The Awakening of Nina Fontaine by Michelle St. James

Author:Michelle St. James [James, Michelle St.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackthorn Press
Published: 2018-06-04T18:30:00+00:00

20

The rest of their conversation was lighthearted by comparison. Liam ordered short rib hash and devoured it without pretense while Nina chose an omelette with a caper hollandaise so good it made her want to lick the plate. Liam told her about a project he was considering in Morocco, then asked about her job at the gallery. She’d only worked there once — a couple hours Saturday morning before she’d begun the long process of getting ready for the Amfar Gala — since their first date, but they slipped easily into a discussion about the trials and benefits of being an artist in the modern era, the challenges of making enough money to support a gallery like Edmonia’s, and a hipster culture that had produced more people who wanted to embrace the lifestyle of a photographer than those who actually wanted to take pictures.

He was once again engaging and easy to talk to, and Nina found herself forgetting they were on a date. She hadn’t realized how much her worry about the age difference had prevented her from enjoying her interactions with him in the past. Now that they’d talked about it, Nina made a conscious decision not to dwell on it, a decision that removed what felt like a twenty-pound weight from her shoulders. Without it, she was able to be in the moment with Liam, to appreciate the excitement of connecting with someone on such a natural level.

After brunch they wandered the neighborhood to work off their food, stepping into a handful of boutiques and antique stores and browsing a used bookstore. Nina lingered over an old, worn copy of Anna Karenina while Liam left her side to pursue the art section. It was the kind of day she never could have had with Peter — he would have been bored inside five minutes, wearing his long-suffering martyrdom like a soggy blanket — and for the first time she wondered if she and Peter had ever been well-suited.

She thought back to their meeting in college, trying to conjure the lusty, emotional passion that had accompanied her every thought of him.

She couldn’t. Revisiting their shared past was like watching a movie of two people she didn’t recognize — Peter funny and sweet, Nina a perfect mirror to reflect the qualities he most admired.

She hadn’t known herself well enough to even look for someone who might be a good match for her, let alone know it when she saw it. Maybe she’d just been carried away on the hormones engineered by nature to insure the propagation of the species.

Maybe they’d never been a match in the truest sense.

This was something new — wandering the city hand in hand with Liam, splitting up inside the bookstore without comment, going their separate ways, neither of them reliant on the other for entertainment or company, equally content sharing an unusual find and standing alone in the dusty stacks, lost in their own worlds.

She’d been flipping through the classics for nearly a half hour when he came upon her, lost in Tolstoy.

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