Choose Me: a novella by Kim Golden

satisfied Sylvie in bed. Instead, he’d pretended to agree with the man, until finally the man had nodded at someone just behind Chris and said, “Well, perhaps his next vernissage will be better.”
    Was he the sort of man Jessica was dating now? Maybe she was married to someone like him. It didn’t even bear thinking about. That she could be married to someone else… why did he care? She’d dumped him? And not only that, on an airplane just hours after swearing to him that everything was okay between them! He’d stormed out of the airport, only pausing long enough to hug his mother and snarl out brief answers to all her questions about Scotland and how everything had gone, with the promise to himself that he would erase Jessica from his mind. He’d kept tel ling himself that she was the last woman in the world he’d ever want to see again, and that she was most likely correct in her belief that they would have never lasted in the States. But he didn’t think it had anything to do with race and more to do with her own insecurities. But no matter how many times he banished her to the darkest corners of his mind, she crept forward again, reminding him of that first night when he saw her sitting in the Bull and the Bear and how he’d been smitten almost instantly.
    All it had taken was one look and a winsome smile on her part and Chris would have gladly run through fire for her.
    He was still staring down at Jessica’s entry in the order book when Susannah returned. She peered down at the page. “Is everything all right?” she asked in between sips of her coffee.
    Chris nodded. “I was just surprised… I know one of the bu yers.”
    “Really? Which one?”
    He tapped Jessica’s name with his index finger. “She’s an old friend. Haven’t seen her in a long time.”
    “Since you know her, maybe you can make my life easier by delivering the photo she bought to her,” Susannah suggested. She was sorting through the post now, one of the many jobs she did that Sylvie often complained about but never did anything to change. “Gary and I have to deliver the others, plus that cumbe rsome statue…” she gestured towards a confusing slab of metal and concrete with what looked like electrical cables sticking out of it at odd angles. “Someone finally bought it last night…thank God.”
    “I might just do that,” Chris said and closed the book. “It would be… interesting to see her again.”
    He turned and regarded the door to Sylvie’s office. The amber-tinted glass wall was opaque enough that he couldn’t see her sitting at her desk, but he could imagine her there nonetheless. What would she say if she knew he was personally delivering a package to a customer?
    As if she’d read his thoughts, Susannah added, “Don’t worry about Sylvie. I won’t say anything about it to her.”
    Then Susannah gulped down some coffee and hurried off with a stack of mail for Sylvie.
    Chris ventured over to the series of photographs featuring Je ssica. In one, an intentionally blurred portrait taken when she was lying in his bed with plain white hotel bed linens draped over and around her, a fetching secretive smile set the mood. Her head was tilted away from the camera, but her eyes were fixed firmly on him, inviting him to return to the sanctuary of the bed and her arms. One hand lay close to her face, her lips brushing her fingers, while the other rested on top of the sheet covering her breasts.  Sunlight dappled her dark skin and cast soft shadows on her fingertips and mouth.
    This was the photo she’d purchased.
    On the day he’d taken that photo, they’d gone to Glasgow to help Fergus with a photo shoot. To thank them for giving up their weekend, Fergus had treated them to a suite at the best hotel in the city.  After several hours in a weed-infested cemetery the freezing rain with a sulky model incapable of following Fergus’s explicit directions, Fergus had thrown up his hands in defeat and roared, “Fuck