn’t seem too upset by it. Ge just rubs the back of his neck sheepishly with his free hand. “I was a little bit of a sap back then, wasn’t I?”

  “Are you not anymore?”

  “Well,” he says, shrugging dismissively. “Not much to wax poetic about out here.”

  Scott doesn’t agree. If he lived here, in a secluded little cottage by the sea, he has a feeling he’d find more than enough poetic inspiration. Evan doesn’t strike him as an introvert, though, not in the way Scott is, and especially not with the stories he’s heard from Frances. Now, he just seems kind of lonely, actually.

  Scott wonders how many people have come to call on Evan since he disappeared. Not many, he thinks, judging by the mismatched cups they’re drinking out of. He takes a sip, studying the way Evan’s expression seems to be a thinly veiled cover for something underneath that he can’t quite put his finger on. “I have a question, though,” Scott says, tracing the lip of his cup with his middle finger. Evan watches the movement, eyes downcast. “Why did you never give it to her?”

  Evan chuckles. “The album? I didn’t even put it together until after I left. I assume they told you I left, otherwise they would be here instead of you.”

  Scott hums in response.

  “I had all the pictures, of course. I took them on every trip we went on together, it was just a matter of getting them printed and sticking them into a book.”

  “And the letter?”

  “Consider it therapy. I left at Christmas, wrote it in March, for Frances’ birthday. I never expected she would actually read it.”

  Scott understands that, he supposes. After April’s death, he had been given various levels of coping advice from just about everyone he came into contact with, ranging from find a new girlfriend to run away and become a hermit. He had leaned far more heavily into the second option. Still, he had toyed once or twice with the idea of writing letters to April, sending them out unaddressed or leaving them to decompose at the grave. He could never really bring himself to do it, though. Something about writing letters to a dead girl seems a little too melancholy, even for him.

  Frances is alive and well, though, having coffee in the next city over, so Scott figures it’s a little different for Evan.

  “Very well-adjusted of you,” Scott says with a tight, wan smirk, and raises his cup when it pulls a chuckle from Evan.

  “That’s something I’ve never been accused of.”

  “Pot to the kettle, then,” says Scott, and his chest feels a little lighter.

  ***

  He ends up staying for dinner, caving in at Evan’s insistence that he still hasn’t learned to portion meals for one after living alone for five years and always ends up with extra food. Scott could have slipped away easily, of course, claimed a prior engagement in the city or said that he had work he needed to finish, but something stops him. It’s a tug at his chest, a little jolt of sympathy at seeing Evan like this. It’s a mirror image of himself, dressed up in the same clothes but slightly backwards, both of them aching for company but not quite sure how to look for it.

  Scott’s had enough practice staring down his own loneliness in the mirror that he’s learned how to read it in other faces.

  Evan pulls him up from the couch, steers him in the direction of the bathroom as he’s cooking so Scott can wash up. Scott nods his thanks as he closes the door, turning to face the sink, flipping the taps on. His face is tired, but not nearly as haggard as he’s seen it in the past. His five o’clock shadow has sprung back up, shadowing his jawline even after shaving earlier in the morning, and the bags under his eyes are prominent enough that it makes him wince. With a short inhale, he bends down to splash icy water against his face, looking marginally more alive when he comes back up to dry his skin off.

  It’s a strange feeling, being in someone else’s space. It makes Scott more aware of himself, of the way he tends to fall short of general societal expectations. Evan hasn’t really made a big deal of it, though at least not in the handful of hours since Scott showed up at his door. Scott still isn’t sure how well he’s handling his return to society, at least not with only Frances and Mitchell as a frame of reference. This, though, sitting in Evan’s living room and drinking coffee and listening to the soft tenor of his voice as he rambles. This is nice.

  There’s pasta and salad on the table when Scott steps back into the main area of the house, two plates laid out neatly opposite each other. Evan stands motionless next to the table, staring intently at a candle.

