Becoming His Muse, Complete Set (23 page)

Which I had left weeks ago. I’m surprised she even remembered.

“I guess you and Derrick have been busy with your art project. Dr. T told me it was top secret.” I wonder if what they’re doing now is part of the project.

“Yeah, it’s pretty hush hush. We work on it
constantly
so we hardly ever leave the loft. But starting next week we won’t be there on Thursdays. You can work at the loft if you like.

“But next Thursday is Thanksgiving. I’ll be away.”

She shrugs. There’s always the next week, and the one after, and, you know,
Thursdays
.”

This is an answer to my dilemma of where to meet with Logan. Between DnC’s offer and Dr. T’s idea to ask Logan to mentor me, it seems like my wishes have been granted.

“Thanks, guys. This is great.”

“And we have an easel so just bring your canvases and paints,” says Derrick.

I’ll be bringing a little more than my painting supplies but I don’t mention that.

I make my way to the English Department hoping I’ll find Logan’s alone. I can think of a few ways to celebrate the good news I have to share…

Approaching his office, I hear voices through the half open door. Logan’s deep velvety voice plus two female voices. I’m sure one is that busty transfer student, Sherriann, and the other is a friend of Ruby’s, but I can’t recall her name. I linger in the hall for a few moments and then wait outside, flipping through my sketchbook, until I see them emerge from the building. They take no notice of me because they are tittering together like pre-teens.

“He is so
hot
,” says Sherriann. “I’m definitely going down on him first chance I get.”

My jealousy surges.

I slip back into the building and walk unabashedly through Logan’s door. He is surprised but unperturbed when I tell them I eavesdropped on them for a few minutes. I don’t share what I overheard from Sherriann, even though her single toss-away sentence is eating away at me. It’s made me forget what I came here to tell him.

“Why do you have to be so flirty with them?” I say with a pout.

“Students perform better when they like the teacher.”

“Perform? We’re not circus acts.” I cross my arms, feeling annoyed.

Logan sighs at my petulance. “Ava, the better students do in class, the more they learn. This is research-validated fact. I’ve been hired here to teach. In addition to that I have a paid position while I finish my novel, which is
my
work, not the university’s. So essentially I have two full-time jobs. Don’t blame me for using my charms to make one of those jobs a little easier.”

“Your
charms
? When you talk to students you sound like you’re seducing them. And I’m pretty sure they think that, too.”

He shoots me a charming smile, “But the fact is, I’m only seducing you.”

“Is that the truth?”

“Of course.” He looks at me with steady green eyes and I believe him. “Is it Sherriann you’re worried about? She comes on strong, like your friend Jenny, but she’s all bark and no bite.”

I’m not so sure about that, but I sigh now and drop my crossed arms. “I guess I just want you all to myself. All the time.”

“You have the best parts,” he says with a wink. He adds, “You have the
real
parts. Remember that.”

I know my feelings don’t make sense. I want everything all at once, like a kid in a candy store, but I know that the best way to savor sweetness is one mouthful at a time. I just feel a fear, a deep-seated anxiety, that I’ll wake up one day and all that sweetness will be gone and I won’t have tasted nearly enough.

“Is it so wrong to want to be with you all the time?” He looks up, across his desk, and I’m expecting one of his searing green gazes to take my breath away but this look is different, this look is serious, thoughtful, and a little distant.

He sighs. “Sometimes I forget you’re so young.”

That is the
last
thing I want to hear. I stiffen in my chair, his grandfather’s leather chair. I place my hands on the armrest to push myself up. I don’t want him to speak down to me. “Forget it,” I say. “Nevermind.”

“Ava.” His voice is firm, but gentle. He wants my attention. I stay seated. “There’s nothing wrong with
wanting
anything. It’s the expectations we attach to that wanting that gets us into trouble. You have some expectation that being with me all the time will somehow make you happy.”

I’m about to start nodding. That’s exactly it. More time with Logan equals more happiness for me.

“But it won’t. I can guarantee that.” He looks away, past me, toward his photos on his shelf, toward some memory or other.

“You’re wrong.” I lean forward. “You already make me happy. All the time.”

