Free Keep Breathing by alexia purdy

couldn’t let it get the best of me, especially with Seth. For damage control, I pasted on a fake smile to cover it all up. Seth leaned on the frame and had already ignored my snap. Instead, he held up a single yellow rose and threw me a genuine smile.
    “What… what’s this for?” I stuttered and reached up, clasping my trembling fingers around the cool, soft stem.
    “It’s not the s urprise, but it reminded me of you. Beautiful and fragile, but also strong. It just felt right to get you this one rose.” He shifted on his feet as he waited for me to respond. I wasn’t even sure I’d heard him right. Nothing shut me up more than a compliment. I know I should have just said thanks, but Seth had a way of jolting me out of my comforts with just words. How this man always managed to surprise me gnawed at my senses, eroding down that rusty, solid metal wall I had so carefully built. It was somewhat irritating and yet made me stop and rethink for minute. I had to say the right thing before he realized what a fraud I was.
    My charm kicked into overdrive as I upturned the corners of my mouth and batted my eyelids. “I’ll go put it in some water before it withers.” If nothing else, this gave me some time to turn away, my face falling as I took a deep breath. No more panic attacks, please…. “So what’s the surprise?” I asked, distracting myself by looking for a vase and snapping the stem to shorten it. I heard him shuffle about in the living room as I worked.
    “You’ll see.”
    I peeked around the counter of my small kitchen bar and watched him as he casually walked around my apartment. He was studying the pictures lined all across the walls in matching frames, carefully placed at even intervals across the room. They were photos of my family, smiling with toothy grins in different scenes of our lives. I had taken most of them myself, but some were by my father, who’d been an avid amateur photographer. There were scenes of different natural landmarks from across the country and endless World’s Biggest—Longest—Smallest—Weirdest monuments. We had traveled a lot on vacations when I was younger, and he had set up his tripod in every single place we’d been. It’d gotten to the point where me and my brother would groan and complain endlessly when he would go about setting up the tripod . ‘Not another picture!’ we’d bitch and moan.
    What would I give to have those annoying moments back? I turned away, gasping at the rush of memories I’d long suppressed into the tiny, dark cracks of my mind. How could I pass these pictures every day without so much as looking at them anymore? How I could let those moments mean nothing after the years had muffled the sounds of them in the back of my head? I’d put them up for a reason. No matter how hard I’d now thought about it, I couldn’t remember what it had been. What was it?
    “ Penny?” Seth’s voice broke through my memories, and the rush of water from the faucet I’d left on pulled me back to the vase on the counter. I snatched the vase and filled it before stuffing the flower into it. “Ready to go?” I said. My heart was racing from everything running through my mind.
    “Yep . These pictures, they’re amazing. Did you take them all?” He eyed me like he wanted to peel the layers off, one by one. Or maybe his assumptions were mounting on who I now was, six fateful years after he’d known me. Maybe, I was just insane to assume anything about this man anymore.
    I shook my head and felt a scarlet heat rush across my cheeks. “Some of them are mine. Some were done by my father.” I walked over to the wall and glanced up at the many pairs of eyes staring back at me. It felt as if I’d never seen these pictures before, and I sighed at the natural beauty surrounding my family.
    “Thi s one was at the Grand Canyon. It was cold as hell on the Northern Rim that day. That one was at Yellowstone National Park, near some of the geysers. Those things