Becoming His Muse, Part Three (14 page)

“Make me a deal,” says Dr. T. “Finish up those last three canvasses to the best of your ability but make that last one a
small
one. I can’t eliminate it because Dean Ascott signed off on your proposal and it’s too late to modify it, but don’t add more stress by tackling another big painting. You can do this, Ava. You’ve almost reached the finish line.”

***

Dr. T’s right. I’m so close to the finish line I should not be taking unnecessary risks. I wish I could stick to that. I tell myself not to visit Logan’s apartment again, that there’s only a month to get through before that finishing line is crossed. I spend several days diligently working on my paintings and helping Ronnie to get caught up. He’s almost there, and it looks like he’ll get his pieces ready in time for the show.

After four long days that start early in the studio and then fill up with classes and studying, I’m desperate to be naked with Logan again. I’m beginning to think the quality of my painting depends on it.

The loft may have fallen through, and the Aston may be out of commission, but Logan was hand-picked by Dr. T to be one of my mentors so it’s perfectly reasonable for me to hang around his office. Unfortunately, I’m not the only one. As the academic year ticks toward its eleventh hour, Logan’s writing students keep dropping by for consultations and feedback. Even ‘quickies’ in his office are getting too risky.

I try to find out from Ruby if the pressure on Logan is going to let up anytime soon.

“We’re all panicking a bit,” she says. “Probably Sheriann most of all. At the last minute, she switched from fiction to the long form essay for her grad thesis, and of course she picked Logan to be her advisor, so don’t be surprised if she dominates his office hours.”

I frown when I hear her name. Whenever I see her with Logan, after classes or during their writers’ round table meetings at Mick’s, she’s always flirting with him.

When I stop by Logan’s office again, and press him for details, he laughs off Sheriann’s overtures. “She’s pushy and immature and still has a long way to go to master her writing craft, but what can I do? I’ve been hired to teach. I can’t tell her to go away.”

I cross my arms and pout.

Logan sidles up to me and slips a finger under my shirt so he can reach my ticklish ribs. “You can’t possibly be jealous, Ava. Not of her.”

I push his hand away. I don’t want to be tickled. “It’s not just that, Logan…”

I drop down on the two-seater velvet couch at the back of his office.

Sitting down beside me, he says, “Good, because I don’t give you a hard time for painting sexy naked male models who probably only sit for you because they think they’ll have a chance to sleep with you.”

“What? How can you say that? Of course that not the case.” Well, maybe those theater friends of Jenny’s…

“That’s basically what you’re accusing me of, isn’t it?”

I let out an exasperated sigh. “We both know Sheriann has ulterior motives.”

“And your male models might, too. But the point is that
I don’t
have any other motives. And I’m pretty sure you don’t either.”

He arches an eyebrow waiting for me to confirm, which surprises me, because even after all these months together as lovers, I still find it hard to believe that he could feel a shred of jealousy about the attention I get from college guys.

I turn towards him. I feel an earnestness verging on desperation come over me.

“This is more than just an affair, isn’t it? I mean, we’re more than just lovers, aren’t we?” I search his eyes, wanting reassurance, depth, a promise…

“Is being lovers not enough?” A question in response to a question is never an answer, but if that’s his strategy for avoiding a real conversation, I can play that way, too.

“Is it enough for you?”

He smiles, takes my hand, and says, “Yes.”

When I frown, he drops his smile, and my hand. He runs his fingers through his hair.

“That’s not really your question, is it? Do you want an answer to a question or do you want to say something in particular?”

He seems reluctant to talk about this. And I’m not sure what I want to say, specifically, so I stick with questions.

“Don’t you think we had a great time in New York?”

“I do. Yes.”

“Do you think we could again?”

“You want to go for another weekend?” He leans forward, as if trying to figure out where I’m going with this.

I sigh and lean back against the couch. “What will happen after you finish this novel?”

“It will get published and then, if the fates are with me, I’ll write another one. Why?”

“Will you need a muse for the next one?”

He doesn’t answer right away. He watches me, and then he seems to be thinking. He leans back against the couch now, too.