His gaze returns to me. His eyes search mine briefly, but then they seem to darken, cool, as if he’s made some kind of decision. He leans back in his chair.

“Passion is a fast fire. It burns hot and short. More time, more togetherness, douses that fire. You’re too young to know this. You haven’t had enough fires burn out on you yet. You haven’t lived among ashes.”

I stare at him, anger begin to smolder under my surface of surprise at his condescending tone.

“That sounds like part of your hard luck writer act.”

He shrugs. “Is that what you think?”

“Do you want to know what I
really
think?” I lean forward, my body tense with anger and hurt. “I think you’re afraid. Of getting too close to someone. Of loving someone.”

I regret my words immediately, feeling as if I’ve crossed an invisible line.

He clenches his jaw and narrows his eyes.

“Who said anything about love?”

Two days go by without a word from Logan. I feel an ache from not seeing him or hearing from him. As I pack my bags and head to the train station, I’m feeling full of regret about our last conversation.

I shouldn’t have brought up love. I should have known better. It’s not part of my job as his muse. He only wants me to inspire him. But I can’t help wondering, isn’t love the greatest inspiration of all?

Logan doesn’t want love. He made that rather clear.

Well, if Logan doesn’t need love then maybe I don’t either.

I tell myself I’m glad to be going home for Thanksgiving. I have been so immersed in school, painting, and my affair with Logan that I need a change of scene. A chance to clear my head. Some time to put my feelings in perspective.

Logan can use this time to focus on his damned novel — the original reason for our affair — but maybe he’ll miss me while I’m gone. Maybe he’ll realize there’s more to us than inspiration and lust. Or maybe he won’t. Maybe he can’t. Maybe he’s too hurt, too afraid, too set in his ways, to let love in. I don’t know.

As I stand on the train platform waiting to board, I realize there’s one thing for sure: love
is
the greatest inspiration of all, and no matter how hard I might try to convince myself that lust is enough, deep down in my heart, I want so much more.

The train home barrels through frosted fields and drab industrial zones.

This time apart from Logan is going to be like medicine — necessary but unpalatable. After our last intense conversation, when I brought up that four letter L word that so often makes or breaks relationships, it was clear to me that we are not on the same page. I’m not even sure we are speaking the same language. Except when we’re naked and not using any words at all…

I shift in my window seat. I don’t want to think about that now. I clear my mind by watching the small towns and wintry brown fields roll by. Going home for Thanksgiving will give me some time to gain some perspective on our strange situation.

I’ve been enjoying being his muse, but what if I want something more? A part of me does. Another part cannot sort out how to turn our secret life into a real one. This is what I need to think about, because as much as I feel my heart, mind and body inextricably bound to Logan’s heart, mind, and body, I do not know if we match up outside of bed sheets, in the real hustle and bustle of the world.

The train makes its long slow cruise through the unattractive outskirts of the city. Soon we’re in the tunnels, burrowing underground to the mid-city station. I feel my ears pop as the pressure changes.

After disembarking, I wait outside the train station until my mom pulls up in her silver Lexus SUV. She’s waving and smiling through the windshield before she’s fully pulled over. I hope she has the sense not to clip the taxi idling by the curb just ahead of me. My mother is flighty and distracted at the best of times, except around my father. With him she is the Attentive Wife or the Efficient Executive Assistant. He’s the Boss and she never questions him. Until I went to college, I rarely did either, except for a short rebellious bout between fifteen and sixteen. For the most part, I was a Good Little Daddy’s Girl.

“Honey, honey, honey!” calls my mom jumping out of the car but leaving it running. “It’s
so
good to see you!” She gives me the once over, noticing that I still haven’t lost the Freshman Fifteen (I can tell by the fleeting tick of her upper lip) and then she pulls me into her thin-armed embrace. She actually feels stronger, as if she’d started working out. And when I really look at her, instead of just glancing and seeing what I expect to see, I notice that she does look more trim and fit than she had last summer.

I toss my suitcase in the back seat and climb into the passenger seat. Once my mom has buckled her belt, she says,

“I know you’re disappointed Tess won’t be here, but guess who else is home for the holiday?” Uh oh. I have a funny feeling where this is going.

