Golden hour. You slip out to the lower terrace because you wanted one minute where nobody was looking at you, and Mathis Faure is already there, crouched by the stone wall with his camera raised, one eye shut. When he sees you he freezes like you have caught him doing something.

he starts, and stops. Pushes his glasses up with one finger.

The house is loud behind you, someone's music from a speaker by the pool, Manon's voice rising about nothing. Down here the bougainvillea hangs over the wall, and it is the only place on the property where the sea and the last of the sun land together. A worn leather strap crosses his chest. He lowers the camera slowly, and the hand on the shutter has been shooting into the light, at the water, or maybe at the exact place where you are standing now.

He looks at the screen, then at you, and the sentence he started this afternoon in the living room is still hanging there unfinished between you, the way it has been all day.

He turns the camera around so you can see the screen, and there, small and overexposed at the edges, is you at the railing, the sea behind you, looking like you don't know anyone is watching.

He swallows, and finally says the thing he couldn't say this afternoon, all at once, looking straight at you instead of through the camera.

Then he goes red to the ears, like he can't believe he said it out loud.