Finally, he says, “I don’t know.”

I close my eyes. My fists tighten a little bit, as if their clenching might hold back tears.

I feel Logan’s weight shift on the couch, and I’m aware he’s moved closer to me. I feel his warm hand on my thigh just above my knee.

“We’ve been through a lot, Ava.”

I nod, still keeping my eyes closed, still willing the tears to stay away. I want to be grown up about all this. I don’t want to dissolve into a puddle like a lovestruck teenager. I knew what I was getting into when he asked me to be his muse. It was for sex, for inspiration, whether for a week, a month, or an academic year. It was only going to last as long as it was going to last. No guarantees. No promises. But ideas and agreements don’t rule the body and the heart.

“What is it that you want, Ava?” His beautiful green eyes meet mine directly, intensely, and, I tell myself, lovingly.

“I want to be with you when this is all over. I want to keep being your muse after this novel, after I graduate, after… Just
always
. I don’t want all of this to be over after I walk across the stage and get my degree, after you close up your office. I want us to be together, Logan. For real. Without secrets. Like in New York.”

There, I’ve laid it on the line.

He runs his hands through his hair, takes a deep breath, is about to say something…

Then there is a knock on his door.

“Professor O’Shane?” A male student peers in. “I really need some help.”

Logan gives me a pained I’m-so-sorry-for-this look.

“I’ll just be a minute,” he says to the student.

A minute? I feel as if I’ve been holding my breath. I exhale sharply, feeling frustrated and thwarted and impatient and irritated and mostly, excruciatingly exposed and vulnerable. A minute?

“Can we talk about this later?” says Logan.

I’m stunned. But I stand up, go through the motions of being his student, of him being my mentor, of keeping our secret. I feel like a false copy of myself.

He gets up from the couch and goes around to his desk. He scrawls something on a piece of paper, folds it in half and hands it to me.

“Here, this is the book you want to look up in the library.”

I take the paper, say thanks, and turn to leave. The student steps in to the office as Logan says, “What can I do for you?”

I walk down the hall in a daze. At the door I stop and look down at the paper in my hand, at the note about the pretend book I need to look up at the library.

In Logan’s rushed scrawl, I read: “
Come to my place tomorrow night. Please.
”

The pressure is getting to me. The not knowing where I stand with Logan is getting to me. Being around stressed-out students is getting to me. Being in conflict with my father is getting to me. Keeping secrets from Dr. T is getting to me. The smell of oil paint and medium, which I normally love, is beginning to get to me. It hardly feels like there’s much of me left.

And now I’ve laid my heart on the table and my dreams on the floor. What will Logan do now that he knows he holds the keys to my heart, my future, my happiness? I guess I’ll find out tomorrow night.

As darkness falls, I trudge across campus toward the faculty apartments to see Logan. The snow has mostly melted, and while it’s still going to be a while before we see true signs of spring, I’m sensing that the worst of winter is over. We’re in that limbo time that lies between the end of one season and the beginning of the next. My life is like that right now, too. I’m nearing the end of my four year degree. I’m approaching the beginning of my independent life. But I’m in an indefinite, in-between state, which, I’m learning, is a state of tension. Nature’s transitions don’t appear tense at all, but people in the midst of change naturally create tension and stress for themselves. I’m ready to graduate, but it’s not time yet. I’m ready to move on with my life, but I’m not free to do that yet. I want some kind of reassurance from Logan, but apparently, it’s not time for that yet either. I feel as if I might burst from all the wanting and waiting.

I almost don’t care if anyone sees me go into the faculty apartments. I’m tempted to brazenly walk in and take the elevator to the third floor.

But I don’t.

I hang out by the wisteria trellis until I’m certain no one’s around and then I dash to the parking garage door feeling like a thief or a spy or what I really am: a sex-starved, lovesick college student obsessed with a professor. How did it come to this? I would almost make myself sick if I weren’t so perpetually aroused.

***

Logan’s first kiss in the stairwell obliterates all my self-judgements. I’ve just been tired and stressed.

“Come on,” he says, leading me up the stairs. “I made pasta and salad and opened a bottle of wine. You look like you could use a little nourishment.”

