“C’mon, Graham,” the bald guy said, jogging out in front of him, then backpedaling, his camera bumping against his chest. The other two were flanking them, trotting along the shoulder of the road, and Graham glared at the guy to his left.

“Just one shot,” he was saying. “One good shot, and we’ll leave you alone.”

“Get lost,” he said through gritted teeth. The photographer lowered his camera, and for a moment, Graham thought that would be it. But then he darted at Ellie, grabbing the end of her towel to yank it away. She let out a little yelp of surprise just as the flash went off, and before he could think better of it, Graham lunged at him, knocking the camera away. It hit the pavement with a splintering sound, and there was the sharp clatter of metal on asphalt, and then a low string of curses as the photographer scrambled to collect his equipment.

The rest of them paused, just for a second. Ellie’s towel had fallen to the ground, and seeing an opportunity, one of the other photographers—the bald one—stepped out in front of them. But before he could even raise the camera, Graham was in his face.

“Put it away,” he said, his voice low, the words gravelly.

The guy hesitated, but only for a moment, looking around Graham to the third photographer, who held his camera tentatively, the lens pointed at Ellie as she bent to grab the towel.

There was a beat of stillness, then two, as they all stood there, the cameras raised like weapons in a standoff. But just as Ellie straightened up again, a flash cut through the darkness—bright enough to leave them all blinking—and as if the two things were connected, as if one triggered the other, Graham’s hand became a fist, and he pulled back his arm, and he punched him.

From: EONeill22@hotmail.com

Sent: Wednesday, July 3 2013 10:24 PM

To: GDL824@yahoo.com

Subject: (no subject)

You were right. We should’ve just stayed on the beach forever.

Light couldn’t possibly have moved faster. Running water. A high-speed train. Nothing, it seemed to Ellie, could have beaten the pixilated photo and accompanying story that spilled out across the fathomless pages of the Internet late that same night.

Sitting on her bed the next morning, the computer propped in her lap, she watched numbly as the articles unspooled across the screen. But she wasn’t thinking about the media’s version of the story, which seemed to hardly resemble what had happened at all. Instead, she was thinking about the moment itself, the way the photographer had reeled after being hit, tipping sideways like a marionette.

His head had struck the ground with a sound that seemed too heavy to have come from a person, and Ellie had looked on in horror, frozen with shock for a few frightening seconds before he blinked and pushed himself up again. It was Graham who moved first, already shaking his head in apology as he reached out a hand to help him up. But he was stopped cold by a flash, and he turned on one of the other photographers with a menacing glare.

“You asshole,” the bald man had said, ignoring Graham’s outstretched hand and struggling to his feet on his own. Already, his eye was nothing more than a slit, the skin beneath it puffed up, a crescent of pink that would undoubtedly be turning an angry purple before too long. He pressed two fingers there, wincing, then explored the side of his head where it had hit the pavement. When his eyes focused on Graham again, there was a spark of something so unexpected—smugness, perhaps, or even glee—that Ellie found herself taking a step back.

“You better get ready,” the man said to Graham. “I’m gonna take you for all you’re worth.”

But Graham had already grabbed Ellie by the arm, spinning her around and urging her away from the huddle of black-clad men. She’d hurried to follow him, the urgent snap-snap-snap of the cameras trailing after them. But to her relief, she heard no footsteps, and before long, even the flashes had blinked out in their wake.

“You okay?” he asked when they were a safe distance away.

Ellie nodded, though her wrist still tingled from where the towel had been yanked so abruptly from her hands, and she realized she’d left it behind. Somehow, in spite of all that had just happened, it was this—the thought of that seahorse towel, which she’d had since she was a kid, lying wilted on the ground in the middle of an empty road—that caused a lump to rise in her throat.

It was almost fully dark by then, and they’d walked quickly, heads bent and shoulders hunched, propelled by an unsettling mix of anger and fear. Ellie’s teeth were chattering, though she wasn’t cold. Her mind buzzed with questions both big and small, but she stopped herself from giving voice to them. The way those men had circled them like hyenas, the steady chirp of their cameras—she’d never felt so exposed. Even now, she still couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being followed, and she kept whipping around to make sure nobody was there.

As they neared her house, Graham slowed and turned to her. Their eyes met briefly in the darkness, and she could see that his were full of worry. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again, looking pained.

Already, Ellie was doing an inventory of what tomorrow would bring and she knew that he must have been too, cataloging the phone calls to publicists and lawyers, preparing for the conversation with his manager, thinking through the inevitable fallout. There was nothing more interesting to the world than a self-destructive celebrity, nothing more exciting than a public meltdown. It wouldn’t matter that the photographers had been staking them out, or that they’d been overly aggressive. All that would matter was that Graham had punched one of them.

Ellie glanced toward her house. Even through the trees at the end of the driveway, she could see the lights were on in the kitchen. It felt like it had been days since Mom left her bobbing in the water at the beach, and she was probably wondering where she’d gone. It made Ellie queasy to think of explaining to her what had happened tonight.

When she turned back to Graham, he was still watching her. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment, and she watched his lips as he formed the words, reminded of their kiss on the beach. They were supposed to be on a picnic right now, she realized, and the idea of it seemed impossibly distant, like it had been planned by two other people entirely.

Ellie shook her head. “It’s not your fault.”

“But I made it worse,” Graham said, his voice flat. “It’ll be so much bigger now. The story.”

“It’s okay,” she said, although she knew it might not be. She’d made the decision to stay away from him in an effort to sidestep this very situation, but then she’d fallen under his spell again, wholeheartedly and perhaps inevitably. And now it didn’t seem fair to have gathered so much momentum only to be pulled up short again, yanked back and forth like the worst kind of yo-yo.

Their hearts simply weren’t built for this sort of thing.

“I should probably go,” she said, her eyes drifting to the house. The air between them felt charged, and Graham forced a smile. But it was an actor’s smile—feeble and strained—and it faltered when she took his hand.