17
E lion sat in the conference room chair, waiting for the rest of his team.
They’d called a meeting to discuss his next exhibit as if he hadn’t just had one a month and a half ago.
But he understood. It took several months to get a show together.
The correct venue needed to be chosen, promotion and advertising done, the theme of the night, which was always set by the things he sculpted, needed to be selected, and whether he would allow another artist or two to take part always had to be decided.
It was why he only put on three or four exhibits a year. They took a lot of time to prepare for outside of his creating them, which in itself took time, especially if he found himself with a creative block. Those he was no stranger to.
His fingers drummed against the table in impatience. He’d been waiting on them for the last ten minutes, and Elion hated when things started late. It had the potential to throw his entire schedule off when it happened.
“They’re late.”
“They aren’t late,” Clara responded. “We got here early, and as a courtesy, they didn’t want you to wait in the lobby, so they showed us in here.” She looked at the time on her phone. “We have five minutes before the meeting is due to start.”
He sighed. He hadn’t thought to look at the time, but he supposed they could have gotten there early. Traffic into the city hadn’t been heavy. Pulling out his phone, he sent a text to Olani. He figured he could see how her day was going while he waited.
“Texting your girlfriend?” Clara asked, and Elion looked over to find her smirking at him.
He and Olani hadn’t put a title on their relationship, but there wasn’t another word for what they were. Yes, they were dating, but they were only dating each other, and the time they spent together negated it being just fun. Not to mention the type of site they’d met through.
“If I am?” he inquired. “What’s it to you?” If there was one thing he and Clara did, it was to tease one another.
“I already know you are. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you text so much.”
He scoffed. She made it sound as if all he did was sit on his phone, texting Olani every minute of the day when that was far from the case.
He texted her a few times a day. Which he supposed seemed like a lot to Clara since before he began dating Olani, he may have sent a text once or twice every few days.
He didn’t respond as his phone vibrated, alerting him to Olani’s response. He was hitting send on a reply when the rest of his team walked in. Greetings went around, and they got down to business.
“Are you working on any exhibit pieces, Elion?” Molly, his art agent, asked.
“I’m working on some pieces, but I’m unsure if they’ll be exhibit pieces or pieces for my website.”
He decided not to mention that he may not sell them at all.
He didn’t want to hear Molly’s lecture about how everything he made should be shared with the world.
She believed it was fine if he kept a piece from a collection, but keeping the entire collection was a waste.
Right now, the sculptures he was working on were part of a collection.
“Well, you’ve got time to decide. Will this be another solo exhibit?” Molly questioned.
“No. I want to include an up-and-coming painter. Help get their name out there.”
“Do you know which one?”
“Not yet, but I’ll decide soon and reach out to them to see if it’s something they’d be interested in.”
The meeting continued in fashion, and Elion realized Molly had been thinking far more about his next exhibit than he had.
She already had a list of potential places that she thought would be best for his next one.
One thing about Molly, she didn’t like to have his exhibits in the same place.
Since he’d taken her on as his art agent, he’d never had a show in the same place twice.
When the meeting finished, he and Clara stopped at their favorite sushi place for lunch. As they waited for their order, he responded to a text he’d received from Olani during the meeting.
“So, I know you still have weeks before it comes around, but do you know where you’re going on your week-long trip?”
“Not yet. I let Olani choose our weekend trip. So, I’m okay with whatever she picks.”
Elion looked up to find Clara staring at him with an expression that he could only describe as asking if he was serious.
“What?”
“If she planned the weekend trip, then you should plan the week trip. Even if she hadn’t, you still should. It’s the end of the twelve weeks and essentially where you’re supposed to decide on whether you’re going to propose.”
He let her words sink in. She had a point; he supposed he should plan their week-long trip.
It also reminded him that at the end of the twelve weeks, he was supposed to have made some decision on whether he wanted to get married.
While he was constantly reminded that they’d met on a dating site because they had to put their dates in there, he often forgot it was one whose end goal was marriage.
That thought brought up a question. Did you know someone well enough after twelve weeks to decide if you wanted to spend the rest of your life with them?
He knew that love at first sight was definitely a thing and that some people got married after weeks of knowing one another.
Sometimes, those marriages ended up being some of the strongest to exist, and other times they fell into shambles.
Elion liked Olani. He enjoyed spending time with her and getting to know her, and he didn’t remember dating being half as fun as it was with her.
Could he see himself down the line, still in a relationship with her?
Yes. Could he see them married? He wasn’t sure, but that primarily stemmed from the fact that he’d never pictured marriage for himself.
He’d never wondered what that would look like or entail.
