TWENTY-EIGHT

"In the cracks of light

(can we just get a pause?)

I dreamed of you..."

———

June 18th, 2018 - London, England

Thirteen shows down. Over six months pregnant.

Dorothea gazed out the window of their eighteenth floor hotel suite. The towers of the city were hidden in a cool white, misty fog. It was chilly for an almost-summer day, and yet she was sweating like she was running a marathon in Death Valley.

Every inch of her body was swollen. The first time she got up to pee, she looked in the bathroom mirror and was horrified. Her face—quite literally—looked like a failed experiment with a new brand of Botox. Or perhaps like what happened when she ate pineapple (which she was severely allergic to). It didn't matter whether she was standing, sitting, or laying down; she now felt as though she was constantly floating in a swimming pool of her own discomfort.

Her bump was starting to get in the way. Dorothea knew it wasn't huge but it felt as if she was carrying triplets (a nightmare she'd had twice, which was enough for her to make a paranoid call to Dr. Marshall at seven in the morning on a Saturday, just to double-check her...situation? for lack of a better term. Lo and behold, there was still and had always been only one —duh— Blood-Sucker).

She was suddenly becoming much more aware of doors. Door frames. Dressers. Counters. Coat racks. Tables and couches; any sort of furniture, architectural detail or junk that she'd never given more than a single shit about previously. All thanks to the New Addition that treated her bladder like a trampoline and kicked the inside of her stomach like a soccer ball destined for a goal on the opposite end of the field.

At the most recent show in Dublin, Dorothea had been offered a stool to sit on when she was photographing from one of the more stationary spots. Though she accepted it, she continued to stand as usual for the entire show. Her feet wanted to kill her but she refused to give in so soon. Had she still been working at The Pearl, Will certainly wouldn't have put her on napkin and silverware duty until Month Eight, at the earliest.

But also, she wasn't working at The Pearl. Several months had now slipped passed since Dorothea had last stepped through the restaurant's velvet and plant-adorned lobby. Though frequently she had recurring dreams that she was zooming around various sections holding trays piled high with food and expensive booze, which always ended with her not being able to find her tables. Despite the fact that she was knocking into things more than ever, she was horrified to think that had she still been a server, it would have only been that much worse.

"Room service!"

Dorothea's eyes shot up from trying—struggling— to put on one of her socks and landed on the singer entering the bedroom. In contrast to her own feelings, Taylor wore a smile that could have parted the clouds out the window as she carried a cardboard tray with two paper coffee cups. "That was fast," Dorothea commented.

"I was gone for almost forty minutes," Taylor chuckled, presenting the tray to her.

Dorothea hummed appreciatively, then took the Chai-labeled cup. She was about to tip the plastic lid towards her lips but sensed the liquid was almost boiling hot. She frowned, blowing into the opening. "I feel like a beach ball," she grumbled.

"Swelling hasn't gone down?" Taylor frowned, gingerly raising her own scalding coffee to her lips.

"I think my face speaks for itself." Dorothea laughed darkly.

"Well I don't think you look like a beach ball," the blonde said.

"A hamster ball, then,"

"No."

"A bloated sponge."

"No."

"It's okay to acknowledge the obvious, T.,"

"You look like my girlfriend," Taylor stated, "as long as we're acknowleding the obvious."

Dorothea smiled, somewhat embarassed by her self-deprecation. Taylor may not have been a fan of it, but somehow for her it made it easier to cope. Dorothea blew once more on the hot chai latte and took a sip, though her face suddenly contorted.

"What's wrong?"

"Mm, I don't know." Dorothea grimaced. It tasted creamy, yet also like she'd scarffed down a rosebush. She shook her head to herself, groaning to no one in particular, "Is there not one thing left on this fucking earth that still tastes good?"

"Want to try sipping on my coffee instead? I kept it black," the singer offered.

Dorothea shook her head again, sucking in a frustrated breath. She pressed her lips together, pissed off at how helpless she felt. The gradual loss of her self-sufficiency over each passing month was maddening.

Though her hands were covering her face, Dorothea felt the older woman shift closer to her on the bed. "Do you want to talk about it?" Taylor asked quietly, as though she could physically see the turmoil that was ensuing inside her mind.

"Not really," Dorothea mumbled.

"Okay. Do you want to go somewhere to distract yourself from thinking about it?"

She thought about it for a moment, keeping her eyes covered. "It's cold outside."

"It's gotten warmer,"

"Is it raining?"

"No,"

"Where are we going?"

"Hyde Park?" Taylor hummed, reaching for Dorothea's hands so their eyes could meet. "To look at the flowers?"

Dorothea held the other woman's gaze, observing how her indigo hues swirled with expectation. She felt like shit, yet couldn't help but express a tiny smile. "Okay," she agreed.

