Becoming His Muse, Complete Set (5 page)

I laugh, my eyes flicking to the back of the booth. “He left his hat. That’ll give me a good head start.”

Ruby orders a second Glenlivet and keeps an eye on the door.

I step outside and inhale the evening air. A tendril of cigarette smoke sneaks in with the fresh air and when I look to the left I see a shadowy figure propped against a cement planter box.

“Leaving so soon?” Logan, stubbing his smoke against the planter box.

I yawn dramatically. “It’s late. I’ve got to get up early.”

“Why not stay up all night then? I can think of a few activities to keep us busy.” He sidles over to me, a crooked grin giving his features a devilish look.

“Us?” I laugh nervously. “It’s Ruby who’s got her eye on you, not me.”

“Oh, I got a good look at
your
eyes. They’ve been roving over me all night. As for me, I’ve undressed you with mine six or seven times already.”

“You are cocky as hell, you know that?”

“Nice word choice.” He grins wolfishly as he walks closer. Then, stopping about two feet from me, he sighs. “Yes, actually I do know that. And you see right through it all, don’t you?”

“The act is not that appealing.”

He raises an eyebrow. “It is to a lot of women.”

I tense up a bit. “I guess I’m not like a lot of women.”

“That I’ve noticed.” He chuckles low and deep. And then he smiles, a real genuine smile, and that realness is so sexy, I feel my knees go tingly and weak.

“The act,” he says with a wave of his hand. “Cocky, self-assured writer with a chip on his shoulder — helps to sell books.”

The tone of his voice has changed. His posture relaxes as he rests one hip against the cement planter and crosses his arms. He looks across the small parking lot and the dark campus beyond.

“That’s another reason to get out of New York. Drop the act for a while. Get down to some real work.” His eyes lock on mine. “In the presence of a real muse.”

I can’t hold his gaze. I look down at my feet, clear my throat. Is he talking about
me
being a muse?

“Do you even know my name?” I say, forcing myself to look at him. It helps that it’s dark out here in the tree shadows.

Logan shakes his head. “Your name is the least impressionable thing about you.” I start to stiffen from the insult until he adds, “That’s true for most people, by the way.”

“For someone who’s made a name for himself you’re awfully cavalier about the identities of others.”

“Just so you know, my name is the least impressionable thing about me as well. Do you want to know the
most
impressionable thing?” he says with a sexy, daring smile.

I’m afraid of where my mind wants to take me. Of where
he
wants to take me.

“I think I’ve had enough impressions for one night.”

I laugh nervously and start to back away, even though I can’t help staring at his lips; I'm aware that my sense of control is directly proportionate to the distance between us. I need the distance, the space, and the fog of my beer buzz to clear before I can make any sense of this whole evening.

Logan arches an eyebrow as he watches me move away.

I’m worried he’s going to follow me until those long fingers of his sift through the thick dark hair on his hatless head. He glances toward the door to Mick’s. Whew. He won’t leave without his hat. Maybe he’ll be tempted by the second scotch and hang out with Ruby for a bit longer. That would make her night.

As soon as he’s back through the door to Mick’s, I walk double time to my dorm room. I actually feel as if I’m running away from something. Or someone. But I also feel that no matter how fast I run, that something, that
someone
, is eventually going to catch up to me.

The mid-September sunrise pours orange light across the quad’s dewy green lawns as I walk to the painting studio to meet Jenny. My imagination is still reeling from a dream I had about a man with green eyes wearing a Fedora.

And nothing else.

The dream images are shadowy now. Sadly, no
detailed
images to recall. But this morning I woke up on the edge of orgasm, and with my bladder about to burst. Sometimes, when I wait too long before getting up to go pee, my dreams get sexual and arousing. Dream orgasms, those rare times they reached their climax, are intensely delicious. But this dream left me wanting. Wanting something beyond my reach.

By the time Jenny arrives at the studio, frazzled as usual, and still picking the sleep from her eyes, I’ve already done a few warm up sketches with colored pastels, but I put those away for now.

“It’s inhuman to get up this early,” Jenny complains. She’s worn her pajamas over from her dorm.

