waiting for a moment

Garvin didn't know exactly how to face the new year. Business was nonexistence these days. No one wanted Christmas portraits. People could take them themselves on their quite expensive cell phones.

What was he thinking? Making a go of it in photography? Well, it had always made him happy until now.

Now, he didn't know what to think of himself or anything else. Evidently.

Yes, there was something he couldn't dare breathe a word to anyone. Definitely, not Ruben. Not even Vera.

He might be in love, but it wasn't with Martha.

No, that ship had sailed some time ago. Perhaps, he'd lost his touch or he'd been foolish to begin with.

Even now, he thought he was a fool. What was it about him? He couldn't put someone out of his mind? And he should. He wanted too. He thought, he'd be over this obsession by now, but he wasn't.

He had found someone he wanted to be with, and he didn't even know her name. She might as well have been a figment of his imagination. And he'd gone time and time again to the library, hoping to see her.

She would make it in the modeling world, he knew, but that wasn't what it was about her. It was this sensibility about her that he wished he could learn himself.

He was sure she wasn't pining over him. Naturally, she hadn't called, didn't take him up, on his offer. It was just as well. Probably a high school girl. He'd hate to get mixed up in something that might lead to a dark path he didn't want.

Jail-bait.

He kept telling himself. But waiting for customers was not helping. He should shut up shop, call that textbook place and hope they sent him some place up north with the polar bears.

He went to the back of the shop which was hardly warm on this cold January day and started taking inventory. Naturally, he didn't know where to start. If he'd just taken a chance. Taken the job at the small town newspaper..maybe he would be waking up next to Martha right now.

Of course not. He doubted she ever slept past five in the morning. And if he were in Walnut, well he'd probably be out in the cold looking for a news story. A Good News news story, at that.

He was on the brink of just tossing all his supplies in the air and let them fall where they may. What did it matter? But he heard a jingle.

He peered around the doorway. Must have been his imagination. No one was here. Just his luck, there was a ghost he'd have to put up with.

"Hullo." He heard an echo. Maybe it was in the business next door. They sold parts for old ovens and washers and dryers. Of course, they never had any parts on hand. It was mainly a mail order place.

Garvin pushed in the box of supplies in their place on the shelf. He sighed, thinking he'd go to the cash register and pray no one was there to rob him.

"Hi." The voice was male and Garvin's dark eyes met the young man's large pale eyes. Garvin slightly winced, thinking there was something so familiar about the teen's face. Maybe he was a young adult. Possibly, lost.

"Sorry, can I help you?" Garvin shook the thought that he'd ever met him.

"I hope so." He was thin lipped and rather solemn. "You, talked to me, before, about ..modeling."

"Modeling?" Garvin was caught off guard. "What are you talking about?"