Becoming His Muse, Complete Set (32 page)

“If you hold me up, I’ll hold you up,” he says.

“Deal.”

Very carefully, and very slowly, we make it not once but twice around the rink. By the time we reach our starting point, we are both grinning victoriously.

“When’s the last time you did something for the first time?” I say, breathless, remembering the first time I met him, at the reading, and the words from his novel about first times and the flutter of the unknown.

He’s thoughtful for a few moments as we navigate off the rink and toward a bench. “I guess I feel as if I’m experiencing ‘firsts’ with you, Ava. It’s unexpected, but true.”

His admission makes me profoundly happy. Obviously, I’ve been experiencing many ‘firsts’ with him, but I hadn’t even dared to think I was making any indelible impression on him. He’s done and seen so much, had so many lovers, seduced so many other muses, lived a varied and sometimes challenging life.

He watches me as we sit on the bench untying our skates.

“I’ve felt things with you I’ve never felt before. Not with anyone.” Suddenly, his bemused smile fades and he looks away.

I reach for his hand. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” I want that smile to come back. I want him to be happy. As happy as I am in this moment.

“I’m not used to feeling this way,” he says quietly.

“You’re used to your ‘familiar pain’, I get it. But pleasure can become familiar, too, can’t it?”

He looks at me with that cool yet searing stare of his, the one that’s part of his act, and I worry that I’ve lost him to that hard, protected self he’s mastered. “Pleasure and pain are two sides of the same coin,” he says. “They tumble into one another, over time, even each other out.”

It’s my turn to frown. “Are you always this melancholy?”

“Except when I’m with you.”

You’d think he’d be smiling when he says that but he looks serious, pensive, even wary. He adjusts his hat and then stands up and offers me a hand up.

I take it, sensing he’s withdrawing into his contemplative writerly mind again. At least I got him to smile and forget about things for a while. I’m tempted to push things, to ask him about what he said yesterday, but I also remember my promise to enjoy myself this weekend, to make the most of this special time together.

“I still think you should get rid of that hat.”

He smirks and pulls it lower over his brow.

We make love slowly and deliberately that night. We come together, open-eyed and breathless, reaching for something new and deep that’s growing within us.

For two days we’ve lived in a separate world from the one we’ve come to know on campus. For two days we’ve lived outside of time building our castles in the air. Yes, I can picture this. Him tapping away at his keyboard, me filling up canvasses to hang at this gallery or that. But am I fooling myself? There would be no explaining this to my parents. Not in a way they would accept or forgive. And what about striking out on my own? I don’t just want to be handed from one man — my father — to another — Logan — without knowing that I can stand on my own two feet. But can I?

As we curl up together in bed, in this world apart from our everyday existence, we talk about the coming weeks. Logan will stay in New York for a few more days before flying to Florida to be with his mom, who’s on the verge of dementia.

“She still recognizes me,” he says. “Though she seems to still think I’m twenty five and a trouble maker. Whenever I see her she tells me I should settle down with a sweet girl. She’s convinced that love heals all ills.”

“Smart woman.”

“Did I mention that she’s going crazy?”

I stretch under the covers. “The smartest people are always a little bit crazy.”

With my arms over my head he takes full advantage and tickles me. I squeal and squirm away from him. After I avenge myself by tugging at the fine hairs around his nipples, we appease each other with some deep kisses.

“I’m going to miss you so much,” I whisper as I nuzzle into his chest.

“Then come with me,” he says.

“To Florida?” I laugh. “I can’t. Every year we go to my grandfather’s chalet in Vermont.”

“Are you going to tell your parents about me?”

I look away for a second. I feel him tense in my arms.

“Ah. Not good enough for the Nichols family, am I?”

He starts to pull away.

“It’s not that at all,” I say. “They just… I don’t know, they have these
plans
for me.”

“I suppose those plans include marrying the boy next door.”

“How did you know?”

He gives me a look. “It’s a figure of speech. You mean that’s literal? What’s his name?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Tell me his name,” says Logan, sitting up.

“Warren.”

Logan makes a face. “Did you see him at Thanksgiving?” he says.

“Yes, but there’s nothing between us. We’re just friends. That’s all we’ll ever be. I was texting
you
when I was with him.”

“Did you tell him about me?”

I shake my head. “Why would I? You and I aren’t even supposed to be together. We’re a secret. Remember?”

Logan looks serious and sad.

“Whenever two lives cross paths they bring their old lives with them, which inevitably complicates things.”

“What are you saying?” I sit up beside him and lift the covers over our shoulders.

Logan stares at me with a soft, sad gaze.

“For a while lovers bask in the glow of one another, a separate world they create for themselves, but they are part of a larger world, and eventually the veil between the two worlds must drop.”

A faraway look comes over him. He gets out of bed and goes over to his desk, where he jots something down in a notebook. At first I think he’s going to come back to bed, come back to me, but the words keep flowing across the page.

I fall asleep and don’t know what time he crawls back under the duvet beside me.

Leaving New York, everything feels different between us. In a good way. Deeper, stronger, more intense. Logan puts me on a train back to school, from there I will get myself to the airport to catch the flight my mom booked for me to Vermont. He’s decided to go directly from New York to Florida to visit his mother.

Our last kiss is passionate, dizzying, and a little bit desperate.

“I’ll see you in ten days,” I say pointlessly, since I’ve said it about ten times already.

“It will be a new year,” says Logan. “Anything can happen in a new year.”

