The Muse by Calhoun Anne

Author:Calhoun, Anne [Calhoun, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Romance
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

Only when he was biking across the bridge did he wonder why she’d been so quiet. This should be no big deal, using stances drilled bone-deep in his body as fodder. He was her muse, helping her learn. But somehow this had become about him, not just Arden. Not the sex—he swerved around a truck emerging from an alley, ignored the honk and yell—okay, maybe the sex started it. Maybe it was the combination of sex and drawing, the sex the bold foundational lines, the framework to contain the more subtle elements, the shading, the texture, the negative space inside every human soul.

What seemed like a simple thing to do for others had started to work away inside him. Without his knowledge, let alone his consent, whatever this thing with Arden was it wasn’t just about her anymore. It was about him.

He rode to Brooklyn, let himself into the motor home, and paced the short, narrow hallway for a minute. The sketchbook in his closet all but glowed in the fucking dark, like he should toss the one in his pocket and pick up the one he’d set aside while it was still damp with blood. Draw what he could to fill the gap in his life.

That was a hopeless task. Nothing could fill this emptiness, no drawing, not even if he had a hundred years and the skill of a draftsman. He was just a grunt who liked to draw knights and dragons, who knew that dreams of quests were nothing more than entertainment. To shake it off, he reached instead for his phone, sent another text to Ryan Hamilton, and to his shock, got three dots and an immediate response. I’m fine. Thx for checking in. Just off the grid for a while.

Relieved, he pulled up his recent calls, tapped Phil’s name, then sat down on the bench seat, and cradled his head in his hands. When Phil answered, he said, “Do you miss it?”

“Fuck, no,” Phil said, amused, knowing exactly what he meant. The background noise, music, laughter, conversation, sounded like a party. Then the noise quieted. Seth heard the flick of a lighter and a quick draw. “All the time. Every fucking second of every fucking day.”

“Yeah,” Seth said. “It was miserable. The suck. Some days I’d do anything to go back.”

“So go back.”

He thought of the people who weren’t there anymore, and the people here he owed. “I can’t.”

Another inhale. Seth heard a door open, then close. “How are you?” Phil asked.

No way was Doug’s brother supposed to be checking up on him. That was his job, not Phil’s. “Fine,” Seth said. “Working. I sleep fine; I’m eating. Working.”

“Let’s try that again, without the bullshit. How are you?”

“It wasn’t bullshit,” Seth said, thinking back less than an hour to his session with Arden, the way he bolted afterward. The press of his nearly empty sketchbook against his thigh as he hunkered down in her living room. “I’m fine,” he said, heard his voice grow stronger before the silence rushed in again, nearly drowning his final words.

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