“Don’t tell me. Warren.”

She beams. “So you
have
been thinking about him.”

“No, actually, I haven’t. But you’ve been trying to set us up since we were in diapers. For the hundredth time, I’m not interested.”

Warren Simmonds has been our neighbor since we moved into that house when I was one and a half. He’s goofy and fun and proved to be a good friend between the ages of eight and ten, but then he got pretty nerdy through middle school and high school (and I mean, the Dungeons and Dragons kind of nerdy), and so we survived awkward neighborly BBQ’s for years since then. He’s a good guy. Just not my type. If Tess had been here, she and I probably would have taken pity on him and invited him out for a drink one night since at some point we’d all want an escape from our parents.

As we pull up into the crescent driveway, the wide front door opens and out pours my father, John Rudyard Evans Nichols, Esq. (JR to his friends.) He stands at the top of the steps with his hands on his hips and a grin on his moustached face. He looks like the king of his castle.

“How’s my princess?” he booms as I slide off the leather seat and onto the pea gravel driveway.

“Great, Daddy. Good to be home.”

I climb the steps and he grabs me, lifting me off my feet, to give me a lung-crushing hug. He played football in high school and his hugs always feel like tackles. Apparently, he earned a football scholarship to one of the local colleges but his father insisted he turn it down, enroll at Harvard, and get his law degree. He always says it was the best decision his father ever made for him, but I have my doubts. Not about his choice to be a lawyer—he’s good at it and he seems to like it—but what must it have felt like to have your father step on a dream come true for most high school football players. “You’ll like it for a few years and then later you’ll wish you’d done something more serious. I’m saving you time, son.” Those were Grandfather’s words, apparently, and my father used them on me when I’d decided to major in Visual Arts, only he replaced the word ‘son’ with ‘princess’.

But I was adamant about studying painting no matter how he tried to dissuade me.

“So you’re going to waste my money on art and then go get a serious degree? Can’t you at least aim to be an art dealer? I hear there’s money in that, but you’d be better off majoring in Business. You can do art on weekends.”

“Either I study what I want or I don’t finish my degree.”

He’d relented, probably figuring he’d have more chances over the years to change my mind.

Telling people what to do has gotten him far in his career, and my mom lets him get away with it at home, but there’s no way I’m going to let him rule my life now that I’m so close to having the chance to live it on my own, but first I have to graduate.

“I’ve got a bunch of catalogues for you,” says my father as we head through the foyer.

“Oh? Art catalogues?” I’m ribbing him, because he’d never send away for something like that.

“Law schools, Princess. Dean Ascott says your grades are looking good. And if you win that award, that will look good on an application.”

“Dad, we have to talk about that.”

I hear the sound of sports announcer coming from the den.

“We have lots of time to enjoy this weekend. Why don’t you settle in first,” he says, pausing at the foot of the stairs. I can tell he wants to get back to the den, and I’m not exactly thrilled to broach the subject of my plans to move to the East Village.

“Sure.”

My mom is halfway up the steps with my small tote bag. I follow her up to my room.

My mom keeps my room exactly as it was when I’d graduated high school, except it’s cleaner and my make up and nail polish bottles no longer litter my mirrored dressing table. Everything is still white, just on the tasteful side of frilly, with splashes of rose pink in the throw pillows and blankets. The white duvet has tiny pink roses embroidered into it. My middle name is Rose and so my mother found myriad ways to work that into her design schemes for my life.

“I’m so glad you’re home,” she says placing the lighter of my bags onto my bed. She turns to me and her eyes are glistening though she is smiling. I’m not up for a tearful reunion. I sigh and drop the suitcase I’m carrying beside my closet door, and say, “Me too.”

I told myself on the train ride up that I’d make this a good family holiday, with no fights and drama. I’d show my parents I’d matured and was ready to take on my independent life. Independent from them. My relationship with Logan has given me a new sense of confidence, and freedom. With it, I feel a growing sense of responsibility toward my parents, not to do what they wanted, but to try to respect their choices in life so that I might expect them to one day respect mine. Maybe not at first, but eventually.