Free Crushing On The Billionaire (Part 1) by Lola Silverman Page A

more alive than usual, if that made any sense. I felt like I could do anything because of him. I wanted to do something, so I grabbed my camera and left in search of moments to collect, seeing if they would put into context the things I was feeling.
    My focus was on couples, on a woman handing a steaming coffee to a man across the counter, their fingers brushing for a fraction of a second, but a fraction of a second that I caught on camera, a fraction of a second that would endure for years and years and years.
    When it started to sprinkle, a man opened an umbrella and invited a woman, who peered up at the sky as if personally affronted, beneath it. I couldn’t tell if they were dating, or even if they knew about it. They huddled under the umbrella together, shoulders touching, and I captured the moment to study for as long as I wanted later.
    Strangers on a bus were forced to pair off, couple up, as seats became vacant and filled. I imagined men sitting next to each other as couples, secret lovers who only met in public while riding public transit. Two women both looking at their phones as they sat side by side were texting each other the things they felt they couldn’t say aloud. The man deeply in love with a woman who couldn’t be with him for any one of a number of reasons expressed his helpless love by standing, offering her his seat. The smile she gave him in return would feed him for an entire week until he gradually started going hungry for her again.
    I shot photos the entire day, having to exchange the drained battery for the charged spare, at one point, to accommodate my own hunger for this art of the couple, the real ones, and the ones I imagined. The homeless people bickering in the alley were just having a lover’s quarrel. Two people who happened to sit down on the same bench didn’t have to say anything to each other. The love between them was a palpable, wordless presence.
    I walked and walked, only dimly aware that my feet were aching, when I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. It was the third text from Shawn. I’d apparently missed the first two.
    Where are you? it read. The previous one: I want to work on our project. The first one: I’m coming to pick you up .
    It made me shudder a little bit to realize that Shawn had been knocking fruitlessly on the door of my apartment where, just hours earlier, I’d been having amazing sex with his father. I guessed I could appreciate Patrick’s inclination to wait to tell Shawn about us, casting uselessly around for the perfect way to break the news. There wasn’t going to be a perfect way. There probably wasn’t going to even be a good way to tell him. I almost ignored the messages, eager to lose myself again to the shooting of couples and love, both real and imagined, but that wouldn’t be right. That would be the very thing I’d railed against with Patrick last night. I didn’t want to hide, or be hidden.
    I texted Shawn the names of the streets at the nearest intersection, wondering if I could act as if everything was normal around him. Would that be lying? It would be a lie of omission, but Patrick had said he wanted to wait. He hadn’t said anything against me when I’d said I couldn’t lie to my best friend. Was it going to come down to me to tell Shawn everything?
    My phone vibrated. Stay there , Shawn had typed. I’ll swing by and get you. Really eager to start the project.
    And I was eager to clear the air, but I didn’t know what that would do to the dynamic of our friendship. Instead, I texted back okay and turned the camera on myself, clicking the shutter. In the program detailing our project, this photo would be captioned, “Loren is excited about starting the senior project collaboration with Shawn, but she’s nervous because she just started a torrid love affair with Shawn’s father. How will it affect their art and their friendship?”
    I looked at the photo I’d taken on the camera’s display and sighed. I looked scared.
    It