I'm the Only One Going in Blind novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Stand-in
On the ninth Skip in a row Dean holds the light reflector while his girlfriend poses in a white dress with his brother; he walks out, and the photographer shows him a booking email in his name that he never wrote.
The photographer asked me to hold the reflector higher while my girlfriend kissed my brother's cheek.
I held it higher.
We were in the glass conservatory at the city gardens, and it was fifty-eight degrees outside and humid in there.
Lacey stood under the white arch in a long ivory dress.
Dustin stood next to her in a gray suit that my mother had bought him on Thursday.
My mother stood behind the photographer with her phone up, filming everything.
"Look at each other," the photographer said. "Dustin, a little closer to her."
Dustin stepped closer.
He looked at the floor.
Lacey put her hand on his sleeve and laughed for the camera.
"He's shy," she said. "Dustin says he's fine with it. Don't you, Dustin?"
Dustin didn't say anything.
That had been the arrangement for nine weeks.
Every week at brunch my mother brought out a tray with five wooden boxes on it.
Lacey had lettered the lids herself, with gold pen, in her careful teacher handwriting.
Three of the boxes said DATE inside and two said SKIP.
I drew one, and if it said SKIP, Dustin took Lacey out that week and I stayed home.
That was the deal my parents and Lacey had made when Dustin started saying he couldn't live with me having her.
I had said no the first time.
Lacey had held my face in both hands in our kitchen and said, "It's only a game, Dean. It keeps him calm. Do it for your parents."
Then I had drawn Skip.
This morning I had drawn Skip for the ninth Sunday in a row.
My mother had cried with relief and said Dustin deserved one real day.
Lacey had kissed me on the forehead and said, "You're the best man I know."
The real day was this one, with a white dress and a rented arch.
The photographer lowered her camera and walked over to me.
She was about my age, with black hair cut to her jaw and a gray cardigan with the sleeves pushed up.
She had introduced herself at the door as Simone, and she had not smiled once at Lacey's jokes.
"Your arms are shaking," she said quietly. "You can put it down for a minute."
"I'm fine."
"You've been holding that for forty minutes and you haven't looked at them once."
I looked at them then.
Dustin had his eyes shut.
Lacey was adjusting his tie, and she was smiling at the back of my mother's phone.
"Dean, honey, hold it up," my mother called. "You're losing the light on her face."
I looked at the reflector in my hands.
It was a round silver disc on a folding frame.
I had held it for forty minutes so that my girlfriend would look good for another man.
So I put the reflector down and walked out of the shoot.
It was only a few steps to the glass door.
Behind me my mother said, "Dean, where are you going?"
Lacey said, in her warmest voice, "Let him go, Mom. He's a little sensitive today."
I pushed the door open and the cold air hit my face.
I stood on the gravel path with my hands empty.
The conservatory door opened again behind me.
It was the photographer, with her camera bag on one shoulder.
"I'm not going to tell you to go back in," Simone said.
"Good."
"But I want to ask you something, and I'd like a straight answer."
"Okay."
"Whose idea was this?"
"My mother's. Lacey's. It's a long story."
"It's a short story in my inbox."
She took out her phone and held it up so I could read it.
It was an email to her studio, dated three weeks ago.
At the bottom it said, "I'm booking this session myself. My brother needs this to feel secure, so he will be the groom, and I will hold the light. Please don't ask me to be in any of the photos. Dean Mercer."
The address on it was mine.
It was my name and my email, and a sentence I had never written.
"Lacey called to confirm it with me," Simone said. "She said you were too embarrassed to phone."
"I never wrote that."
"Then someone did, using your address, and she knew about it."
Inside the glass, Lacey looked up through the leaves and waved at me, bright and easy, and went back to fixing Dustin's tie.
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