She'd converted the pantry into a darkroom the year she stopped trusting anyone else with her film, and the red bulb over the sink turned everything the color of a held breath — his hands, the tray, the strip of negatives clipped and dripping above them.
"You're not supposed to watch it," he said, close enough behind her that she felt it more than heard it. "Watched pots and all that."
"This isn't a pot." She rocked the tray anyway, the fixer sliding in a slow tide over the paper, and didn't turn around. "It's a photograph you took of me without asking."
"You let me."
"I noticed you doing it. That's not the same as letting."
The timer on the counter ticked its ninety seconds down in red numerals, and under the tray the white rectangle held nothing yet but a rumor of gray, the shape of a shoulder starting to insist on itself.
His hand found the small of her back, not asking either, and she let it stay there the way she'd let the shutter click the night before — a decision made by simply not stopping it.
"Whatever's on it," she said, "I see it first."
"You will." He didn't move his hand. "You already are."
The image rose the way it always did, slow and then all at once — her own face turning toward a camera she hadn't known was there, caught in the exact second before she said his name — and when the timer buzzed, neither of them reached to silence it, both of them already looking at the same thing.