The Muse's Undoing

“You can’t possibly think I kiss everyone like that, can you?”

Or maybe this is all gonna go to my head way too fast. I avert my gaze, looking down at my coffee. “Matthew, don’t say shit like that to me.”

“You’re the one who wanted to talk,” he reminds me. “What did you think I was gonna say?”

“That you think I’m cute, but this is just casual and not to get attached ‘cause you’re a rolling stone or some shit.”

“Cute?” He snorts. “Anyway, you’re already attached.”

I scrub a hand over my face and sigh.

“Mind if I ask you something?”

“Maybe?” I say.

“On the subject of other lovers, you don’t ever talk about you and Nicole.”

I frown. “No?”

He shakes his head.

“You know her,” I remind him. “You were friendly.”

“But I mean, why her?”

With no idea where he’s going with this, I give him a vague answer and hope he can take it from there. “She had a good sense of humor. We had a lot of similar interests.”

“Did she turn you on?” he asks.

“She’s an attractive woman.”

“Were you always attracted to women?”

“Not every woman,” I hedge.

“So…yes. Did you always want to be married?”

“That…” I’m not sure how the truth is going to resonate for him, and that makes it hard to look at him. “No. But it got harder to be alone.”

“I get that,” he says quietly, like he’s ready to listen. Which means I have to talk.

I push some hair out of my face and lean back in my chair, needing some distance. “When I went back to work—after a few months in the field being mostly by myself all the time and not knowing what I’d be coming home to, I met her, and I thought—I could be coming home to someone. And she indicated she’d be happy to be that person.”

“Oh.” His soft sound lands like lead between us.

Guilt threatens to choke me.

The first time I’d come back to New York a few months after leaving the “sick bed,” I’d intended to reach out Matthew—to Dick and Donna and Maggie, too, but once I arrived in Manhattan—once I’d taken literally one look at the bed he and I shared for the better part of a year, and saw no sign of him in our apartment, I couldn’t bring myself to.

I had a lot of shame about needing him the way I had—keeping him from living his own life, and also the less than innocent thoughts I had about him that I’d kept to myself. Before I’d gone overseas—before the bomb blast—I’d been practically addicted to Grindr—to sloppy hook-ups with pretty men.

And I’d hated myself. I hated the way it felt to use someone to get off and not give them a second thought the next day. And yet, the pull I’d felt to sink right back into the habit once I realized Matthew had moved out made me feel like an alcoholic staring down a bottle of vodka. Just walking down the street to the deli meant I’d see a half dozen men and picture them on their knees. The act itself wasn’t the trigger—it was the memory of self-loathing.

I hated myself for wanting Matthew, and I didn’t know what I’d do if I saw him. If I’d even be able to have a normal conversation with him. If I’d be able to stop myself from making a pass at him. If he’d find me disgusting.

While I don’t remember ever purposefully coming onto him in the middle of the night, Matthew is objectively attractive. But it isn’t just that he’s easy on the eyes.

Here’s the thing about my brother. While he’s the shier of the twins by far, he and his sister are both capable of filling a room with their presence, and they have a story for everything.