Five Years Outside Their Photos, So I Finally Walked Out Forever Chapter 09

Five Years Outside Their Photos, So I Finally Walked Out Forever Chapter 09

After I came back from Mesa Vista, I didn’t see any of them.

Ethan sent plenty of messages, though.

I didn’t reply to a single one.

Mutual friends told me the four of them initially kept their friendship going as before.

But Ethan stopped showing up for their so-called “four-person get-togethers.”

When Brooke called drunk in the middle of the night, he didn’t answer.

When her cat got sick and she cried for someone to stay with her, Ethan sent just one reply.

[Take it to the vet.]

Little by little, she lost all the special treatment she took for granted.

So she started turning to Jake and Ryan more often.

They took over the things Ethan used to do for her.

Then, six months later, Jake got a girlfriend.

The first blowup came when Brooke called him at two in the morning.

She couldn’t sleep and wanted to go for a drive.

Jake was about to get up when his girlfriend asked,

“Do you really have to go this late?”

Brooke immediately said on the other end of the phone,

“Never mind. Stay with her.”

“I’ll be fine on my own.”

Almost instinctively, Jake said,

“She just can’t sleep. Why are you making such a big deal out of it?”

He froze as the words left his mouth.

They sounded far too familiar, just like Ethan a few years earlier.

His girlfriend didn’t argue. She just looked at him.

“Then go.”

That night, Jake sat in his car until morning without starting it.

Later, for the first time, Jake told Brooke without being prompted,

“Don’t call me at night unless it’s an emergency.”

Brooke was stunned for a long time.

“You weren’t like this before.”

Jake stayed silent for a long time, then said only,

“That was before. I have a girlfriend now.”

Not long after, Ryan started dating someone, too.

As usual, Brooke left her spare key with him.

When his girlfriend found out, she wasn’t happy.

Brooke used the same old line.

“Don’t fight with her because of me.

“I’ll just take the key back.”

Ryan was about to defend her.

Then he remembered the airport in Paris, and how he stood beside me when my passport went missing and said,

“The four of us can’t all change our flights just for you.”

That night, he returned the key.

For the first time, he also sent me a message.

[I’m sorry for what happened before.]

I didn’t reply.

The apology came too late to mean anything.

After that,

Jake stopped going, too.

So did Ryan.

Once, Brooke’s messages in the four-person group chat drew dozens of replies a minute.

Now half a day passed without a word from anyone.

Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore and asked,

[Didn’t we promise the four of us would always stay together?]

Nobody answered.

That once-unbreakable group of four, the one that kept me on the outside,

fell apart little by little, without even a proper goodbye.

Ethan became the quietest of them all.

Someone said he cleared all of Brooke’s things out of his home.

He changed the door code and deleted the pictures of the four of them from Instagram.

Later, he did come to see me once.

He stood outside my building and said,

“Claire.”

“I’m sorry for what I did before.”

“Could we still see each other?”

I thought about it.

There’s no reason to.”

A year later, I held my first solo photography exhibition.

I called it “Beyond the Moon.”

The first wall featured Mesa Vista.

The last wall showed all the places I visited alone over the past few years.

The sea in Iceland. The rain in New Orleans. The snow in Montana.

Lots of friends came to the opening.

Someone suddenly called,

“Claire, come get in the picture!”

I instinctively reached for the camera.

“I’ll take it.”

The person beside me grabbed me.

“Why would you take it?”

“This is your day.”

They pushed me into the middle. One by one, the people around me moved close.

I broke into a smile. As the shutter clicked,

for the first time, I stood at the center of the frame.

There was no Brooke, no Ethan, and no one to tell me

that this wasn’t my place.

Only later did I understand.

I never needed to fight my way into a place where I truly belonged.

And the people who really wanted me to stay

wouldn’t leave me outside the frame,

waiting for five years.