by Isabel North
“Keep looking.”
Big hulk of metal. Twisted bits. Swooping lines. Elegant curve. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”
“You see whatever you see. That’s the point of art.”
“A dolphin. I see a dolphin.” She didn’t see a dolphin.
Gabe burst out laughing again; then, at her narrowed glare, he pointed at Alex. “I’m laughing at him, not you, Elle.”
“Relax your eyes and don’t try to see anything,” Alex said in her ear, voice low. “Ease into it…let go of your preconceptions…”
“You ever watch that eighties Henson film Labyrinth?” Gabe asked.
“Yes. Oh! Is it a goblin?”
Alex’s body shook behind hers.
“I’m starting to get pissed off here,” she said. “If it’s not a goblin, what do you mean?”
“Okay. So a couple of places in the film, they used this technique, anamorphism. You know it?” He waited, expectant.
Elle had once kept a patient alive with manual cardiac massage, her hand in his chest cavity making his heart beat until the trauma team could get him into an operating room. She had assisted at emergency births. She had held patients as they died. On a daily basis, she’d dealt with complete strangers in the throes of experiencing the absolute best and absolute worst things a human being could experience. Sure, she was scared of spiders and toilet demons, but put her in an emergency and she was a superstar. She refused to feel stupid for not having had the leisure time to brush up on her fancy art terms. Anamorphism. “Why don’t you go ahead and break it down for me?” Elle said. “Pretend I’m an idiot.”
“No problem. Let me see. There was a sequence with a wall. Looked like a solid wall until the heroine walked up to it, and then it was revealed to be a gap and a hidden passageway. Trick of perspective. Another example, this one somewhat more relevant to Alex’s work, there was a landscape shot with some random-seeming rock formations, and as the camera panned round, they lined up to become a face.”
She remembered that bit! “Is it David Bowie?”
“Just look.”
Elle looked. She took a deep breath, tried to think of how it made her feel…a bit exposed, a bit shivery, but that was probably more to do with Alex as close as he was… Wait…she almost had it… Yep. There.
Elle stood up straight. “Holy crap,” she said and felt her cheeks turn hot. She saw it. “That’s…” She couldn’t finish.
Gabe did it for her. “Boom,” he said.
“You are such a douche,” Alex told him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Elle wrenched away and spun to face him. “You’re a porn sculptor?”
Alex’s brows snapped low. “No,” he growled, taken aback.
She pointed a stiff arm behind her. “That’s pretty explicit, Alex!”
“Can’t be that explicit. Took you long enough to work it out. And it’s suggestive. Erotic. It’s not obscene.” He stared down at her challengingly.
“I like it,” Gabe said.
Of course he liked it.
“It’s a bold new direction, but I like it.” Gabe addressed his next comment to Elle. “Up to now, his work has been very industrial, very uncompromising and aggressive. Kind of an on-the-hunt vibe, you know, on the prowl. Nothing like this. Which is more of an after-the-hunt vibe. So you don’t have to worry, it’s not like there are hundreds of representations of your interesting bits out there or anything.”
Alex watched Elle’s pupils shrink with horror. Goddamn it, he was going to kick Gabe’s ass for this.
“That’s not me,” she said, her voice rising in pitch.
“Well, you’re my muse,” Alex said.
She sucked in a breath, then whirled and stretched up to slap her hands over Gabe’s eyes.
He stood there and chuckled. “Too late. I’ve seen it.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she dropped her hands. “Stop looking at it!” she yelled at him.
“If you insist. I’m going to go over here and look at this one. It’s my next favorite.” He ambled over to the other sculptures and stopped in front of one.
“Is it a rude one?” Elle asked.
“None of them are rude. It’s a narrative of seduction and passion, damn it.”
“It’s my butt! How is my butt a narrative?” She gave him a light shove.
He circled her wrists with his fingers, drew them behind her back and held her in place. “Elle, you’re taking this the wrong way.”
