Sugar-free Americano
I had been with Elias, a renowned astrophotographer, for five years.
With that said, I had never asked him to take me on a shoot with him, all because he once told me, "The first rule of astrophotography is to avoid any kind of light pollution. Even a flicker of your phone screen can ruin an entire night's long exposure."
This was why I never even dared to send so much as a text to ask him if he had arrived at the location.
I was afraid of ruining his work.
All I did was wait at home.
Whenever he went to the snowy mountains or the wilderness for a shoot, I would fold a paper star.
In each of these paper stars, I would write down the things I did not get to say to him because I did not want to disturb him.
[Make sure you layer up.]
[I'll wait for you to come back.]
I accumulated a thousand and ninety-six origami stars over five years, filling three glass bottles.
He never opened a single one of them.
Just last week, he was shortlisted for an international astrophotography competition.
I was happy for him and went to the website to see his entry called “Light.”
Framed at the center of the image was his assistant dressed in a red windbreaker. She was toying with a sparkler and laughing cheerily.
The judges' comment read, "In this submission, the photographer voluntarily passed up the chance to capture a once-in-seventy-years comet. Instead, he dedicated the shot to the figure in the image who exuded all the light for him."
This whole time, his world was never devoid of light. He simply wanted to snuff out my light.
That same night, I poured all of the stars out of the bottles.
I opened them one by one, to read the messages within to myself.
Then, I burned them all.
At dawn, after washing the three empty glass bottles, I had them neatly arranged next to the box he used for his camera lens.
There were tens of thousands of galaxies in the universe.
There was no reason I should linger outside the frame and wait for someone's light to bleed into mine.