The Muse's Undoing

Page 40



“Like you don’t,” I say.

“You’re right. I wouldn’t survive a week,” he says.

“Same. I might have to call for a different kind of delivery later,” I joke.

He sends a disapproving glare my way. “You’ll get yourself fired.”

“Please. Like anyone has any clue what goes on in the lobby at three a.m.”

Fischer frowns, then looks back down at his laptop. “The more I know about you, the more I wonder whether I should.”

“That hurts my feelings.” I fill up his electric kettle and grab the tea he keeps stocked for me. While I wait for the water to heat, I lean on the counter and watch him work.

He never pulls his hair back, so to me he looks like he did when I used to help him wash up in the shower. I admit I may be slightly obsessed with his face.

He’s traditionally handsome, square jaw, dominant chin, and large, heavily lashed pale gray-green reflective eyes beneath a strong brow. This afternoon, he has a weekend’s worth of stubble, which is a lot for him, but because it’s slightly darker than his sun-kissed hair, it sets off his full mouth. He’s slender, dressed now in a zip-up hoodie and those thin gray sweats.

The truth is, I find Fischer attractive, but that’s nothing new. When he was captain of his high school lacrosse team, he was an all American cutie, but I was five. When he was in college, he started growing his hair out and got glasses—Ivy League hottie. I was in elementary school. And then he changed his name and started his career in journalism—we rarely saw him then, but when we did, he was a “grown-up,” and I was a gangly teen with bad skin.

The trouble I have these days is he wasn’t always this attractive. The same way Patrick Dempsey gets better with age, so does Fischer.

Also, I have a weakness for the glasses. I like when he looks all “journalist” and not anchorman. This is the way I remember him.

When my tea is ready, I sit down across from him, grab one of the legal pads, a pen, flip to a blank page, sip my tea, and sketch him while he works.

Maggie texts me off and on, and I respond, but I keep coming back to the sketch, flicking my gaze from his face, deep in concentration, to the pad of paper where he’s coming to life. Naked.

I shrug to myself and keep going. I give him a huge cock in the sketch, just so I know when he sees it later, probably when he’s alone, he’ll get a kick out of it. But I place the scars with precision. They’re burned into my brain. When the knock comes to signal the pizza is here, I flip the papers back to cover the sketch and go to the door.

“You’re still in your underwear,” Fischer notes when I set the pizza box down on the coffee table and try to settle on his uncomfortable couch.

“You keep it too warm in here.”

“You just run hot,” he says. “It’s sixty-eight degrees.”

“You want me to put on my polyester suit?”

“You can borrow a t-shirt. Maybe some shorts.”

“I think you’re gonna be okay,” I tell him, folding a hot slice and stuffing it in my mouth.

Using his cane, he limps over and plops down next to me, groaning from his knee. Our hips fall into the crease between cushions, smashing us together side by side. I don’t bother to move, and neither does he.

In fact, when he gets his slice, he leans back, throws his arm across the back of the couch behind me, and we’re practically cuddling.

Not exactly, but close enough. I wonder if he really does think of me as a needy baby.

“You don’t need to snuggle me, you know. I’m already hot.”

“I’m not snuggling with you. It’s a small couch.”

It’s a regular-sized couch. No wonder Gavin had questions.

“You want me to sit somewhere else?” he asks.

“No, you’re fine. I just don’t want you to think I’m needy. That was the word, right?

“I was kidding.”


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