Midnight Muse

“What?”

“The whole ‘Darling’ thing. You just expect women to swoon at that, huh?” His smile is hesitant, and he takes the card I hold out to him. “I thought so. Can I have my supplies now, Darling?” I ask, batting my eyelashes a few times for good measure. Ever the face of innocence, I am.

Ace takes my credit card without further comment, running my total. I don’t even care what it is right now, I just want him to swipe the fucking card so I can hightail it out of here. His mouth is set in a firm line now, shoulders tense. The aura in the entire shop has changed with my retort, but I don’t have the ability to care right now, itching to get away.

When he hands it back to me, I stuff it back into my purse. Ace shoves my bag across the counter with a grumbled, “Knox was right.”

“Excuse me?” Knox was right? About what? The asshole doesn’t even know the first thing about me.

“You are grumpy.”

The sheath containing my ire is stripped away. My fingers curl into fists around the handle of my bag, my nails biting into the skin of my palm. The rumble of anger only fuels my irritation and I’m unable to keep the alizarin crimson from staining my cheeks as I glare up at him.

“Tell me you’re shitting sunshine when you haven’t slept all night because of your roommate.”

Ace’s answering smirk is cutting, suggestive. It makes me blind with rage.

Spinning on my heel, I shove myself out the door before he can answer my anger with another sly remark.

Fucking assholes, all of them.

CHAPTER 5

QUINN

“All I’m saying is that I think he’s pretty cute,” Rory scoffs, defensively.

Since we moved in, it seems as though my entire life revolves around the boys living next door to us.

While I finally managed to get the sleep I deserved last night, something had felt…off. The other side of the wall was almost too quiet as I laid in the darkness, awaiting sleep to take me in its hold, even though my body had been aching for it all weekend. All night, there hadn’t been a peep from the asshole I share my wall with.

I know it’s Knox’s room on the other side, there’s no way in fucking hell that it isn’t, but the lack of music blaring through the plaster was almost like a dream.

I shove the thoughts from my mind. It’s too early in the morning to be squabbling over our neighbors with Rory.

It’s our first day of classes for our sophomore year at VU, and I won’t let them ruin it.

The sun shines brightly on Rory and I as we walk to our first class of the day: Drawing 201. It’s the only one in our schedules this semester that we share. Rory is delving deeper into her major of oil painting this year, but I’m still on the fence about how I’m going to continue my own when drawing has been so unfulfilling. I yearn for that feeling of pride over my work instead of the existential dread of how I’m not good enough that has been haunting me for years.

Rory has her drawing pad tucked under an arm as she walks. Mine is held in a similar fashion; the obnoxiously large pad of paper bigger than my torso nearly slipping from my fingers as I adjust it. Her deep brunette hair is tied back into a loose bun that she makes look effortless but I know takes at least twenty minutes to make sure all of the strands look “perfectly tousled,” according to my roommate. If I were to try to recreate the look, I’d surely resemble a rat with bedhead.

How our conversation shifted to our thunderous neighbors, I’m not entirely sure. We’d seen one of them driving off this morning in his vintage car that somehow always seems to be parked right out front our apartment building. Its cherry paint rusted; the metal rotted through. I wasn’t even sure that the car was in running condition because it looks like it broke down there one day and the owner abandoned it, but the vehicle gave a hefty splutter, black smoke trickling from the tailpipe as he rolled down the street.

It was the roommate who had given the final slam of the door in our faces on that Friday night, the one who looked like he could break through the thin wall separating our apartments just by leaning against it. He wore a fitted emerald shirt, and by fitted, I mean that the seams of the fabric were nearly splitting from the force needed to stretch around his broad body.

He had nodded to the both of us, but that was all we were given before the black puff of fumes wafting from his car made us wrinkle our noses and pick up our pace as we headed for campus. He was the least volatile of the three by far, even if I didn’t feel so inclined to return his morning greeting.

The art building is old, but the classroom is spacious and drab. Concrete floors adorned with paint that hasn’t come off and dried clay chipping into dust show the essence of creativity within the space, the room shared with many different classes working with a vast array of mediums. The white walls keep the room bright, the sun casting through the windows bouncing off of them, creating a well-lit space to work in. The art horses are lined up in a circle surrounding a mattress with a sheet spread across its lumpy surface. The room smells of both paint and graphite, comforting me, settling me; my shoulders relax as I take in a hearty breath.

Accustomed to the setup from last year, I gather that we’re going to be jumping right into the class and will be drawing today. The most memorable moment from last year had been the oldest man I’ve seen serve as the model. Of course, that was the day the professor had chosen a specific close-up of a limb for each student to draw. I’d so luckily gotten to draw his low-hanging, wrinkly nether region. Yuck.

I shudder as the memory resurfaces, following Rory to a seat. Dropping my bag to the floor, I set up my sketchpad, leaning it against the back of the horse as I dig around in my backpack for all of the necessary materials I’ll need.

Rolling my eyes in response to her earlier statement, I finally reply, shuffling through my pencil case for an eraser. “I didn’t say that they weren’t cute, I said that they’re assholes.”

Despite my quiet night last night, I couldn’t help but wonder about Knox. His brooding nature and stupidly charming face plagued my thoughts as I drifted off in the loud silence of my room.

Students trickle into the classroom one by one. A group of girls stride in, laughing about something that happened at a bar over their weekend. Another girl follows, but it’s clear that she isn’t in their clique. She’s pretty, her ice white hair is draped long down her back, the front pushed from her face by the sunglasses sitting atop her head. Her blue eyes flick around the room nervously, searching for a place to sit, and I’m about to call her over because I can use another friend to side with me against Rory over my annoying neighbors when my eyes are drawn to the boy trailing her inside of the classroom.