“It’s only 90 minutes before your first class,” I say, pulling out my thin rods of charcoal and my burnt sienna conté crayons.

“Also inhuman. Nothing should start before 10 AM,” she insists, as she strips down.

Averting my eyes, I tear off the last sheet I’d filled with curves and jagged lines. I never watch my models undress. I expect them to “bare all”, literally and figuratively, once on the podium, but before and after they’re my friends and acquaintances whose personal privacy I value and respect.

“So, how do you want me today?” says Jenny with half-hearted enthusiasm.

“Heartbroken,” I say. She nods, giving my request some thought. Jenny is majoring in Theatre Arts and has spent a fair bit of time on stage, which is why she is one of the few models I actually pay with cash, rather than trade in time or, occasionally, beer. The guys like beer.

I add, “The kind of heartbroken that comes when the guy breaks up with you right after having sex with you.”

“Ugh. You’re describing my life last weekend.”

I laugh, knowing she doesn’t mind. Jenny is the type who lives, loves, and plays hard. I guess she studies hard enough to keep up her grades as well, but I’m pretty sure just barely. She’s what I call an 'experience slut'; she just can't get enough interesting experiences. In all honestly, I wish I could be half as bold as she is; my life might be more exciting, but I’d probably never get my artwork done, and that’s my top priority. Jenny can have her heart broken one weekend and fall deeply in love again the next. I, on the other hand, have only ever fallen in love with art. Not that I don’t date or have boyfriends. They pass the time and sometimes stir up my imagination enough to inspire a new painting, but that’s rare. I like sex, but I’m partial to good sex. And that’s rarer still.

As I watch Jenny sprawl on the divan set up on the podium, I hazard a guess that she has good sex all the time. Even though we’re all drawing from the same pool of campus manhood, she seems to be like a master chef who can whip up a gourmet meal from lame leftovers. If Jenny’s involved, I surmise, the sex must undoubtedly be good.

My charcoal sticks are flying across the page as I try to capture her pouty bottom lip, her one knee fallen to the side and the other bent at an angle, her back reclining, and her head looking too heavy to hold up for the shame and grief she’s clearly feeling. I tear off that sheet and sketch some more, adding burnt sienna tones to the black lines and smudges. I’m getting close to what I want for the painting I’m planning, but by the time the chime goes off on my phone, I still don’t quite have it.

Jenny wraps herself in the blanket she’s been lying on and comes over to look.

“Wow, Ava. Those are gorgeous. You see me better than I see myself.”

“I’ve almost got the composition I’m looking for. Any chance you could come back again? I’ve got the studio booked for Thursday morning. Same time?” I raise my eyebrows hopefully.

She groans. “Only if you bring coffee.”

“Deal!”

I start packing up my stuff while she gets dressed.

“A couple new male actors joined the program this year,” she says. “I bet they’d model for beer.”

She walks back over to where I’m standing. She’s now wearing sweatpants and a tight mauve tank top that does nothing to hide her protruding nipples.

“They’ve got great bodies,” she adds, as if I need more convincing. Beer is the cheapest barter going.

“So you’ve already seen both of them naked, have you?” I’m half joking, but she grins mischievously and says,

“Oh yeah. Both guys, one word:
hot
.”

I scrutinize her satisfied smile. “Not both at the same time?”

“How did you guess?” She giggles.

I laugh a little nervously. I know she gets around, but I didn’t realize she was that experimental.

“Sounds like things are pretty spicy over in the theater department,” I say.

“Half the time we’re like a heap of puppies when we’re doing our improv exercises,” she says. “It’s a pretty touchy-feel-y department. But it must get hot over here, too. I mean, y’all are looking at naked bodies all the time.”

“Looking is one thing. Most of my artistic process is solo.”

“Oh, well sex can be fun that way, too,” she says encouragingly.

“Not quite what I meant, Jenny.” I clip up the small tackle box that holds my drawing supplies.

“I guess you visual artists are all are a bit more serious.” She looks around at the empty room. Soon it would be filling with students from the abstract painting class.

