Photo Booth

I carry a photo booth strip in my wallet. Four frames. I only noticed the last one last week.

Her name was Naomi. We took it at a train station on our second date, crammed in a stuffy curtain booth, pulling faces. Frame one: both of us serious, like a passport photo. Frame two: me laughing. Frame three: her laughing. Frame four: chaos. A blur.

She gave me the strip. "Keep it, since you've got pockets," she joked. I did. I kept it for two years. Through three wallets. Through the breakup. Through the long, quiet months after, when I stopped looking at it but never took it out.

Last Thursday, I was paying for a coffee. The strip slipped out. It landed on the counter, face up. Under a bright light, I saw it properly, for the first time in ages.

Frame one: both of us serious. Frame two: me, laughing. Frame three: her, laughing, head back.

Frame four. The blur. I'd always assumed it was a mess. But under the bright light, it wasn't. It was me, mid-turn, looking at the camera.

And her.

Not at the camera. At me.

She wasn't laughing. She wasn't posing. She was just looking at me, with the softest, quietest expression I'd ever seen.

I'd carried that photo for two years.

I'd never noticed the exact moment she fell in love.