He supposed he needed to try to see if it was in the cards for him, if he could imagine himself as someone’s husband because he’d never had a need to before.
“S o, I’ve been thinking,” Xola stated as Olani watched her move around her kitchen. She’d come to visit Xola after a long day at work, and her cousin was cooking for them. “You like Elion, right?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And you would say it was worth putting yourself out there and sifting through all the men that submitted surveys?”
She furrowed her brow. “I would. Where is this going, Xola?”
Her cousin shrugged. “I’ve just been thinking about maybe trying it.”
Olani let her words sink in for a moment. Xola had thought she’d lost her mind momentarily when she told her about the site. However, she figured seeing that she’d taken precautions and nothing insane had taken place with the dates she’d chosen had softened Xola to the idea.
She was a bit surprised she was interested in it. Xola wasn’t an advocate of any dating sites and thought they were a waste of time since, usually, people were only looking for hook-ups, and her husband application site fell under that category.
“Well, I still have archived those few surveys you liked if you want to look at them again.”
“I might do that, but I’m not in a rush or anything. I just had the thought.”
Olani nodded. She understood that curiosity was always the first step in deciding to do something. Xola had been curious enough to ask if she thought the headache of digging through the surveys and the few bad dates she’d been on had been worth finding someone she could connect with, and it had.
Elion was attentive when they were out together, always giving her his full attention.
He planned fun, romantic dates for them and was willing to indulge her in the new things she wanted to try.
Dating him wasn’t simply going through the motions.
She genuinely connected with and enjoyed the time they spent together.
She couldn’t remember being so excited about dates since she’d first started dating in high school.
Back when it was new, and she hadn’t known what to expect.
It was that same way with Elion now. Dating had become a dead-end street for her, and it prompted her to create the site and allowed her to find what she was looking for, someone she enjoyed spending time with and talking to. That was always an excellent start to any relationship.
As her cousin moved around the kitchen, Olani thought about her next date with Elion.
It was four days away, on Saturday, and it was her turn to choose.
She wanted to switch up her choices again and plan something more intimate.
Maybe take a page out of Elion’s book, but so far, she hadn’t been able to come up with anything that she liked.
She knew if it came down to the wire, she could tell him the day of because she’d admitted to him on the phone last night that she hadn’t decided yet, and he’d informed her he would keep Saturday open for when she did.
It was sweet of him, even if she felt guilty that he was willing to wait for her to choose something for them to do when he could plan something else if he needed to.
No, she wanted to give him at least a day’s notice. So, she planned on looking for other ideas when she made it home that night and tomorrow during her free time at work.
“Oh, I don’t know if Aunt Veida has called you yet, but she and my mom are visiting in a couple of weeks. Uncle James is going out of town for work, and they decided to take a mini-trip.”
“I haven’t talked to her yet, but you know my mom enjoys calling me when she gets in bed since it helps her fall asleep when she can’t,” Olani responded. “Now that I think about it, I’m about to take that personally because I think she’s trying to say I’m boring.”
Xola laughed as she mixed the salad. “Now, you know, anytime she has to talk to someone on the phone, it makes her tired. She’s fallen asleep on the phone with me in the middle of the day.”
“It clearly just drains her,” Olani replied with a smirk.
“I think it’ll do them some good to take a trip, even if it’s just an hour and a half.”
“You’re right. Did Aunt Zinnia say where they’d stay?”
“No, but I’m sure they’ll let us know.”
Whenever their mothers visited them, sometimes they’d separate and stay with their daughter, and sometimes they would either stay at Olani’s house or at Xola’s.
They expected their daughter to stay with them when the latter occurred, so the four were always under the same roof for a few days.
Olani didn’t mind too much since it wasn’t for extended periods, and it was nostalgic.
Once the food was finished, she stood, going around to help her cousin carry the dishes to the table.
They sat and made their plates, blessing their food before she asked if Xola had any engaging new patients.
She knew her cousin couldn’t tell her much, but she’d only gotten one, and they were pretty typical.
Xola told her about a podcast she’d been asked to be featured on and give some insight into sexual addiction and some fun things to try in the bedroom. She was sure Xola was excited about it, and she made a mental note to tune in.
When they finished eating, Olani put away the leftovers and cleaned the kitchen while Xola finished some patient notes she hadn’t at the office. It was after nine, and she decided she would call it a night and head home, since she was going into the office early the following morning.
The two said their goodbyes before Olani grabbed her purse and left out of the front door.
On her way home, she tried to come up with a date idea for Saturday.
When she had no luck because she wanted something intimate but not played out, she resigned herself to the fact that she would be doing extensive research.