He Gave My Ring To Her Now He Wears His Regret Chapter 09
After the plane landed at JFK, Nico didn’t go home. He drove straight to my apartment.
The door code no longer worked.
He knocked for a long time before my landlord came upstairs.
“Looking for Virginia? She moved out yesterday.”
Nico’s expression changed.
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know.”
The landlord handed him a cardboard box.
“She said if you came by, I should give this to you.”
Nico took it.
The box was light.
Inside were all the things he had given me over the years.
A discontinued watch, a few books, an old sweater.
And the Leica camera.
He had bought it for me in our second year together.
He’d said, “You take beautiful photos. From now on, you can be in charge of all our group pictures.”
Back then, I hadn’t heard the slight in that sentence.
There were six of us.
But he had always said, “the five of us.”
Later, I had asked him, “Then what am I?”
He had paused for a second, then smiled and ruffled my hair.
“You’re the photographer. The photographer always stands outside the frame.”
I had believed him.
So, over the years, I took tens of thousands of photos of them.
Photos of Nico and Alessia laughing together.
Photos of the five of them celebrating birthdays.
Photos of them standing shoulder to shoulder, watching the sunrise.
The photos that truly belonged to me were pitifully few.
At the bottom of the box was a hard drive.
Nico plugged it into his computer.
There was only one folder on it.
The folder was named Outsider.