After we eat, we take the dishes to the sink and then make our way over to the couch with our glasses of wine.

At this point, all my worries and insecurities come tumbling out.

“I just don’t know if I can keep doing this, Logan.”

“Doing what?”

“The lies, and the pretending. And I don’t know where I stand with you.”

He frowns.

I take a sip of wine and say what I only half-mean:

“I don’t want to be your muse anymore if it means sneaking around like this.”

“Then don’t.”

What? I stare at him. He’ll give me up that easily? Won’t even argue with me? Or fight for me?

A mischievous smile overtakes his sweet mouth.

“Come back to New York with me.”

“
What?
” I jolt forward on the couch and nearly spill my wine.

“We’re only sneaking around because we’re
here
. On this uptight, backwards campus.”

“I know but…”

“In New York we can be together the way you want to be.”

“But what about my degree… Your position?”

He shrugs. “I can live without it.” He leans over and puts his arm around me. “But I don’t want to live without
you
.”

I settle into the possessive warmth of his arm while he keeps talking.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday, Ava. About writing my next book, about needing a muse. I don’t know if I need a muse anymore, so long as I have you. To be
more
than a muse — a friend, a lover, a partner, a roommate, anything and everything, so long as it’s
you
.”

The wine and his words go straight to me head. I feel stunned.

His green eyes search mine. “It’s what you want, isn’t it?”

When I don’t answer right away—my mind is swimming with implications, most of which are ballooning into a deliriously happy bubble in my belly—he nervously adds, “I mean I know you want to live and paint in New York. Maybe not necessarily with me but—“

I stop him before he can continue down that ludicrous line of thought.

“Of course I want to go to New York! And be with
you
!”

I let a grin lift the corners of my lips as my mind flits from image to image of us walking the streets together, visiting galleries, going out for dinners, art openings, literary readings, and other images… cozying up on the couch with a movie, having breakfast together in bed, doing other things in bed, and not just in bed…

“Then let’s pack and go,” he says. “I can write the ending of my novel at my own desk. With you there with me I’ve actually got a chance of getting it finished.”

He’s bristling with energy now. He stands up, scanning the room as if he’s deciding what to pack first. The personal contents of the apartment would fit into a duffle bag. His office will take a little more effort.

“Wait,” I say, reality seeping in at the edges of my romantic dream. “Do you mean
right now
?”

“Or tomorrow or the day after.”

“But, Logan, I’ve got the show. I’ve got to graduate.”

He frowns and sits down again. “Do you?”

“You expect me to leave
now
?”

He shrugs. “You keep saying you’re sick of doing what everyone wants you to do, sick of following the rules. You want to break free, live your own life, right?”

“It’s true, but…”

“Your degree doesn’t make you an artist, Ava, your art does.”

But almost four years of hard work wasn’t easy to just throw out on a whim. How could I make him understand?

“What if this novel you’re writing… What if you lost all that you’d written already. Over three hundred pages, and you’re almost finished, and you lose everything?”

“It would be a blow, for sure. But that novel’s in me. And either I’d write it again or I’d write another. The work lives inside me. The same way your paintings live in you. Your degree’s not the same. It lives outside of you, it’s bestowed up on by others, by an institution. It’s not the same thing at all.”

“But I can’t just walk away from all of this.”

“Why not?”

I thought of my father, of Dr. T, my friends, Ruby, Jonathan, and Ronnie Larkin. Even Madeleine.

“How can you consider walking away so nonchalantly?” I say. “What about your students? The friends you’ve made here? Dr. Tennenbaum—Rich?”

“So you won’t come with me?” He’s frowning again.

In my mind, I weigh the proposition again. It’s not just the responsibility I feel for finishing my degree, or for not wanting to disappoint others. As thrilled as I would be to run off romantically into the New York skyline, I know it’s a fantasy. Reality would be much more stark. Not that I don’t believe we could be happy together, but with these particular circumstances, would I just be following Logan, avoiding the bigger realities of my life, and letting another man, even if it’s not my father this time, decide my fate?