Page 32 of The Art of Taking Second Chances

“These trees look like shrouded figures, and the withering tall grass resembles prostrating humans.”

“You see that, right?”

“But the sky is pink and white, and my first thought was Love and Loss. You used pink to depict our first time together, didn’t you?” he asked, his sight trained on the canvas.

“Yes, why? What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking rapture, ecstasy. A transcendental experience of some kind.”

“Spiritual?”

My eyes were glued to the painting, but I felt him shrug.

“Or sexual.”

“Or both?” I glanced at him. “The liminal space between the sexual and the spiritual, human and nature?”

A liminal space. Wasn’t that also where we stood?

He turned to me. “That’s for the expert to figure out.” The familiar smile warmed my heart, and I found the nerve to thread my fingers through his. His touch felt the same—thrilling yet comfortable. Warm, soft, yet firm and commanding. We were so close, he could’ve kissed me without moving an inch. Perhaps I wanted him to. But he turned to the wall. “This is brilliant, Tara! You’re brilliant.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you.” I found myself grinning like a giddy teenager. “Told you I’d need your help solving the mystery.”

“You solved it. I only corroborated after the fact.”

“But two artists using similar symbolism seems untenable.”

“Maybe one was an apprentice. Did you find a difference in technique?”

“They have distinctive strokes for sure, but I was on a completely different tangent, so I’ll have to look again.”

As I savored the warmth of his hand in mine behind that sturdy, faithful wall, we found ourselves in a moment of complete bliss. On the other side was a cruel, unfair world, full of pain and heartache.

“Thank you for sharing this with me. It had been a long time. I didn’t think I had it in me anymore.”

“You’ll always have it,” I whispered. “Nothing can take that away.”

When he rolled his thumb over my hand, it was all I needed to get through one lifetime. “So, Amar’s friend, huh?”

“I was angry,” he said, his eyes back on the painting. It was then that I tried to withdraw my hand, but he tugged it back and held on tight. I stood looking into the painting but not seeing it. His grip tightened and my breath turned heavy. “You look beautiful.”

My heart began sprinting again. I waited for something to happen—a sound, a breath, a touch. Nothing changed, but my body was preparing itself for something. Then I heard it. Footsteps. High heels on the polished wood floor. I quickly disengaged my hand and backed up a respectable distance from Sameer just as Aarti came around the corner.

“There you are!” She gave a friendly smile. “What are you doing here?”

He quickly stepped toward her. “Tara wanted to show me something.”

“What?” she asked and looked back and forth between us.

“Just something silly we used to debate about in college,” he said. The smile that accompanied it could be easily misconstrued as adoration if one didn’t know him. But I could spot his discomfort from a mile away. He slid his hand around her waist and looked at me over his shoulder. “See you around, Tara.”

See you around, indeed. I threw back my wine and ambled into the grand room where the hot couple blended seamlessly among the rich and powerful. I walked over to Dr. Hadden and stayed with her until the first guests began to leave.

Out the door I walked, along the path flanked by a rambling lawn, only to end up in Sameer’s presence for the third time that night. He stood by the large marble fountain, talking on the phone, and hung up when he saw me. An uncomfortable moment elapsed as I flashed back to the swift arm he had slipped around Aarti. Fire and brimstone, that was us.

“I was waiting for you. How are you getting back?” he asked, and I felt my anger spike.

“I’m calling a cab,” I said while scrambling to open the app on my phone.

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