The Swan

by Aja

  The next day, Nova tried to get out of the bed so she could head home and change before heading to the gallery. She was preparing for the Festival that was coming to Chicago. It had been coming to the city for a few years now and the community was excited about the Caribbean flavor. Her small gallery would be selling a few pieces, but she was in the process of procuring a few more. Artists sometimes approached vendors to have their work displayed so they could get some recognition.

  As she made a move to slide out of the bed, Mikhail’s long arm snaked around her waist and pulled her back onto the mattress.

  He moved above her, his face hard as granite, his lips firm but kissable.

  “I want you to stay a little longer, Nova,” he murmured.

  Instead of saying a word, she nodded and allowed him to make love to her once more.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mikhail had waited long enough to tell Nova about the commercial. Actually he wanted to tell her yesterday because there were a few shots that had to be redone for the commercial and Toya had been called back. The entire time, she made it very clear she wanted Mikhail but he wasn't having it. However if any of her desire showed up on screen, and Nova saw it, he would lose his girl for sure. If he told her before hand, maybe he stood a chance. But when she showed up looking sexy, relaxed and ready for him to love on her, he lost all reason and went with his heart and made love to her instead of crushing it with Toya's bs.

  The thing was, she was fast becoming his heart.

  Three weeks ago, he began a painting of her unknowingly. As she slept, he pulled out his sketch board and started to draw the lines of her face, the swell of her perky breasts he watched rise and fall with her breathing.

  He made sure to get the lines of the curves of her hip, and the arch of her back as she slept soundly and unaware on her side. The following week he put her beauty to canvas and wondered how he could show her how much she meant to him.

  He realized he loved her and it had come out of nowhere. That is what he told himself, but if he were being truthful, he would have to admit that he felt something, a glimmer of something when he would see her around in the halls, or when they happened to be in the same Calculus class junior year.

  Looking back, he could see why Toya, Melanie, Deidre and Stephanie all ganged up on her. Nova was classically beautiful. No need for makeup or hair extensions to alter her into a masterpiece. He was connected enough to the world and the ways of women through social media to know that caking on makeup, applying false lashes and fake hair were all seen as slaying. He knew that got a lot of attention. Back in high school, it wasn’t as pronounced. High school girls, especially Toya, made sure to always have their hair professionally laid out and nails manicured with tips applied. She always wore the latest fashion. She snuck on the lipstick and eyeliner because quiet as it was kept, Toya’s parents were strict.

  They were older than most of their classmates’ parents, having had Toya when they were in their thirties. This made them indulgent, but also overly protective. Toya had access to a lot of things, but the idea that their baby girl might be wearing makeup would have received their disapproval. When Toya got off the school bus, she would hustle into the bathroom and apply the light cherry-colored gloss to her lips and line her eyes with dark eyeliner before rearranging her hair to have a mature look about her.

  Of course, she was hot stuff. Of course, he was into the makeup queens and the ones who went all out to show the little bit of goodies they had at their pubescent stage. However, instinctively he knew he wouldn’t find solace with them. Maybe that made him superficial as well, to judge them off their need to focus on their looks alone, but again, he knew what or whom would work for him.

  Though he wasn’t at all prepared to say that Nova was the one in high school, looking back he can say there was a part of him that knew she would be a beauty. That she was a beauty already. Her parents knew she would be someone very special at birth by naming her Nova. A star that burns bright for all to see.

  Well Nova burned brightly for him to see. He felt that burn for her everyday and he wasn’t letting it go. Part of that was being honest about this commercial so they could move beyond it. He picked up the phone to call her a few times but would stop himself out of his fear of fumbling the words.

  He at first blamed his delay on the knowledge that she was setting up her tent for the festival this weekend. The festival where a surprise would be shared with her. That surprise coming tomorrow was his reason for avoiding her today. He had to make the final arrangements which he did using Terri of all people. But that was an excuse. He knew she wasn’t planning on staying at the festival. She had told him that morning, “After I get Sharice set up at the booth, I have to head back to the office and finalize a few things so that I can be there tomorrow. Friday is the slow day because most people are still at work. Tomorrow is when I will get the most traffic.”

  So he had no reason to not call. The real reason he stalled was because he knew that Toya, actually anything about their past, was delicate. It was a landmine. Shoot, he himself was a landmine that he figured would need to blow in order for them to settle and move forward.

  Instead of talking to her first though he went to see his pops. Why, he wasn’t sure given his father was never supportive but he was consistent and for some reason that seemed to matter more at this moment.

  As he walked into the house, he could smell smoked meat and knew his dad was outside grilling.

  He walked out back to the yard and saw his pops manning the big char griller.

  “Hey son, what brings you around your old man?”

  “I knew you had some meat grilling and decided to get me a bone.”

  That made his pops laugh before giving him a brief hug. Not long enough to feel love, but long enough to know he wasn’t unloved. That’s how their entire relationship had been.

