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She hops to her feet, still wearing that insincere smile, and offers me a hand.
I don’t take it, but roll up to a stand in one swift move learned from years of dance classes.
Her fake smile should warn me away, but it only makes me want to step closer and find out what’s underneath. What’s she really feeling right now?
I’m a connoisseur of pretending, but genuine emotion is elusive.
“The costume is even more impressive up close.” Her voice is so syrupy sweet I feel dizzy from the sugar high. She’s up to something. Probably back for another attempt to convince me to help her.
I’m not going to give in. Three more songs, and my album is complete. I can’t let my muse become real or I’ll lose the thread, that creative spirit and flow I couldn’t find in LA after everything went bad.
I need to get back to the only thing that’s ever really made any sense to me. The only thing that’s ever felt like safety.
“Give me five minutes to get out of this monkey suit?”
She giggles like I’m funny, but I’ve never been funny. I hate this fake plastic version of her. The only reason I’m not asking her to leave is that I need to find out what she’s really up to.
At least, that’s what I tell myself. It has nothing to do with the loneliness wrapped around me like a dark hole. Nothing to do with my desperation to escape myself and my own thoughts.
“Sure,” she says. “I’ll go say hi to Barley.”
I nod once, spin, and hurry into the house, as desperate to get away from her as I am for her to stay.
There’s no getting out of the Bigfoot costume quickly, and I try not to think about how good Honey felt in my arms or how smooth and toned her legs looked under her black pleated skirt as I remove the head and place it on its stand.
I try not to wonder if she put on eyeliner and lipstick just for me as I peel the suit from my sweaty body.
I try not to wonder how her red lips will taste or how easily I could slide my hands under her skirt and grab her ass as I pull her tight against me.
I fail on all counts. I’ve spent far too much time thinking about this woman already to figure out how to stop now.
It was five months ago that I saw her for the first time, walking the fields next to her house in the moonlight, her pale skin glowing, her dark hair a veil. I watched her for a while, trying to figure out what she was doing, if she needed help.
Turns out, she was just enjoying a moonlit stroll. By the time I figured it out, it was too late for me.
I was gone for the woman I’d never met and doubted I ever would. I groan aloud at the memory of how I imagined holding her even then, long before I had a right to.
I still don’t have a right to.
But she crept into my brain, the most perfect woman I could imagine, kind and wild and sexy as hell. So far removed from the mess of my life that I could forget about it myself when I watched her, when I imagined us together.
That fairy tale vision of us woke up the creative part of me that had been sleeping, and I wrote music again for the first time in nearly a year.
It’s unnecessary, but I raise my arm and sniff my pit, already knowing it’ll be bad. She won’t mind if I take a quick shower. It’s better than her smelling me.
And if she does mind, maybe she’ll get bored and leave. Best-case scenario.
No artist wants their muse to become a real woman.
I shower quickly, ignoring my aching cock. There’s no time for that and it feels like a violation to get off to fantasies of Honey when she’s just outside, close enough to hear my moans.
My phone rings from my nightstand as I’m pulling on a pair of jeans. I grab it, hoping for good news, relief coursing through me when I see my agent’s name on the screen.
“Rafaella. Please tell me I can come home.”
She clears her throat. “Jaxon, you know I always want to tell you what you want to hear.”
My heart sinks, and I tug at my hair. “What happened?”
