Polaroids

136 8 8

by twinsister27

by twinsister27

Matthew took a picture of himself and his girlfriend Stephanie Cordato with the polaroid camera. She covered her face in it, camera-shy. Matthew thought it was adorable. The small girl took the picture from him after it printed out, and proceeded to write the date on the back. 10/8/2006. October 8, 2006. She then wrote a caption: Forever and Always. They would be together forever. They promised that to each other moments before the picture was taken.

"I love you," Matthew told his girlfriend.

"I love you too," Stephanie told her boyfriend.

Matthew and Stephanie took a picture together after Matthew proposed to Stephanie (and she said yes and then they kissed). Stephanie wrote the date on the back: 11/17/2010. November 17, 2010. Caption: Forever and Always.

"Now we know it'll really be forever," Stephanie referred to the fact that they were now engaged.

"You didn't know that 1,500 days ago?" Matthew asked. He couldn't imagine a future without Stephanie.

On their wedding day, along with professional wedding pictures, Matthew got his parents to take a polaroid picture of the newlywed couple. Stephanie wrote down the date on the back, 05/19/2012. May 19, 2012. They had gone through a lot to get to that point.

The caption, of course, written in Stephanie's beautiful handwriting, was Forever and Always.

The couple didn't have much of an occasion to take another polaroid picture for a long time after that. They wanted them to be about truly important things. Besides, between Matthew travelling for theatre and Stephanie working so much, they never really had time to take one.

Stephanie kept the photos in a box, separate from everything else. She looked through them when she was lonely and missed Matthew. She felt a little less lonely whenever she looked at them.

Years later, Jason, who worked for Matthew and Stephanie, got the couple an Instax mini camera for Christmas. He was only somewhat aware that they used to have a polaroid camera, lost it, and wanted a new one. He didn't understand the significance of it. To test out the camera, he took a picture of them. Stephanie wrote the date on the back, 12/23/2015 and captioned it Forever and Always on the front.

A couple years later, Stephanie gave birth to Oliver Julian Patrick, her beautiful baby boy. At the first chance he could, Matthew took a polaroid picture of Stephanie holding Oliver. Stephanie didn't want to write the caption, since she was holding the newborn. So Matthew wrote it instead. It had been a long time since they took a picture like this. He wrote the date on the back, 07/09/2018, and captioned it Forever and Always.

About a month later, the now much bigger GTLive Crew of Jason, Chris, Dan, Meredith, and Amy had found the camera. Well, half of the Crew was playing with the camera, and the other half was working.

"Where did you get that?" Jason asked his younger coworker, Amy, who was holding the camera in an attempt to take a selfie.

"Matt said we could use it if we want. He doesn't mind. It still has film in it," she explained, taking a picture. She watched as it started to develop.

"I got that camera for Matt and Steph a few years ago," Jason conversed. "They didn't really use it, because they said they only like to use it on 'special occasions'."

"Cool. I'm gonna take a picture of the room," Chris said, taking the camera from Amy. He did his best to take a picture of the entire room at once.

Amy and Chris didn't write the date down. Chris captioned his 'The Office' and Amy didn't caption hers.

Matthew and Stephanie used the polaroid camera one more time before giving it to Amy to keep. There was no real occasion besides that. They both smiled in the picture. But Stephanie didn't have time to caption it, since they had to go set up for a Skype call meeting. Stephanie gave Amy the camera as the picture developed, not bothering to grab the brand-new photo. The Crew member didn't want to caption it for them, so Amy took the camera and kept the photo in her purse, forgetting to give it to them before she left that day. Since it was Friday, she wouldn't see them again until Monday.

Monday came. Amy woke up to a text from Jason.

J: Do you have the polaroid picture Matt and Steph took on Friday?

A: Yeah why?

J: Can you caption it? Write 'Always and Forever' on the part below the picture, and on the back put 08/31/2018

Amy proceeded to write that in black pen. She sent a picture of the polaroid to Jason.

J: Thank

A: Why?

J: I think I should tell you in person

Amy decided not to question it, and took the polaroid in to work.

The Office was oddly quiet until you got to the GTLive room, where everyone was. Matthew was sitting on the couch, with Jason next to him. Meredith was holding Oliver, who was two months old. Everyone looked very concerned.

"What happened?" Amy asked, breaking the silence as she handed the picture to Matthew, who started to cry. Jason lead her out into the hallway.

"Stephanie went missing. Nobody knows where she is and she isn't answering her phone. Matt wanted the picture. Except he didn't want the caption to be Forever and Always, that's like Matt and Steph's cute romantic caption about how they'll always be together. So I changed it," he explained.

Amy looked at Matthew in the livestream room. He was looking at the photo and seemed so heartbroken. As Amy and Jason silently went back into the room, Amy heard Matthew whisper.

"Forever and always."