  “We’re not rushing this meat, son. If we want it nice and tender, gotta give it a little longer.”

  “I’m willing to wait it out.” He thought about Nova.

  His father looked over at him as he sat in one of those flimsy folding chairs in the yard before going back to the meat.

  “You were always patient. Not a bad quality to have.”

  Before Mikhail could deliberate on the compliment, his father’s voice said, “I was never good at waiting. I wanted my boy to hurry and grow up and play ball like I never got the chance to do. I wanted him to grow up to be a man.”

  Finally, he closed the lid on the grill and walked over to Mikhail.

  “You did turn out to be a great man, son. Had I been patient enough I would have enjoyed all the parts in between.”

  His father didn’t ask for it but he felt it was needed. In fact, it was what he needed. So he got to his feet and hugged his dad.

  He wasn’t sure what happened over smoked meat, but he felt peace because of it. He also knew that if he were to remain the man his father now thought of him, he would have to talk to Nova about Toya in the commercial … like right away.

  So he called her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “You have got to be kidding me?”

  Since high school, he always thought Nova was sweet, not exactly soft spoken but definitely not one to yell. In this moment, he realized he had her pegged wrong because an angry Nova was definitely loud. He knew that she was going to react that way and he had given serious consideration to not telling her. That lasted as long as it took him to realize that he had just made a television commercial with Toya. A woman that he knew, for a fact, Nova couldn’t stand. She has a television, she is bound to see it, he thought before he picked up the phone to call her.

  “I wish that I were. When I walked into John’s office, that was—”

  “I knew it,” Nova interrupted. “I knew that something like this was going to happen. I knew it!”

  “You knew what?” he paused. “You think that I planned this?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “
No!”

  “Come on, Mikhail,” she said, not bothering to hide her anger or her disbelief. “You expect me to believe that out of the blue, they asked you to do a commercial and it just so happens that the one person in all of Chicago that they choose to be in it is Toya?”

  “Yes,” he said calmly. “Because that’s exactly what happened.”

  “What happened to Ken and Barbie?” He remembered telling her about the corny commercials his dealership usually recorded and she mentioned seeing them and thinking the ads could use some color.

  “They’re targeting the black market with this series of commercials. You know, like you wanted them to.” He added the last part to try to calm her down. There was a flaw in his plan though.

  “You mean, the two of you will be doing more of these together?” she asked through gritted teeth. Nova was fuming with rage.

  “Ye—”

  “I don’t know how I could have been so stupid. Stupid! Stupid enough to think that you were really interested in me.”

  “Nova, I—”

  “I was just something to do on the cruise.”

  “It was more—”

  “What were you doing, trying to make her jealous by fooling around with me? Or was this y’all’s plan to torment me some more? That’s what it was, was it?”

  “It wasn’t like—”

  “Why? Haven’t the two of you hurt me enough?”

  “You got me all wrong, Nova. Please, you have to believe me—”

  “I thought that I was falling in love with you,” Nova said, and it caught Mikhail off guard, unprepared and speechless and he wished he had time to sit with that feeling but then she crushed him.

  “Don’t ever call me again,” she said and hung up before he could stop her.

  He sat there for a while with the phone in his hand, not believing what just happened. But if he truly wanted to be honest with himself, he should have seen this coming. Not Toya getting hired to costar in a commercial with him. That was a circumstance way beyond his control, but he should have known that something would happen to drag their past back to the forefront. But how do you prepare for something like that? It’s not like they left Chicago. They both still live in the same area they grew up in. Both of them still associated with people from high school. Something was bound to happen to trigger all of those bad feelings the he was working so hard to overcome.

  “No, I have to make her understand,” he said and dialed Nova’s number. He got no answer, so he called again. The result was the same. He called again. That time, it went straight to voicemail. “Oh, no she didn’t just send me to voicemail,” he said and called her again.

  Mikhail called her three more times and got voicemail each time before he figured out that Nova was not going to answer her phone, and it was likely it was turned off. He sat there for a while with the phone in his hand, tapping it against the armrest thinking.

  Everything that Nova said about him was wrong. The last person he wanted to be around, much less make a commercial with, was Toya. He had seen her evil side years ago and went out of his way to stay away from her. What he was doing, what he was slowly building with Nova was the best thing in his life right now and he would be damned if he was going to let her get away that easy. He stood up, grabbed his keys and headed for the door. If she wouldn’t answer the phone, he would go to her apartment.

  “She is going to listen to what I have to say,” he said, jerking the door opened and walking into Toya who looked like she was about to ring his doorbell.

  His featured turned hard when he noticed how she was dressed. Tight blue dress, black strappy sandals. Made-up. “Make who listen to what you have to say?” she asked smiling.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to talk to you.”

  Mikhail didn’t bother to hide his anger or his disbelief that she would show up like that. “How’d did you know where I lived?” he asked, thinking that Toya always did have nerve. It was one of the things that he used to like about her in the days when he was blind with lust for her but he was in high school. Most teenage boys were horny and looking to have a good time, while trying to use the sense their mothers has and fathers tried drilling in them. He was lucky to not have little Mikhail’s with Toya.