After relenting to Taylor's assistance with her wretched socks, Dorothea grabbed her personal camera and headed down to the lobby with the singer. From there, the pair rode in an SUV and stopped at the edge of Mayfair with plans to take a leisurely stroll towards Kensington Gardens.

Though the air was still cool, the clouds were breaking, and suddenly Dorothea's Pregnancy Brain was being shoved aside by her Photographer Brain. As the two walked quietly side-by-side, Dorothea observed how the shadows were coming thorugh the trees; which direction the light was coming from. She went through a phase in college with flowers, photographing anything from the tulips in Bryant Park to the danelions growing out of the cracks in the dirty Canal Street sidewalk. She quickly became fascinated by their resiliency to just about anything in the concrete jungle, like the daffodils in the lone, beat-up terracotta pot on the roof of her dorm building. She'd only taken one photo of it—out of hundreds—and yet it was supposedly Sophie's favorite.

Long after they were no longer roommates, Dorothea couldn't stop seeing daffodils. It seemed as though they were springing up in every corner of Manhattan, even on the smallest patches of green.

Dorothea fiddled with the settings on her camera, then snapped a test shot. In turn, it sounded off a shutter that suddenly caught Taylor's attention.

"Jesus," the blonde gasped, then laughed. "Every time that goes off I'm gonna think we're being papped."

"Thought you said it wasn't as much of a problem here," Dorothea said, looking through the viewfinder.

"It hasn't been," Taylor corrected.

"But it might become a problem."

"Well, that's true for just about anything,"

"Mm," Dorothea conceded. She took another test photo, suddenly feeling rather warm. She then unzipped her jacket, revealing a navy-blue, v-neck dress with itty-bitty white polka-dots (one of the three-am impulse purchases) and frowned up at the sky. "Think there's any chance it'll get cloudy in the next ten minutes?"

Taylor let out an incredulous laugh. "Weren't you just saying in the car that you'd literally give up the ability to bend your knees if it meant the sun would come out?"

"I didn't realize what angle it was coming in at."

"Isn't that what Photoshop's for?"

"In a way, but I try not to rely on it,"

"You sound like my dad using a GPS,"

"I trust my instincts."

"I trust outcomes."

Dorothea looked up at Taylor from her camera with a curious smile. The blonde was smiling, as well, but looking straight ahead.

Around fifteen minutes later, the pair arrived at the garden. It was somewhat busy for a Monday afternoon, with various summer tourists and families with kids and strollers sauntering about. As their shoes crunched against the sandy gravel, Dorothea snapped a photo here and there. Within a few minutes, Taylor had to take a call from Tree regarding the next day's show, and so while she found a bench, Dorothea wandered down one of the paths.

Right as the sun dipped behind a cloud, Dorothea pounced on the opportunity to take some photos. The colors were rich and vibrant; purples, yellows, pinks, blues and reds, all in high contrast against the shadowless backdrop. As the click of the shutter filled her ears, her mind spun with possibility. More and more, she'd been thinking about the nursery—wherever it might be—, including a somewhat-heated discussion with Taylor about what color to paint the walls. Taylor wanted yellow. Dorothea wanted bare white, covered in a few large-print photos on glass that were drenched in rainbows of color. The singer wasn't understanding her vision, but surely the photos of the flowers would change Taylor's mind.

Dorothea was crouching as she snapped a photo of a large sunflower, but realized it may not have been the best choice. As she wobbled getting back to her feet, she reached and steadied herself on a nearby trellis. The structure arched over the path and was covered in a complicated pattern of deep emerald-colored ivy. The sight of it suddenly launched her back in time, lost in the forest of her dream and tangled in Taylor's—then—unfamiliar limbs.

As the sun came peaking through the greenery, Dorothea adjusted her camera and snapped a few photos. For a moment, she imagined a large, horizontal print of it hanging above the baby's crib. She looked down the path to Taylor, who smiled at her from the bench, and suddenly that vision morphed to the singer lifting the baby out of the crib and telling her the story of how the photo hanging above her came to be.

Dorothea took a dozen more photos of the ivy.

Once again, she decided to crouch to get a photo of the plant cascading down to the ground. Her feet were starting to get sore, though, and so when she stood up she stumbled a bit. She reached to grab the trellis for support, dropping the lens cap to her camera and watching it scatter in the process. But before she was able to retrieve it, a hand with pastel yellow fingernails and multiple silver rings beat her to it.

"Hey, no worries, I've got it—"

Dorothea's eyes snapped towards the voice. The pale, frosty hues across from her were just as wide as her own.

"...Thea?"

The sound sent her mind tumbling, in the same way that rolling down a steep grass hill as a kid while laughing at the top of your lungs whisked your brain into scrambled eggs. The flowers beyond—the daffodils—had started to dance in the breeze, as though they knew how wild it was. And yet even more bizzarre were the clouds, cracking open and spewing harsh, bright streams of sunlight, like a flashlight through smashed glass.

"Sophie."