The next few days were spent wine tasting. Minenhle had never been one for wine or drinking but she had found the experience fun as Mike kept her alive with jokes and his interest in fine wine.
Minnie had informed her friends everyday about what she had done that day. The questions on the summer fling seemed endless from her friends. They kept asking if she was really fine and if there was any way, the smallest chance or possibility that Michael was the guy.
When she had told him this, he laughed and said that even if he was, he wouldn’t admit it.
One day, Mike had taken her to another Khesa Nyama. There was nothing special about this one but the simple fact that they had better meat than the first one.
But unlike the first time, Michael didn’t buy them any beer. Maybe all the wine tasting had done its affects and he never wanted to drink again.
But somehow Minnie doubted that. He had spent the past three days enjoying and tasting wine that he had tasted before.
“How about you come to the Christmas gallery show?” He asked, wiping his hands on a serviette. They had finished their meals in silence as both of them indulged a little too much on the meat.
“I don’t know.” She lifted a serviette up to her lips.
“Come on, there will be some good art.” He insisted, sitting on the edge of his seat. “En Nic will not be daar.”
She didn’t understand why it was necessary to assure her that Nic wouldn’t be there if she was going. She shouldn’t have been the one blocking Nic out of his own life. He had been here long before her.
“Why?” She shook her head. “Isn’t he one of your star artists?”
“Ja but he went home for Christmas.” Michael shrugged, leaning back on his chair.
Of course, he would go home for Christmas. She should have gone home too. But yet there she was, revelling in her freedom that after all of this would be uncertain. She was enjoying it whilst she still could.
“Oh.” She managed. “I guess-”
“Besides I wanted some new art.” He smiled at her.
“Running low on art?” She let her a small smile toy on her lips, wiping the hands she had licked clean on her serviette.
“Maybe.” He shrugged, playing it off. “And ek het gehoor dat your work is baie goed.”
From Nic, she remembered that day when they first met and he had said that he could never do what she was doing. Her chest felt tight as she swallowed the memory down.
“Yeah, sure why not.”
Mike had driven her back to the hotel and had any pick of the art that she had made since she had gotten there.
Mike had taken the painting that depicted the wide blue sea and the small couple in the far distance. It felt lighter not to have it in her room and have it somewhere where she wasn’t seeing it every time she looked around.
Not that she didn’t like it.
It was one of her best paintings, the colour work and detail had been some of her best but she didn’t feel as if she wanted to keep it.
Or maybe it was the reason behind the painting that made her choke up every time she saw it.
When Christmas rolled around, the first one she had not spent at home with her family, she had done her best not to ignore her family and the large skype chat that she had with her siblings was nice. But everything felt different, she felt different.
It felt so good to see them even if she had only went to the other side of the country. It felt as if she was lightyears away.
Her Christmas was planned, in a small sense. Her best friend, Pia had been dragged to the Cape by her workaholic mother on some business conference and they were going to have dinner together.
But she couldn’t ditch Mike. She had promised that both herself and her artwork was going to be there.
And she knew that even if Nic wasn’t going to be there, his work would be. And he was just a summer fling. It meant nothing.
It meant nothing.
But everything felt different and odd.
****
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