13
I t was going on eight-thirty in the morning as Elion sat in the parking lot of a closed restaurant.
He was waiting for Olani to arrive. They were going on their weekend trip, and she’d asked him if they could leave Friday morning.
Elion didn’t have a problem with it as long as she was okay with missing that workday.
It would give them an extra day together, so he would not complain.
He’d suggested they meet somewhere because her coming out to his house would have her going in the opposite direction they needed to, and he didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable about giving him her address.
At eight-thirty on the dot, a car pulled into the parking lot, but it wasn’t Olani’s. He’d seen hers enough to know. It parked beside him, and he watched Olani get out of the passenger side. Elion got out of his vehicle and went around to her.
“Hi,” she greeted, smiling up at him.
“Hey, Sweetheart,” he responded, leaning down to kiss her.
They pulled apart, and she pulled the trunk open. When she reached in to retrieve her suitcase, he stopped her. Elion pulled it out, walking the few steps to open his trunk and placing it inside with his own.
When he turned back to her, he found her hugging a woman who demanded that she let her know when they made it and to have fun.
“I will,” Olani responded as they pulled apart. She then turned to him. “Elion, this is my cousin, Xola. Xola, this is Elion.”
He held his hand out. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Xola smiled, taking his hand. “Same.” She turned her attention back to Olani. “You said he was an artist, and I thought button-up shirts and khakis. Not tattoos, biceps, and what will probably be a good time for you.”
“Xola, stop talking and go to work.”
Elion chuckled, going to open the passenger side door.
“Fine,” Xola stated. “Have a good time, but be careful. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” They hugged again before Olani slid into the passenger seat, and Elion closed the door. He waited for Xola to get into her car and back out before he got behind the wheel.
“Before we go, I remembered you saying you rarely ate breakfast,” he stated, reaching into the back seat. “But I got you a fruit bowl, some yogurt, and some orange juice for the ride.”
Olani smiled at him, leaning over the middle console, and he met her halfway, dropping a kiss on her lips. “Thank you, babe,” she stated against them before pulling away.
Elion put his seat belt on, waiting for Olani to do the same and get comfortable.
He backed out of the parking space and pulled out onto the street.
They were heading to Roswell for the weekend.
When he’d told her she could choose for them, he figured she would pick Las Cruces, since it was the closest of the three options.
He didn’t mind taking a longer drive, and Roswell was only three and a half hours from El Paso.
They’d been driving for fifteen minutes when Elion turned down the radio and glanced at Olani as she opened the fruit bowl.
“I’ve decided to make this a thing,” he started. “So, tell me something else I don’t know about you.”
“I took ballet when I was younger. I wanted to be a dancer for a while until my junior year of high school.”
“What changed?”
Olani sighed. “It was the realization that my entire life would revolve around it, practicing and competing for jobs. Every aspect would be a competition, and I didn’t want that to be my life. I just hate that I had to learn that lesson the painful way.”
“How so?” he inquired, glancing at her again to find her taking a bite of a strawberry.
“When I was sixteen, I was cast in the lead role for a production. The ballet company I trained at put it on every year,” she started after swallowing.
“I was extremely excited and proud of myself because it was the first time anyone of color was the lead in that production.” Olani paused for a moment.
“It came down to another girl who was a few years older than me, and in our head-to-head audition dances, I was the better of the two. I went after practice to tell her how great she did and maybe apologize for her not getting the spot or something. Her sister had been the lead a few years prior, and I knew how bad she wanted it.” Another sigh, and Elion glanced at her again.
“So, I go, and before I can say anything to her, she tells me she’s fine and she’ll try again next year.
We leave it at that. Well, something happened between then and our next practice.
She’s throwing glares at me, mumbling under her breath when I’m learning the steps; she even tried tripping me a few times when our instructor wasn’t looking. ”
Elion shook his head. It was terrible, but he could imagine it happening. There were several career paths people didn’t realize were as cutthroat and competitive as they were, and ballet was one of them.
“This goes on for several weeks,” she continued. “Then we’re leaving one evening. I’m headed down the stairs, and I feel myself falling forward, and it’s only when I crash to the bottom that I realize I was pushed.”
“She pushed you down the stairs?” he questioned in disbelief.
“She did, but she maintained when later confronted by our instructor that she didn’t.
That she was exiting the classroom when she saw me trip.
The fall caused me to break my ankle and two fingers, and I fractured a wrist. I couldn’t practice, and if I couldn’t, I had no leading role.
We were three weeks into practice, and the production was in another three weeks.
I wouldn’t be healed in time to continue. ”
“Are you telling me she pushed you down the stairs and still ended up with the role?”
“Not quite. She was my understudy, and she started practicing right away. Perfecting every move, making sure she had it down to a beautiful science. But I have a protective, petty older cousin, and the day before opening, Xola beat the brakes off that girl,” Olani laughed lightly, and Elion chuckled.
“She let her do all that practicing. Allowed her to be excited about it and snatched it from her as she walked out of dress rehearsal the night before. I won’t lie; it was bad. Xola cracked two of her ribs, and her parents called the police. It was a whole ordeal.”
“Remind me not to get on Xola’s bad side,” Elion stated, and she laughed.
“But that taught me I didn’t want my life to be a never-ending competition because if a nineteen-year-old girl would push me down the stairs for a leading role, what would a grown woman do?
And yeah, I compete in my career now but on my terms. Only when I want that business, and you don’t always have that luxury in dance. ”
He reached over and grabbed her hand, kissing the back of it, then her palm. “I hate that something you enjoyed was tainted, but I also got something else from that story.”
“What?”