I’m thinking along the lines of our lust story evolving into a proper love story with a happy ending. Plus graduation, the art show, Logan’s book publication and the slim but possible chance to fulfill my dream to be an exhibiting painter in New York. I can’t help thinking about a “new year in New York”.

Logan hasn’t brought up the idea of me telling my parents about him again. Once I graduate I can do what I want, but for now, it’s one shock at a time for my parents. Maybe after they get used to the idea of me living in New York, I can bring up the idea of my sexy, professor, ‘older’ man boyfriend. Maybe next Thanksgiving…

He walks me to my train’s platform. I find my assigned car. Outside the door, we kiss again.

“I got you something for Christmas,” he says.

I’m caught off guard. “A gift? But I didn’t think—
”

He puts a finger to my lips. “—I didn’t want you to
think
anything. I was inspired to get this.” He reaches into his jacket pocket.

“But how… When?” We’ve been with each other pretty much 24/7 this trip.”

“After I met with Lowell.”

He withdraws a small turquoise box with a with satin ribbon.

“Logan!” I don’t even take the box. I just stare at it, feeling my eyes twinkle with wonder.

He offers the box again. I take it this time, tug at the ribbon, and lift the lid. Inside is a thin coil of silver, a bracelet, with a charm on it.

“Oh, it’s gorgeous.” I examine the charm. It’s a tiny silver paint palette.

“You like it?” His eyes flit from my eyes to the charm and back again. He smiles when he sees how big I’m grinning.

“Help me put it on?”

I tuck the box in my purse and he drapes the bracelet over my wrist, turning it until he finds the clasp.

“I know you probably won’t wear it while you’re painting, but when you’re away from the easel it can remind you of what you love more than anything in the world.”

I feel a little sob lodge in my throat. He’s talking about my love of painting but it’s going to remind me of
him
. I don’t want to cry.

“I wish I got you something.”

He pulls me into a hug. “You’ve already given me more inspiration than I could have ever dreamed of. A trinket means nothing.”

Does he mean this trinket on my wrist means nothing? Because it sure means something to me.

He kisses me on each cheek. “It’s only ten days,” he says. “Not forever.”

But when we reunite again at school we will have to go back to living our secret life. After the intimacy and freedom of this time in New York, I know that will be hard. We’ll still have Thursdays at DnC’s loft, and Logan is officially mentoring me now, but we won’t be able to reveal this growing, deepening passion between us. Everything will still be a secret.

After being together almost non-stop this weekend, ten days suddenly apart will feel like torture, like ripping a band-aid off with one violent yank. With each subsequent day we will have to cover up our raw feelings and grow a protective layer so we can get through the remaining months until the school year ends. And then… It’s still unclear, but I feel hopeful.

As I climb aboard the train and blow Logan a few last kisses, my new, tinkling trinket fills me with resilient, unbreakable hope.

Thank goodness the holidays are over and I’m on my way back to school.

My father did not take my announcement well. My mother just sighed, as if she’d been preparing for this disappointment all along. My cousin Tess was supportive, but I expected that of her. I even confided in her about my affair with Logan. She was deeply curious and concerned, but told me it was a good thing I hadn’t told my parents about that yet. If they couldn’t understand New York, they would never open up to that idea. At least it felt good to talk about it with someone.

My father eventually retracted his threat to disown me and told me to go ahead and move away to New York, if that’s what I want, but I can consider myself “on my own”. He said he won’t foot the bill this time. I told him I didn’t care. The added tension between us certainly dampened the festive spirit normally found in my Grandfather’s chalet. I ended up spending a lot of time squirrelled away in his library, where I found a signed first edition of Truman Capote’s novel,
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
.

One afternoon my grandfather found me curled up in one of the chairs by the fire.

“Good book,” he said.

I nodded in agreement and then I closed it so I could ask his advice about the battle with my father.

He sighed and said, “Your grandmother, rest her soul, was always better with advice.”

“But do
you
think it’s a mistake for me to move to go against my parents’ wishes?”

He sat down in the chair across from me. “It doesn’t much matter what I think.”

“But I want to know.”

He pondered a moment or two. “Parents think they know what’s best for their children, and, you know, they
do.
The problem is that children turn into adults and life isn’t always about what’s
best
for anyone. I didn’t know that when I was your age or Johnny’s. See? Even now, I still call him by his boyhood name.” He shook his head. “You have to understand, Ava. Parents’ have their children’s best interests at heart.”

Unless, they didn’t, I thought, remembering Logan’s experiences.

“And that’s under pretty ideal conditions,” added my grandfather. “But even with the best of intentions no parent can see beyond their own successes and failures, or their own fears and dreams. Maybe if I had been a different kind of father to him, he’d have been a different kind of father to you.”

“Would you do things differently if you had to do it again?”

He shrugged. “We gain wisdom by making mistakes, sometimes at the expense of others. But if I had to do it over again knowing what I know now?” He scratches his chin. “I suppose I would learn to let go sooner.”

He took the book from my hand, turned it over, handed it back to me. “I’ll let you in on a little secret.” He lowered his voice just a bit. “Parents who love their children will
always
love their children, regardless of their choices. Johnny’s a bear when it comes to getting what he wants, but it isn’t in his heart to disown you, Ava. Don’t let his fears become your fears.”

“But you wouldn’t let him be the football player he wanted to be.”

“Ah, yes. He likes to blame that on me, doesn’t he? Truth is, he went for one semester to that college, struggled to live up to his high school reputation but found himself in a different league all together. It was too hard. He saw the writing on the wall for himself.”

I had to let that sink in for a minute. “So he’s just scared for me then? He’s afraid I’ll fail?”