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“—sleep okay?” Nathan’s saying.
I blink and turn my attention back to him. “Hm?”
“I asked if you were able to sleep last night.”
“Oh, yeah.” It’s a struggle to keep my face straight. “Yeah, slept like a baby.”
Click, click.
I have to stop myself from glaring at Staphanie. “You?”
“Took me a while to fall asleep, but once I did, it was fine.”
Click.
My frustration boils over and I turn to Staphanie and snap, “Could you stop that, please?”
Staphanie lowers the camera from her face and looks innocently at us. “I’m sorry, stop what? Taking pictures?”
I grit my teeth. Now that she’s said it like that, it seemsridiculous that I would ask her, the photographer, to stop photographing us.
“Everything okay?” Nathan asks, holding me close to him.
“Yeah, sorry, just camera shy.” I force out a laugh. “As it turns out, it’s a lot more nerve-racking to be on this side.”
Nathan smiles at me. “It kind of is, isn’t it? I’ve got more sympathy for celebrities now.”
Well, I’m not about to let this chance go. “Yeah, it’s really stressing me out.” I turn to Staphanie with my most apologetic face. “Can we have some privacy, please? Just for a bit.” Then I recall her threat and add, “I promise we’ll be well-behaved.”
Her smile tightens and for a moment I wonder if she’ll lose her cool, but then she nods and says, “Sure, of course. You’re the boss!” She starts to leave, then stops. “Don’t take too long, though, or else Ama will freak out and who knows what she’ll do.” She widens her eyes at me meaningfully and then leaves the garden.
I turn back to Nathan, who’s frowning slightly.
“Is everything okay?” he says.
“Yeah! Totally! Why wouldn’t it be?” Jesus, tone it down, self.
Nathan narrows his eyes at me, smiling quizzically. “Uh, because you just told our photographer to go away? I know you, you’re all about the wedding photos, and I’m not just saying that because you’re a wedding photographer, I’m saying it because you have, like, some weird fetish about photos with brides in them.”
“I think you mean admirable dedication.”
“Oh, right, that,” he laughs. “But really, what’s going on? You know you want ten thousand pictures of you in that dress. God, look at you. You are beautiful. How the hell did I get so lucky?”
My insides are at war. Half of me is crooningawww, and the other half is tearing its hair out and going, “THIS IS A DISASTER!”
“I just wanted some alone time with you, is all. There’s plenty of time for pictures later.”
In response, Nathan bends down and kisses me. By the time he pulls away, we’re both slightly out of breath. “I have something for you,” he says, walking over to a table and picking up a box.
I open it. “A UCLA mug?”
“Not just any UCLA mug. You remember that time we made mug cakes at the dorm? I made you the kimchi-and-hot-dog mug cake and you were like, ‘Ew, gross!’ and then proceeded to finish the entire thing.”
“Yeah, of course,” I say, as if I hadn’t ruminated and obsessed about every single day spent with Nathan for years after we broke up.
“This is that mug. I went back to the kitchen afterward and, uh, took it.”
“You stole from the dorm?” I say with mock horror.