Instead of trying to get out of his grip, she stepped closer, tipping her head back to snarl up at him, “You can’t sculpt my butt, Alex.”
God, he wanted to kiss her. He angled his head down and said, a breath away, “It’s not your butt.”
She gritted her teeth. “You cannot sculpt a very specific region of my butt.”
“Can,” he whispered, then stole a hard kiss. “Did.”
She was gratifyingly distracted for a second, then refocused. “I don’t give you permission.”
He smiled. “I don’t need your permission.”
“I’ll contact an attorney.”
“They’ll tell you the same.” She made a noise of frustration. “Elle, I hadn’t even seen your…butt…when I did that. It’s not yours. None of these are you. Let me rephrase that. They’re all you, but only to me.”
“And to anyone else who knows I’m your muse!”
“Muse isn’t the same as life model.”
“People are still going to think it! I can’t believe you’re going to do this to me again, Alex.”
Again? What the hell?
“It’s one thing to make me the laughingstock of the entire school when I’m sixteen. It’s another thing to put me out there like this. You’re pantsing me in front of the entire world!”
Now he was getting angry. “I know you don’t get art, Elle, and I don’t care—”
“How very noble and superior of you—”
He pulled her up to her toes and glared down into her furious eyes. “But I’m not pantsing you. I’m not insulting you. This isn’t humiliation and embarrassment! This is inspiration, it’s creation, it’s passion! I am not holding you up to ridicule. I’m on my knees in worship! This is love!”
The anger snuffed out and she returned his gaze, stunned.
“And the people who know you’re my muse make up a damn small group, Elle. It’s me, you, and him.” He lifted his chin in Gabe’s direction.
“At the moment it’s the three of us,” Gabe said, as he sauntered over. “You’re going to laugh when you hear this.”
Alex stiffened. He wasn’t going to laugh, was he?
“Stephanie isn’t coming here to see you and your new stuff. She’s coming to find your muse.”
“I’m going to kill Justine.”
Elle slipped out of his grasp and stood for a moment, eyes wide, before she bolted.
Gabe came to stand beside him.
“Thanks, man,” Alex said.
“You love her?”
Alex looked at him as if he was crazy. “I’ve always loved her.”
“That’s a fucking tragedy. Or it would be, for a normal human being. Good thing you’re you, right?” Gabe clapped him on the shoulder.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Talking about how it’s a good thing you’re above caring what people think. Because if that were me? I’d be devastated if my muse was mortified to be my muse. Alex. Alex!”
Gabe’s voice continued but, with the abruptness of glass breaking, his words had stopped making sense. Alex backed up a step, hip colliding with his work bench. Tools clattered to the floor as Gabe’s voice faded and his ears filled instead with a stuttering roar.
He didn’t care what people thought about his work. They got to respond to it the way they chose. By the time they were looking at it, it was none of his damn business. Even if Elle didn’t like it, if she loathed it, he didn’t care. But until Gabe had said it, he hadn’t heard what she meant.
It wasn’t the work she loathed. She was mortified to be the inspiration for the work. Mortified.
To be his muse.
To be his.
He shook his head, and his hearing rushed back.
“Get a grip, man, come on,” Gabe was saying. “Shit, you never take anything I say seriously. Stop staring at me like that—you’refreakingmeout. Alex!”
“Yeah.”
Gabe took a breath. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” He bent down slowly, started picking up his scattered tools.
“I was messing with you. It’s fine. You know that, right?”
“Mmm-hmm.” He held his welding gloves in a slack hand.
“She’ll be fine with it. Give her a bit of time. Do the whole flower-chocolate-diamonds thing. Hold a boombox up in the rain. Pick a cliché. She’ll understand.” Gabe reached out and smacked him on the shoulder again. His palm flattened on Alex’s bicep, then he snatched it back. “Shit. You’re cold.”
Alex stared into Gabe’s eyes and watched the whites grow around the dark green irises.
Gabe turned to the doorway. “Gargoyle! Get in here! Daddy needs a cuddle!”
