My head is still ringing with the lyrics of Thinking Out Loud as I step into my apartment. It’s an apartment I both love and hate, a remnant of my former success.

It’s a mid-size apartment on the eighth floor with a great view over midtown Manhattan. Over the tops of the buildings, the Broadway skyline is just visible, its lights flickering. I’m right in the center of New York life, a subway’s ride away from Times Square and the Rockefeller Center.

That used to excite me, but now I find it depressing. These days it seems that I’m always on the sidelines of someone else’s fantastic memory. Broadway has become too familiar. I hardly take note of the theatre now.

The city reminds me of how I felt after winning my first major award and making enough money for the deposit—and the first day I had those keys in my hands. I remember some of the greyscale landscapes I shot when I first moved here, back when I appreciated nothing more than all the potential and promise of New York.

I still have one of those landscapes printed on a canvas on my wall, next to dozens of my other works. The black-and-white felt artistic at the time, but now it seems bleak.

The greatest shots of my short and glistening career also adorn the walls. There’s the shot of a US soldier with a thousand-yard stare looking over ruins in Afghanistan, while another soldier tries to resuscitate a young girl in the background. I won a prize for that image; the award hangs in a frame beside the picture.

* * *

It’s hot as hell out here. I’m trying to lay low, but I stand out like a sore thumb. I’ve been sitting in what’s left of the village, waiting for the US Army to pass through. I’m not supposed to be here.

I take a sip of warm water from my bottle and glance at my watch. My guide was meant to be here an hour ago, and I’m starting to worry. After all, I’m a twenty-four-year old New Yorker alone in a war zone.

The dust beneath my feet starts vibrating as the trucks pull near. I raise my camera to capture their passage, but soon realize that this is no simple through-drive to base.

I can hear screaming, commands being yelled out, the shouts of men in agony. The trucks reel into the clearing. I keep out of the way, although nobody is paying attention to me. There are much greater things at hand than the presence of a photographer.

One of the trucks is missing half its front and limps into the village. I guess that the troop has hit a roadside bomb. Unharmed soldiers drop down from the truck to run for supplies.

A young soldier crouches on the dusty ground, his head in his hands, his stare long and distant. Behind him, another Private holding the limp body of a young Afghan girl jumps down.

The first soldier doesn’t even look up as the second begins to resuscitate.

Part of me wants to run and help him. The other part of me knows I have a job to do. I raise my camera and shoot.

* * *

I remember how it felt to actually be there, feeling overwhelmed by the significance of being right where I was standing, knowing that if I didn’t capture that very moment, it would disappear, and the world would never know.

I have four newspapers framed from the occasions where my pictures made the front page. Obama’s election, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Orange Revolution in Kiev, and an image of a child being reunited with her missing parents after the earthquake in Haiti.

My memories of my photojournalism career are bittersweet. I’ve been present at some of the most iconic events of the twenty-first century and taken pictures that have memorialized those moments in human memory forever. But it’s over now. There is no more jet-setting and living life by the rush of adrenalin. It’s only weddings and sweet-sixteens. Those pictures on my wall are a reminder of an adventure that ended far too soon.

I place my bag of equipment in its cabinet in the living room and head to my bedroom. It’s sparse inside; stripy blue and white bedsheets, a mirrored wardrobe and a nightstand. Yesterday’s shirt and tie are still strewn over the back of a chair in the corner.

I pull my busted cell from my pocket and take a proper look at it under the light. It’s completely broken, cracked right down the middle of the screen. I try to turn it on; the backlight flickers, then dies.

I chuck it to the end of my bed and dig around in the bottom drawer of my nightstand for the old cell I keep for occasions just like this, then switch on the radio. Ed Sheeran again. I tune into a classic rock station and start to unwind.

My old cell is buried under a bunch of old CDs and several keys for unknown doors. It’s some ten years old. It’s thick and chunky; the sort where each key governs three letters, making your thumbs ache when you try to type out a message. Just looking at the outdated brick of a cell, I’m yearning for the ease of my smartphone.

I find the charger and plug it in. I watch the battery symbol fill up with bars until it’s charged enough to switch on, then slide in the SIM from my new phone. When it’s ready, I select the option to copy over SIM contacts to the cell, merging my current contacts with the ones from my old handset.

“Ta-da,” I mutter to myself.

At last, I can get in touch with Fifi. She’s still saved as “Sophia” in my phone, from before I met her and discovered, “Everyone calls me Fifi!”

I lie back against my pillows, listening to Aerosmith, letting my muscles relax. I scroll through my contacts to Sophia.

Maybe a few steamy messages will help me unwind—and Fifi’s a bombshell. She’s a wild brunette who loves to be the life and soul of the party, and she’s not afraid to get explicit. We’ve been sexting through the app since day one, then we moved onto texts when numbers were exchanged.

Her profile had caught my interest. It was a mix of intrigue about her career as an Events Manager and attraction to her dark hair and eyes. Her pictures showed her having adventures all around the world. A fellow traveler.

I’d shot her a message, something about how Barcelona was such a fun place to be at this time of year. She’d replied, and the rest was history. We’d had our first date at a bar overlooking Staten Island and went home together.

We’d met up twice since then. Sophia was feisty and sensual, but I had yet to know much about her. She isn’t one for deep conversations, so I’ve only skimmed the surface in getting to know her. It’s hard to say whether there’ll be a spark when she finally opens up. For now, it’s mostly a physical relationship.

I shoot her a message now: Hey sexy. I’m thinking about all the things I’d love to do to you right now.

A moment later, I get a reply: Who is this?

— It’s your favorite Tinder match. Who else?

There’s a long pause before the next reply. I start to seriously wonder if it takes her this long to figure out who is messaging her, just how many guys is Fifi stringing along? I wonder if she’s even saved my number in her phone, or if poor saps like me are exclusively Tinder fodder who never make it as far as her contacts.

—Finally, a response: Tell me more about all those things you were thinking about.

I grin, and message back.