  “Ricky gave it to me,” Toya flirted, as she had done on set. At first, he thought that it was just her getting in character for the commercial, since they wanted them to act like a couple the way Ken and Barbie did, but he quickly realized that she had an agenda.

  Remind me to kick Ricky’s ass. “He didn’t have any business giving you my address.”

  “Can I come in?” she asked.

  Toya had caught him looking at her several times while they were shooting. I knew he still wanted me, she thought. He was just fooling around with bucktooth Nova to make me jealous. The way that she saw it, doing that commercial with him was a great way to insert herself back into the situation and back into his life.

  “I’m on my way somewhere right now.”

  “Well then, let me give you my number and you can call me when you finish doing what you have to do and we can talk about you and me,” she said, reaching in her purse for a card.

  “Don’t bother, Toya. You’d just be wasting a card giving it to me because I am not going to call you. Not when I get finished with what I have to do.” He locked his door and stepped onto the curb to get to his car. “Not ever. We had our time. It didn’t work. There is no you and me beyond us doing a commercial together. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to my woman.”

  As he pulled off, Toya stood watching in disbelief. Her plan to end whatever she thought she saw brewing on the ship and what she could hear with his call with Nova had failed. The only way to possibly get him back would be to do some psycho shit that was beneath even her. Nova had won for now, but Toya knew that if Mikhail ever tired of Nova, she would be there to answer.

  Chapter fourteen

  Before Nova could escape into her house, Mikhail was pulling up to the curb.

  When he called her an hour ago she was leaving work early with hopes to stop and see him since she knew he was off today. After he dropped the news on her, she immediately decided to head home where she could cry and berate herself for lowering her defenses to Mikhail Luther, the only man she ever really loved. Now she felt silly for stopping to get gas first, but she had to attend the Chi-Flavor Afro-Caribbean Carnivale tomorrow and didn’t want any delays when she already knew she would be sitting in traffic to get there.

  Prior to Mikhail’s call, she had secured the last art piece from a woman named Terri McCoy, providing a canvas called The Swan which would be delivered to her booth at the festival tomorrow. The Swan would not be there today, the first day of the festival, because of the delay in securing it.

  That wasn’t typically how Nova did things but Terri made it clear that the artist wasn’t available to show the art until Saturday and since she knew who Terri was, she trusted that the art would be something she would want to sell. According to Terri, “This piece will blow all the other pieces out of the water and is the epitome of Caribbean love. Just give Ray a chance.” Nova had never worked with Ray before but she allowed Terri’s recommendation to speak in place of her research. Worse case scenario, the art wouldn’t sell and according to the contract, Nova could return it to the artist within sixty days.

  Her commission was usually set low at these events; her focus was more on sharing local artists with Chi-town and building long term relationships where artists were more inclined to see her for their future showings. It was an investment. That was how she managed to have twenty unique pieces to showcase.

  “Nova. Talk to me.”

  He was out of the car and standing on her doorstep begging.

  “I can’t do this. That woman was my worse nightmare, Mikhail.” Everything she had worked so hard to push down and out of her conceptions about him was now here in her face. How could she ignore this warning sign. Toya would be
a problem.

  Only if you let her, a voice whispered.

  “I know and honestly, she was for me too after awhile.”

  Confused she asked him, “How so?”

  “Can we go inside where your neighbors aren’t watching?” Nova’s neighbors were likely at work still but she didn’t want to take a chance by arguing that point on her front lawn. She walked into her house and placed her bag on the table in her foyer and led him to her living room. Resisting the urge to sock him in his fine face, she sat on the couch and watched as he struggled with whether he was welcomed to sit as well.

  She remained silent and was pleased when he remained standing.

  “Toya used to bully a lot of people, not just you. I didn’t know that at first because she would go out of her way to hide it from me. Keep in mind, I played basketball, football and baseball. My schedule kept me pretty busy and focused on passing classes and practice.”

  “You seemed to also be focused on her.”

  Sighing, Mikhail admitted she was right. “Yes, but that wore off after awhile and it was more about keeping up with appearances.”

  Nova just stared at him and waited.

  “My dad liked the idea of me having someone popular like Toya as a girlfriend and because of that he was less hard on me. My mom didn’t like her very much but I wasn’t trying to please my mom. He was the man in my life, he was the one I wanted to be most like. Now I wish I did try to please her because she’s not here for me to tell her she was right.”

  Nova’s eyes softened but she remained silent and listened. Her heart had gotten her in enough trouble; this time she needed her mind to make the decision which mean he had to convince her with logic.

  “After my heart, or my lust, stopped being involved, the way Toya treated people became more apparent. She didn’t just hurt you, Nova. There were others.”

  “You watched her mow down people’s feelings like a bulldozer and stayed with her.” It was a statement, not a question.