“Jesus, Gabe. I’m not his daddy.”
“You’re in shock. You’re cold. What is wrong with you, suddenly developing a vulnerable spot? You’re supposed to be invincible. You’re not supposed to give a fuck.” He poked Alex again. “Why are you cold? You’re never cold. Gargoyle!”
“I’m not in shock. And Gargoyle won’t come in here. He knows he’s not allowed into my workspace.”
“All right.” Gabe opened his arms wide. “Man hug. Let’s go.”
“I’m not hugging you.”
“Yes, you are. This is happening. The human touch is a healing thing, Alex. Quick hug. Two seconds. Just for reassurance.”
“I don’t need reassurance.”
“For me. I need reassurance. I’m a monster. Feel like I spanked a puppy.”
Alex drew his gloves on, picked up his torch, and ran through the pre-lighting safety checks. “A hint, Gabe.” He struck the flame. “Don’t ever try to spank me.”
Gabe dropped his arms, eyeing the torch. “What are you going to do? You’re not going to get dramatic about it or anything, are you?”
“No.” Alex turned to his masterpiece, contemplated it for a second. Then he said, “I’m going to destroy it all.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Jenny said. “What is with you tonight?”
They were sitting on the couch in the living room in flannel pajama pants and T-shirts, with the kind of reality TV Elle hated and Jenny adored playing onscreen. Elle realized with surprise that the volume was way down. It wasn’t loud to start with, since it was late and Katie was in bed, but Jenny had turned it to nothing more than a faint background hum and was staring at her.
“What’s up?” Jenny asked. “Was the date not good?”
“No, no. The date was good.”
“Was the sex not good?”
“No, no. The sex was outstanding.”
“Liar. Outstanding sex, by definition, means you’re still smiling twenty-four hours later. Yet here we are and—” she gestured at Elle’s face, “—I see a glaring absence of smiles.”
Avoiding her gaze, Elle looked instead at the old trunk they were using as a coffee table. A tatty old steamer trunk Jenny had saved from Mrs. Thompson’s hoard, stripped and scrubbed and bleached and cleaned and announced was the new table. It worked. Quirky, but worked. Comfortable, too. They’d both stretched out their legs and propped them on the trunk. Jenny’s pants leg was rolled to the knee to show her once-white cast had now been doodled all over with colorful flowers and butterflies and a cute baby dragon. Another week, and it would be off.
Jenny poked her. “If it wasn’t bad sex, then what’s going on?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I’m a smart girl.”
Elle blew out a breath. “He’s an artist.”
Jenny waited, and when Elle didn’t continue, said, “Sexy.”
She had no idea. “You remember that guy back in high school?”
“Can’t say I remember you having a guy back in high school. Mostly because I was a self-obsessed tween at the time and I didn’t notice much of anything. Only guy I remember you being connected with was that weird dude who jumped your bones out of nowhere. Remember how we had to lock Dad in the bathroom overnight to get him sober enough that he could go in and meet with the Principal, who was freaking about Miss Goody Two-Shoes going off the rails? Oh. Oh, no. Him? Ice-cream-gargoyle-hot-neighbor guy is the weird dude?”
“Yeah. It’s him.”
Jenny straightened. “There it is! There’s the smile! Damn. He’s still got a thing for you, has he? That’s so sweet, carrying a torch for you all this time. So romantic.”
“Yeah. Except it’s not a torch. It’s way, way bigger than that. I’m his muse.”
“So romantic. His muse? Be still my heart.”
“It gets worse. He’s been in a creative slump, and then when we bumped into each other again, he got kind of…revved up…and he’s had this intense outpouring of new work, all inspired by me.”
“How is that worse? That’s better! Who knew practical Elle Finley, super-serious nurse, could inspire an artist.”
“Didn’t get to the worse bit yet. This stuff he sculpted?”
Jenny fell back, a hand to her chest. “He’s a sculptor?”
“Metal artist.”
