The Photograph
(Kate, present day. After midnight. Alone.)
She wasn’t looking for it. Not really.
It slipped out from between two old case files, of all things — she’d shoved them into the drawer years ago when she still brought work home in hard copy. She should’ve thrown them out. Should’ve shredded everything. But there it was, tucked inside a battered folder: one white-edged square, curling slightly at the corners, smelling faintly of paper and dust and something darker. Time, maybe.
She sat down hard on the edge of the bed.
Her glass was already half empty — Sancerre, dry and soft — and she swirled it absentmindedly as she looked. Really looked.
God, that shirt. She’d forgotten it had been his. And she’d taken it, of course. He'd probably found it missing the next day and smiled. Or maybe he didn’t notice. Maybe she was the only one who kept mementos like that.
In the photo, she’s kneeling on the floor, legs folded under, shirt gaping open just enough to show the full curve of her breast — the one he used to kiss first. Her hair’s undone, lips parted, and there’s a flush in her cheeks that she knows wasn’t just wine.
That look in her eyes… fuck. She looks wrecked and triumphant. Barely held together by that shirt and the stem of a wine glass. She looks like she’d just been ruined and wanted to be again.
Kate ran her finger along the edge of the photograph, then over the words she’d scrawled:
Kate, 24 x
No flourish. Just fact. A tiny claim. That was her. Her body, her want, her mouth on someone’s name.
She closed her eyes and let it come back. The way the wooden floor had pressed against her knees. The sound of his belt hitting the floor. The way he’d lifted her by the hips like she weighed nothing — even then, with those heavy thighs and full breasts, she’d always been felt. She liked that about herself, even when she pretended not to.
She took another sip of wine and leaned back on the bed, still holding the photograph above her. Her dressing gown parted at the knee, warm thigh peeking through.
There were voices in the street outside, a taxi pulling off. She didn’t care. The photo rested now against her chest, just above the swell of her breast. The same breast — heavier now, softer, more real somehow. She cupped it through the silk. Closed her eyes.
It wasn’t nostalgia. It was hunger. For that girl. For what she felt. For who she became after that night. For what she'd let herself want.
She slid one hand beneath the robe, eyes still closed, the photograph warming against her skin.
Kate, 24 x.
She could still be her. She was.
Just slower now. And so much better at it.
