The Muse's Undoing

Page 38



MATTHEW

Never?

That’s a lie, but Fischer’s a liar. He wasn’t exactly around when Maggie and I were growing up. He probably would have disappeared completely if he hadn’t nearly been blown up eight years ago. When he started working in journalism, he even changed his last name from Cannon to Elliot, which isn’t even his birth mother’s name. He made it up out of thin air.

Since his recovery, he’s spent eighty percent of his time in other countries. It’s no mystery why his shotgun marriage to Nicole never worked out.

I love having him back in town, though. While he was almost completely absent during my childhood, his injury changed everything. Granted, I get that wasn’t the best part of his life, but my memories of it are good. It was the most settled I’d ever been, before or since. I had a routine. I had purpose. I had him. But then he got better and went back to work.

Seeing him on the news from time to time was no substitute for the real deal. I prefer the solidity of his body to an image of his face on a screen. I like his scent. The sound of his voice. It’s not weird, no matter what my mom says. It’s not hero worship either. If anything, I’ve saved him way more than he’s ever helped me out, but maybe that’s why I’m so attached. I like to know he’s all right. And there’s no better proof of that than seeing him up close in the Manhattan morning with the sunlight glinting off the golden strands in his dark blond hair.

“Gavin’s pretty,” I say, lifting my head to take a bite of my bagel.

“Figured you’d say that.”

“You don’t think so?”

“Not my type,” he says.

I ignore that and look around his drab apartment. “You should let me bring some of my drawings over here. This place needs more personality.”

“I don’t need any charcoal renderings of giant dicks on my wall, but thanks.”

“I can draw pussies, too.”

Fischer laughs. “You remember what those look like?”

“It hasn’t been that long,” I say. It hasn’t even been a year since I was with a cis woman. And Elodie Lafayette-Arnaud who lives on the twelfth floor has a beautiful body. An absolute work of art, including her pussy.

I polish off my bagel while Fischer returns emails. When we’re both done, we turn to each other, and he wipes a crumb off the corner of my mouth. “You should lie down. You look exhausted.”

He’s right. I should. “You don’t want to watch a show with me?”

“Look at you pouting.” Fischer fusses with my face, combing his fingertips through my scruff and rearranging my hair. Then he gives my chin a squeeze, his thumb pressing into the cleft. “Go lie down.”

He doesn’t have to ask twice, but I like when he insists. “Rub my back.”

His smile is fond, his eyes as silver as a mirror in the morning light. “You’re like a baby.”

“Maybe Gavin will want to do it when he gets back.”

“I’ve got it,” Fischer says, eyes narrowing slightly. “But you know if I lie back down, I’ll fall back asleep.”

“So?” I gaze at him wearily. “You don’t have to work today.”

He seems to consider it. “Do you have to work tonight?”

“I don’t remember. If my alarm goes off at four, then yes.”

He laughs. “Check.”

I sigh, dragging my phone out of my hip pocket and opening it up. “No. I don’t. I should get home.”

His hand slides from my chin to my cheek, and I lean into it, closing my eyes.

“You’re not gonna make it,” he says.

“I will if you pay for a car…”


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