“With the welding and the mask and all that? He’s got muscles, hasn’t he? ’Course he has. Wrangling all that metal and fire and shit. Holy crap, Elle.”
“His sculptures are really…um…they’re all way over my head. You know me and the finer things in life. This is like a big cosmic joke, and as well as being over my head, they’re kind of rude.”
Jenny clapped her hands. “Love it!”
“As in explicitly rude.”
“I’m already jealous. You don’t have to bang it home.” She winked. “So to speak.”
“That’s bad, Jenny!”
“It was a joke. It’s supposed to be bad.”
Elle waved her hand. “Not the joke! The fact that he’s done these complicated sculptures and some of them—maybe all of them, I can’t tell—have my, uh, body parts. In them.”
Jenny sat up, used both hands to help swing her cast down, and turned fully to Elle. “What happened to all that talk about your relationship with Chris sputtering out and how you changed your life because you wanted more before you burned out?”
“Okay, but—”
“Then some romantic smitten artist pays homage to you, immortalizes his feelings for you in his work, and you think it’s bad?”
They stared at each other, Elle’s mind whirling.
“You big prude,” Jenny said. “It’s not like he’s putting pictures of your boobs up on Facebook.”
Elle scowled. “I know that.”
“So you’re overreacting why? Jesus. You know what I’d give to have some guy so gone for me he sculpts my anything?”
“It’s not technically my anything. It’s some sort of physical representation of what I make him feel, I don’t know—”
“Prude!”
“I don’t like being exposed! And I don’t freaking get it! Here I am, boring old me, nothing special, but instead of that he sees these dimensions of passion. I don’t get it and, fine, I admit it, I love it. Love it, and I’m in so much trouble because I think I might love… Anyway, I’ve got things straightened out here, I’ve got a job in the community as a nurse, and I’ve got you and Katie to think about. I’m not free to go prancing about playing the femme fatale whose rock star artist boyfriend is so open about his feelings he—”
“You’re not free?” Jenny’s voice was low and angry, and stopped Elle dead in her tracks. “What do you mean, not free? Why? Oh, I get it. You’ve got me and Katie to think about. Right? We’re the ones who make you not fre
e. We’re the ones holding you back from the kind of life you want.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you thought.”
“You don’t know what I think.” Shit, Elle didn’t know what she thought.
Jenny scrubbed her hands over her face. “This is why I took so long, okay? This, right here, is why I took so long to ask you for help, Elle. This is why it wasn’t as easy as you seem to think. When I asked you to come back to Emerson, you do know that all I meant was geographically, right? Not time travel?”
“What?”
“I asked you to come back and help me out for a couple of weeks. That was it. But you moved your entire life back here—job, home. And I didn’t stop you because, damn it, I missed you and I wanted you here. But Elle, you have to know, while I want you here, I don’t need you here.”
Elle directed a pointed look at Jenny’s cast.
“Not once this is healed. I never asked, wanted, needed, or expected you’d come back and take it all on again.”
“I don’t know what you—”
“Me! The Finley name! The keeping up appearances. So people find out that you inspired your boyfriend’s dirty sculptures. So what?”
“They’re not dirty. They’re beautiful. And subtle. Screw it, I can’t see it. But they’re not dirty.”
This is love, Alex had said.
“It doesn’t matter if they’re downright pornographic.” Jenny shocked Elle by grabbing both her hands and squeezing, her face soft but serious. “No one’s going to take me away, Elle, if things aren’t perfect. If you cause any kind of wave. I’m a grownup. I’m a mother. I’ve been married. I love you, and I always thought I appreciated how you raised me and held it all together for us, but I didn’t. Not until my life fell apart, and I was the one left holding it for me and Katie. I’m lucky, because I’ve got you to back me up. You didn’t have any backup, and you were still a kid. I can see how that would affect a person, could make you scared of being exposed again, but you know what? It doesn’t matter. You know what matters?”
Yeah. She knew what mattered.
“Love matters,” Jenny said. “Take a chance, Elle.”
