Page 2 of The Art of Taking Second Chances

“Well, I’ll let you get reacquainted then,” she said.

“Thank you, Susan.” I offered a sincere smile.

She gave me a graceful nod and swayed out of view on her enviable heels. I could never pull off high heels that elegantly, especially because I wasn’t allowed to wear them growing up. I was always tall for my age, and my mother insisted that they were as impractical as they were unnecessary.

I stepped away from Sameer and sat on a bench facing the wall. In the large, vacant hall, currently closed to the public, I heard the echoes of his shoes striding toward me.

“Sweaty palms? I thought you’d be angry, not nervous,” he said, sitting beside me. I clenched my jaw, determined not to give him what he sought: another fight. I allowed the silence between us to draw out and turn into a buzz in my ears before I heard him again. “Meeting you like this cost me a lot of money, you know. Your painting wasn’t cheap.”

“It was never up for sale,” I responded in a perfectly calm voice. “You lured my agent into the deal and blackmailed me into selling it.”

“Blackmail! Such a harsh word,” he said with a crooked smile. “I’ve never known you to be dramatic.”

It was just like him to use an accusatory tone and push my buttons, to elicit my anger so he could justify his flippant behavior. Had he forgotten how well I knew him?

“You paid seven times your initial offer until I had no choice but to sell. I call that blackmail,” I said, still managing a calm voice.

“Are you actually accusing me of forcing you to sell me the piece you made for me?”

“It wasn’t for you. It’s about you, but I never intended you to have it.”

“Same difference.” He got up and paced the gallery. “And you call it Love and Loss?”

“Creative license. I stretched the truth.”

“Of course you did.” With hands locked behind his back, he resumed his scrutiny of the paintings on the wall, then stopped mid-stride and turned to me. “Why did you insist on meeting me?”

“I always insist on meeting the buyer.”

“But this time you knew it was me.”

When I glared at him in response, he returned to analyzing the sparse exhibits.

“Why did you insist on buying it anonymously?”

“Because if you knew it was me, you wouldn’t have agreed to sell.”

He got that right.

He resumed his leisurely trek, as if looking at the displays was more interesting than holding a steady conversation with me.

“You’re doing it again,” I blurted, stunned that I had said it aloud. His expensive shoe yelped a light squeak on the polished floor as he made that quick turn to me, his eyebrows raised in question. “This bravado,” I said, pointing with my index finger. “The squared shoulders, the display of nonchalance. Are you this person again?”

His face darkened, and his jaw clenched, but he quickly composed himself. I had caught him red-handed in the act when no one was supposed to recognize it as a pretense. I could’ve flashed a triumphant grin, but I wasn’t interested in playing his games.

Instead, I returned his smoldering gaze with the ferocity I felt in my heart. But when my eyes inadvertently slipped to the shapely mouth under his short mustache, my lips parted at a memory I thought I had crushed a long time ago. A shiver swept through my body. He walked over and sat so close, I felt the touch of his fresh, woodsy cologne.

“What do you want?” I demanded.

My mother always worried that my inability to back out of a confrontation would land me into trouble one day. But until today, it had only helped me survive.

“You wanted to see me. You tell me. What do you want, Tara?”

“I wanted to meet the fool who spent an outlandish amount on an unknown artist.”

“You know better than to take me for a fool. I know exactly what you’ve captured on that canvas.”

Our eyes drifted to the frame on the wall. He had recognized the peculiar use of light against the soft black palette as the night we walked together to his apartment. The way the darkness gently blended into a rosy hue represented our first time together. He also saw the smudge where my brush had slipped, and instead of rectifying it, I had chosen to amplify it with a flash of crimson on my knife. That was the pain he had caused. I knew he saw it all, but I wasn’t ready to accept it.

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