  “It won’t bite your head off, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Scott says, startling Evan. He stifles a chuckle at the way Evan’s shoulders go tense, his face flushing.

  “It’s not too much, is it? I don’t have visitors very often.”

  Far be it from Scott to deny any special treatment. He just shrugs and gives Evan a little smile. “Light it. I haven’t been romanced in a while.”

  The words stick in his throat as he says them. It feels oddly like flirting, the wit jumping to his tongue with ease, and that leaves a little pit of guilt in his stomach. He shouldn’t be flirting, especially not less than a week after April’s death anniversary, and even less so with a near-stranger.

  Even if that near-stranger really is incredibly attractive. Even if he’s starting to feel less and less like a stranger by the minute.

  Still, the words are out, hanging in the air between them, and Scott watches as nervousness bleeds from Evan’s shoulders. He sets the candle in the center of the table, lighting it with a little handheld cigarette lighter as Scott slides himself into the chair opposite Evan’s.

  They eat in relative silence, Evan pausing here and there to ask Scott to pass the salt or if he likes the meal, and it’s nice, strangely enough. Scott isn’t used to comfortable silences, certainly not with strangers, but Evan has a way of setting his nerves at ease. He supposes it’s just the personality. Scott might be a ball of anxiety at any given moment, but Evan is warm and bright, comfortable enough to fill the spaces in the conversation with his presence alone.

  Scott is halfway through his plate when a thunderclap breaks through the quiet of the room, and he starts so quickly he nearly knocks over his glass of water. Evan stifles a laugh, looks out at the window, wipes the smile off of his face.

  “Is it raining?” he asks, voice quiet, and Scott blinks. It hadn’t been too cloudy when he had driven down to the waterfront. Then again, autumn storms could come at a moment’s notice this close to the coast. Sure enough, when he turns to look at the street outside, water droplets coat the glass of the windowpane, and the telltale patter of rain is just barely audible if he strains his ears.

  “Shit,” he hisses, more to himself than to Evan. He hates getting caught in the rain, hates it even more at night, most of all when he has to drive in it. “There’s no chance it’ll let up anytime soon, is there?”

  Evan furrows his brow, sta
nds up from the table and pads over to the front door. As he’s sticking his head outside to check the sky, Scott fishes his phone out of his pocket and sends a text to Frances.

  Sent 8:14 PM: Gave him the book, stayed for dinner

  Received 8:15 PM: Are you sure you should be driving in this weather?

  He doesn’t have a chance to reply before Evan is back, water droplets clinging to the tips of his curls. “It’s pouring out there,” he says, grimacing, and Scott resists the urge to purse his lips like a petulant child. “You can’t drive with the weather like this.”

  Scott can, of course, even if he doesn’t like it, but Evan’s concern sparks a little ball of warmth in his chest. “Frances said the same thing, you know.” He holds his phone up, shakes it a little for emphasis. “Just now.”

  Evan blanches a little, pulling a face at the mention of Frances’ name, and Scott winces inwardly. He shakes himself after a second, though, expression morphing back into his easy half-smile. “You can stay the night here if you want,” he says, and Scott blinks incredulously.

  “You just met me,” he deadpans.

  “And giving you my couch is better than making you drive back alone in that nightmare.” He waves an arm in the direction of the window for emphasis, and Scott can see the rain coming down in thick curtains. It’s a split second decision, one he doesn’t realize he’s made until after he finds himself nodding in reply, but it’s worth it for the way Evan’s smile splits into an exact replica of his smile in the Christmas photograph.

  Chapter Six

  Evan sets up a makeshift bed on the sofa in the living room, piling blankets and pillows on the table to the side. The cozy feeling that had occupied his chest during dinner is gone now, leaving him feeling a little awkward. After all, he had just planned on dropping the book off and leaving, but strangely, Evan doesn’t seem like as much of a stranger as he had expected. Maybe it was because of how familiar he had become with the photographs, or some residual feelings left over from all the stories he had heard from Frances, but it feels like he’s known Evan for much, much longer than a single afternoon.