The Muse's Undoing

She licks her lips and presses them to mine. “Will you draw a picture of me like that? Your cum spilling out of my mouth?”

“I’ll tattoo it on my inner thigh.”

“Fuck me,” she says, thrusting her hips, her voice deeper now and insanely stirring, “Breed me.”

“Let me suck you.”

“Dirty boy.”

“You want me to beg?”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re irresistible?”

The word is a trigger of my own making. A lifetime spent unable to say no has left me unable to resist anything. I’ve made a mess of myself and my heart with zero sense of self-preservation. I exist in a perpetual state of emptiness, and I have no one to blame but myself and mornings just like this.

“Talk is cheap,” I say, suddenly desperate to spend myself inside her. I physically rearrange her slight body to face away from me.

“What happened to sucking?”

“I changed my mind.”

“You’re gonna be rough, aren’t you? You’re mad at me now,” she says, and her tone implies it’s not a question—rough is what she wants.

After ripping open a condom, I slap her ass so hard, she grunts—the sound distinctly masculine. “Shut up and take this cock like a good girl.”

“You look like shit.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

Maggie sits across from me with perfect posture at the coffee shop in Lincoln Square, two doors down from the apartment building where she lives with her fiancé of two years—Good old Stuart. “Who, pray tell, took a look at you today and said otherwise?”

I give her a cryptic glance

“You’re still seeing Valentine.”

“I am, and she thinks I look great. Wanna see my hickey?” I reach for my belt as a joke until she stops me with two hands up and a high-pitched giggle.

“You’re so full of shit.”

I wink and pick up my paper cup. I pounded a triple espresso shot before switching to green tea. I probably don’t look my best. Val and I are like a bonfire. When we’re together, we burn hot, well into the night. Neither of us sleeps half as much as we should.

Maggie plucks at her lower lip before taking another sip of her cappuccino.

She and I have the same wavy dark hair, same dark blue eyes and square jaws with chin clefts. But she’s about a foot shorter with our dad’s thinner lips and slightly hooked nose. Also, his shitty eyesight. Today she’s wearing her coke-bottle glasses with her hair in a messy bun. She’s on her way to a night fashion shoot once we’re done here.

Luckily, our comings and goings align more often these days than not. She’s still one of my only friends. If working evenings and nights meant I didn’t get to see her at least a few times a week, I doubt I’d have taken the full-time doorman job at the Eastmoor when they offered.

To be clear—I don’t identify as a doorman. I’m an artist, but in this town, we’ve all gotta pay the bills.

While I sketch a caricature of her on my napkin, she says, “Oh, guess what! I don’t know how I forgot to tell you this. Stu and I set a date.”

I nearly choke on the hot tea when it hits my throat. “You what?”

“Turns out we actually are going through with it.”

I let out a huff. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Well, save the date, Matty, because it’s happening. Mom practically burst into confetti when I told her.”