The Muse's Undoing

I’ve always worked in journalism. Facts. Bias. Truth. Lies. Black. White. Worthy. Not worthy.

Matthew’s never looked at the world like that. He sees meaning. Poetry. Beauty.

And he’s the embodiment of all those things, too. A heart still pure. A body capable of both grace and strength. And eyes that never judge or criticize. At the most, they make a geometric analysis.

He’s just different. Different from me. Different than anyone. And he’s always had the ability to make me feel things right along with him. Yes, sometimes things that made my dick inconveniently hard, but deeper things, too. Like that part of me that always felt disconnected to everything reached out finally and found a way to ground itself in his way of seeing things—in him.

And those were not the kind of thoughts I was supposed to be having about Dick and Donna’s baby boy. “Remember, Matty, please—you were so young.” He’d barely turned twenty-one on my first visit back to the city.

He breaks eyes contact and nods.

“The right thing felt like letting you live your life. I thought about us, though. Too much, maybe. That first week back, I was so alone. I’d wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and reach for you. It made me realize a couple things. I didn’t want to die alone like that, and I wasn’t about to put that kind of pressure on you.”

I give him a moment to take this in. I hope he knows that was then. Now—we’re something new, and my feelings for him are shifting in a different direction.

“So that’s why Nicole,” he says.

My voice is a choked whisper. “Yeah.”

“You didn’t want a relationship with a man?” he asks.

“My feelings about men are complicated.”

His brow furrows. “Okay…”

“I have a lot of shame,” I say, wanting to clarify and realizing too late how inadequate those words are.

“About being bi?”

I shake my head. “It’s not that. I can accept that about myself. I didn’t like who I was when I was hooking up with men. I was cold and selfish and…I don’t know how to describe it, but I felt like an addict. Like I didn’t care who it was or how I got off—I just cared about getting off.”

“I get that, Fischer,” he says, finally meeting my eyes.

I sense an understanding deeper than I expected. It makes me brave enough to say what comes next. “I wanted you. And I felt disgusting for how much.”

“Because I was young or because we’re…”

“Brothers? Both,” I say.

“And now?”

I take a deep breath, needing to touch him, but unable to think of a way. “It doesn’t feel as wrong knowing you want me, too.”

“I do want you,” he says firmly, validating me. “If you’ll have me.”

“Are you asking if I want to be your boyfriend?”

“Do you?”

“More than I want most things,” I say.

He leans forward, elbows on the table. “I get that I can’t come first. I know you have Vaughn and your work?—”

“You’re more important to me than my work.”

He snorts. “Since when?”

I lean in, too, bringing our faces closer. “Since I decided I couldn’t be away from you any longer. You’re half the reason I’m home. Your emails. It was hard to be away from Vaughn, but we were used to it. But when I couldn’t stop thinking about you and what it might be like to have you in my life again—it made me realize how much I was missing out on. What I could have, if I let myself.”