Page 41 of Becoming His Muse
“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.
“So, 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?”
