Page 58 of Indiscretion

We walked to the next piece—a bunch of triangles.

“I’m sensing a theme here.” Simon chuckled. “Do you think she tackles the rhombus?”

“Shhh.” I looked around. “Someone might hear you.”

Simon drank his champagne. “Someoneshould tell the poor woman she’s not a very good artist.”

We made our rounds, checking out all the paintings. Underneath the last one, there was a bunch of numbers. I pointed to them. “How come this is the only one without a colored circle beneath it and instead has numbers?”

“This is the only one that’s not been sold.”

“Oh wow. I’m afraid to ask, but what do they go for?”

He tilted his champagne glass toward the numbers—thefivedigits. “That’s the price.”

“Please tell me someone forgot the decimal.”

“Nope. For the bargain price of twenty-two thousand, four-hundred-and-fifty dollars, this baby could be yours.”

“I should’ve been an artist.”

“Tell me about it.”

A little while later, Simon introduced me to the artist and her husband. We chatted with a few of his colleagues and had a second glass of champagne.

“I’m sorry the art wasn’t great. I’d heard the pieces were expensive, and I dumbly equated that to talent.”

“It’s fine. I’m glad I came.”

“We can sneak out of here now that the big boss saw me, but I’m not ready to call it a night. You want to come back to my place for a while? It’s only a few blocks.”

“Umm…”

“Come on. I’m going back to India tomorrow. This can’t be my last bit of fun before twenty-six hours of traveling.”

I smiled. “Sure. Why not?”

Simon weaved our fingers together during the walk. It felt nice, a familiarity to it, like two old friends catching up.

Once we got back to his apartment, he went to the kitchen. “Go sit. Take your shoes off and get comfy. I’ll pour us some wine.”

My feet hadn’t yet become accustomed to pounding the pavement in heels, so taking them off for a while sounded good. Back in Virginia, I’d mostly driven everywhere. “Okay. Thanks.”

After a moment, Simon passed me a glass and took a seat on the couch next to me. He sipped. “This is nice, isn’t it?”

“Elementary-school art and free wine. What more can a girl ask for?”

He smiled. “It’s been what, four years, since we’ve seen each other? And yet it feels like we picked up right where we left off. There’s a comfort between us, and it’s because of you. You’re just real. That might sound simple, but it’s not easy to find dating.”

I sipped my wine. “Are you still seeing that woman you told me about a few months back? Petra or something like that?”

“We split up a few weeks before I left for India.”

“What happened?”

“Something was missing. How about you? Have you met anyone since moving to New York?”

My mind immediately went to Dawson, which was stupid because obviously Simon was asking if I was seeing anyone. I shook my head. “No. But I did get a marriage proposal from a man who looked about eighty and I’m pretty sure lives in the subway station. So things are looking up.”

---