“That you’re flexible.” He glanced at her with a smirk, and she laughed, pulling her hand from his and swatting him on the chest.
“Alright, your turn,” she told him after she sobered.
O lani watched Elion drum his fingers on the steering wheel as he thought.
Reaching into the fruit bowl, she grabbed another strawberry, held it out to him, and watched him take a bite.
It was innocent. She knew it was, but Olani found something enticing about it.
She watched him lick his lower lip a few seconds later, and she bit her tongue to keep from saying anything or making a noise.
“I’m discovering that my childhood compared to yours was boring,” he told her.
“Was it boring or are you just too embarrassed to tell me?” she questioned teasingly. “Besides, I didn’t say it had to be about your childhood.”
Elion chuckled. “Oh, you want embarrassing? I got you.”
Olani turned towards him, propping her elbow beside the headrest. “I’m all ears.”
“You know that sculpting has been my career path since I was young, even with the tagging. So, I was confident in my ability to create and sell, and I just knew it would work out from the jump, especially since I’d been able to sell the small pieces I made here and there.
” He paused for a moment. “I conducted my first show through a broker, and I rushed to make pieces for it. I didn’t have a team; knew nothing about marketing, but every piece sold.
The pieces were small, so I only made a few hundred dollars, but you couldn’t tell me anything. ”
“You were feeling yourself, had a big head,” Olani stated, before popping a grape into her mouth.
“Most definitely,” Elion agreed with a nod. “Naturally, I set up another quick sell, more small pieces, again everything sold, and I made a few hundred dollars.”
She furrowed her brow because she knew there was more to this story. If for no other reason than he’d told her, it was embarrassing.
“I was feeling like the world was at my fingertips. Why I felt that way after selling some pieces, I don’t know, but I did.
I approached this artist who was having an exhibit and looking for others to go into it with him.
I tell him my last two sales because they weren’t exhibits, sold out, and he adds me to the roster. ”
When he paused again, Olani held another strawberry out to him. She was genuinely sharing with him, but she’d be lying if she said she didn’t want to see him bite it again.
“Not one of my pieces sold at this exhibit,” he continued after swallowing.
“Other artists sold out; some only had a piece or two left. Then I overheard a patron saying my sculptures looked like a child made them. Naturally, I was pissed, but I looked at them for the first time and realized it was true. I’d made them all in two weeks, not caring about the piece’s finishing or integrity. ”
She knew that was extremely fast, regardless of the size of the pieces. Not that she had any sculpting experience, but it made her wonder how he’d sold all those other pieces if they were of the same quality, or if the people that bought them just wanted something eccentric.
“It’d stopped being about the craft I loved and became about the money.
The pennies I’d made compared to what I make now, but I couldn’t reconcile how the others sold so quickly, and these were worthless.
” Elion chuckled, and Olani tilted her head, wondering if he would let her in on whatever inside joke was swimming around in his head.
“A few weeks later, I’m going home; my grandparents were celebrating their fortieth anniversary. I walk into their house and see all the pieces I’d sold the first two times.”
Her eyes widened, and she placed her hand in front of her mouth. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Not at all. The person I was using to sell them was a family friend who knew they were shit. So, she voiced her concerns to my grandmother, who bought them all. How’s that for embarrassing?”
“Wow. Well, at least you learned something from it.”
“I did. I learned at twenty, that I did not have enough business sense, so classes on it were needed, and to always take my time regardless of how long a piece took me. People pay for quality, not quantity. After that debacle, it took me almost two years to put on my own exhibit, but I sold every piece, caught a critic’s eye, and started making a name for myself. ”
They spent the rest of the drive going back and forth telling each other stories, Olani occasionally feeding him pieces of fruit. When the exit for Roswell came up, she pulled up the address of where they would stay and gave him directions to get there.
When they pulled up, she was taken by the outside. She’d seen the pictures before she booked it, but in person, it was breathtaking. It was a two-story house—the bottom half housing cobble. The driveway was short, leading to a garage that sat next to a cobbled archway.
They stepped out of the car, Olani grabbing the bag she’d repacked the fruit and yogurt containers in. She went to the trunk where Elion was taking out their suitcases. When she reached for hers, he moved it away from her.
“You get the door; I’ll get the luggage.”
She decided not to protest and led the way to the front door.
She rechecked her phone, got the code for the keyless lock, and put it in.
They walked into a living room decorated in muted blues and gray.
It was warm and inviting. From the entrance, Olani could see the dining table in an alcove she assumed led to the kitchen and stairs to the left of it.
She walked over, sticking her head in to see the kitchen. It was small, but she doubted they’d be doing any cooking while they were there. On the off chance they did, it would be fine.
She followed behind Elion up the stairs into a small hallway.
There were three open doors. The one in front of them was a full bath; she knew the other two were bedrooms. She knew the house contained a half-bath downstairs but hadn’t seen it.
Elion looked into each bedroom before placing her suitcase into the one on the right.
“I’ll give you the bigger room,” he told her, putting his suitcase just inside the door of the other one.
She stepped into what would be her room for the next two days and found it was a standard room that housed a king bed with a fireplace across from it.
Which she knew from the pictures was just for show.
Rolling her suitcase further into the room, she placed it in front of the closet door.
When she turned around, she found Elion leaning on the doorframe.
“Why don’t we go get some lunch?”
“Lunch sounds good,” she responded, walking over to him. “Then we can go to the museum?” She phrased it as a question because she wasn’t sure he’d want to do anything after lunch until they went to dinner that night since he drove.
“We can do anything you want to, Sweetheart,” he replied, leaning down and kissing her. He took her hand when he pulled away, and the two headed out of the house. Olani was looking forward to this weekend.