“I guess.” I sigh. I sure am. Maybe some of my comrades get distracted when they work, but I did my best not to. Even though it’s hard sometimes when the guys pose. They don’t always take the job so seriously (especially when they pose for beer). Some of them think getting naked on the podium is a kind of foreplay, and more than once it could have been.

Even Jonathan seemed on the verge of an erection when he last posed for me. I think he was a bit embarrassed about that, but my focus calmed that down. I have strict rules about not dating models
or
friends' exes. And I don’t mix work with pleasure. Maybe Ruby's right about me being a tad on the obsessive side of focused. But I know it’s going to be hard work rather than play that will get me into New York gallery one day. 

Jenny picks up her gym bag. “See you Thursday, Ava. I take cream and three sugars.” She winks and then bounces out of the room.

I leave the art building and head across campus to drop my art supplies in my dorm room before my first class, The History of Medieval Art. Dr. Tennenbaum teaches the class, and I’ve taken everything he’s taught since my Introduction to Art History in freshman year. He was the first prof to make a big deal out of my talent—he told me about the Mona Lisa competition at Mick’s— and ever since he’s encouraged and supported me. I’m pretty sure he’s around fifty, but he looks like a dashingly handsome forty-something who’s favorite pastime is to wander around art galleries looking deep and mysterious. He’s the kind of man I might one day want to marry. If I do end up getting married. This is something my mother assumes will happen soon after I graduate. She doesn’t yet know about my plans for New York. I’ll have to bring it up when I go home for Thanksgiving.

On my way to Kendrick Auditorium, where Dr. T’s class is held, I hear someone yell my name. I look up and around but can’t locate the source of the bellowing, though the voice sounds unnervingly familiar.

“Ava, over here!”

No one on the grass or pathways is looking my way. Then I catch a glimmer of movement over by the wall of the Childer Building, home of the English Department. At the same time, I catch the tiniest whiff of cigarette smoke. Squinting against the sun’s glare, I see someone sitting on the wide windowsill of a ground floor office. A hand holding a cigarette dangles out the open window.

Logan O’Shane tips his hat at me.

So he does know my name.

I smile and wave awkwardly. He gestures to me to come over. When I hesitate, he stubs out his cigarette and drops the few feet out his window. He does this with a casual strength and grace that gets my heart thumping. A moment later he has navigated through the landscaping and is striding over toward me. I break out in a light sweat, which I falsely blame on the September sunshine. Fragments of my dream resurface: a Tweed jacket on the floor, heavy breathing, a smooth muscled shoulder inches from my lips as I lie on my back, my
arching
back…

“Where are you off to on this beautiful morning, Miss Nichols?”

Instead of answering his question, I blurt out one of my own:

“This is a non-smoking campus. How did you convince the Dean to let you smoke in your office?”

“I didn’t.” He winks. “I’m breaking the rules. Some rules, as you must know, are meant to be broken.”

I resist rolling my eyes at his cocky attitude.

He stands in front of me looking all comfortable and relaxed in snug fitting khakis and a white button down shirt. His green eyes, at first mischievous, now lock on mine with familiar intensity. Familiar because I just remembered their look of hunger in my dream.

I feel nervous and self-conscious all of a sudden. Something about that dream. More pieces are coming back. His nakedness. Mine. Only I can’t remember the raw details. My eyes wander over his clothes trying to imagine what my subconscious mind tried to fill in. My conscious mind, however, does nothing but make me blush.

“So why did you call me over?” he says with a charming smile.

“Me? It was you. You just
strode
over here. To me.”

Flustered, I sound defensive and indignant, but he’s caught me off guard. In fact, he’s caught me between dream and reality. His eyes are laughing at me now. His lips and voice join in.

“Just teasing you, Miss Nichols. Nice verb choice, by the way,” he says with a smirk.

“What?” Now I’m confused, trying to catch up, and calm down. All while trying to appear cool, composed and unaffected by his overwhelming presence, which is both real and dream-enhanced.

“Strode,” he says. “To stride. Shows purpose and motivation, as if the character has a
design
on his target.”

Oh. “The character being you?”

“Dapper gentleman strides over to beautiful coed on her way to… Where?”

Did he just say beautiful? Me? And
dapper
? Him?

“Where are you on your way to, Ava?”