My stomach did a somersault at his question. “I thought one of my professors recommended me.” I was so used to them throwing my name to recruiters that it hadn’t crossed my mind to ask.
“Wrong.”
My mouth went dry, nerves rocketing through the stratosphere. “Wrong?” I repeated.
His thumb stroked my cheek. “I found you. Or maybe you found me? It doesn’t matter. A chance encounter on a train brought us to this point, Plum.”
“You…stalked me?” I choked out, flinching out of his grasp.
Oh my God. I fell in love with my stalker.
He rolled his eyes with a snort. “I got your name from your friends with a twenty-dollar bill, which, admittedly was mildly creepy, but I didn’t stalk you.”
Reggie and Sam. No surprise there. The pair went on to sell one another up the river, literally, their drug-peddling on campus earning them a stint in prison upstate. I was too stupid to pick up on it at the time, thinking they wanted to hang out because they liked me. As it turned out, they just wanted access to my rich friends and their parents’ credit cards.
“You hired me because you thought I was cute?” Great. Just how I wanted to win a damn job. I’d scrawl it at the top of every cover letter once I finished school.
“No, because I needed you,” he sighed, running a frustrated hand through his hair. “You’re going to think I’m insane, but you called to me that night. You still do, even across an ocean. You’re everything to me.”
“Why?” I asked, gnawing my bottom lip as I digested his words, everything I thought I knew about our relationship blowing up before my very eyes. “Of all the people on that train, why me?”
He rubbed his forehead with the half-smile that had always reduced me to jelly from the first time we met. “We don’t choose our muses.”
“Muses?” As soon as I said it, a rumble of dominoes fell in my mind, all leading to one concrete answer. I went to speak, but he held a finger to my lips, checking his watch as he shook his head.
“Enough talking. I have something to show you.” He led me inside by the hand, walking briskly from the bedroom to the living area.
My mind must have gone into system overload, nothing seeming to make sense, as the truth settled into place.
“TV on!” he barked, the big screen I’d struggled with for weeks coming to life.
“Seriously!?” I screeched. “That’s all I had to do?” I’d all but done the hokey-pokey to get the dang thing to work.
He laughed, a rich, warm sound I’d missed. “Feed 313.”
The channel changed to an aerial shot of the Louvre, night already leaving the city dark. The usual twinkling lights that lined its perimeter were dimmed, the pyramid at its center dark.
“Is this live?” I asked, but he didn’t reply, tipping his head toward the screen, imploring me to watch.
So I did.
One by one, the lamp posts came to life from left to right, purple bulbs replacing the standard yellow, violet lights as far as the eye could see. Once it reached the final post, the pyramid flashed a deep, purple hue.
By then, people were flocking to the area, the camera offering a perfect view of the action, unobscured as it took in the scene unfolding. In a matter of seconds, it seemed like hundreds of people were there, all eyes on the purple light show.
“What is this…?” I trailed, falling silent as gasps came from the crowd.
A flood of police officers rushed into the ruckus, angry shouts seeming to demand answers about what was happening, but soon they hushed too, everyone focused on the pyramid, a message projected on its side in white.
Happily EVER After Is Now
The crowd cheered, a chant in French breaking out that I couldn’t understand. I wanted to turn and face Ethan, but stayed hooked to the screen, struggling to wrap my mind around the scene in front of me. “What’s going on?”
Ethan squeezed my fingers, prompting me to look at him, his shoulders lifted, an invisible weight seeming to be lifted from them as his blue eyes burned for me. “Our happily ever after starts now.”
Ethan
“You said…you aren’t…you are?” Kee sputtered, eyes bouncing between me and the television screen in shock, her knees knocking together.
I caught her before she hit the floor, arms hooking under hers as we came chest to chest. “Hang in there. We’re not finished yet.”
Her eyes whirled with questions as I steadied her before heading to the hall, her hand in mine while I plowed through every invisible wall I’d built during my ten years in Boston. It was time.
We approached the one room no other eyes had seen. The one place I was exposed. I punched in the door code, adrenaline leaving my hands unsteady as my fingers struggled over the keys. It was as if my body was sending out one final calvary before I surrendered.
“It’s 0902,” I informed her once my fingers found their strength. “My Nan’s birthday.”
I pushed the door open and nudged her inside before I lost the strength, baring my bones to my heart and soul. The moment I’d feared more than anything happening in front of me.
But the world didn’t stop. Life as I knew it wasn’t over. Instead, the constant knot in my chest was freed, something foreign flooding the space: hope.
Kee’s legs wobbled as she stepped forward, her hazel eyes seeming to double in size at what she was seeing.
In the center of the studio sat my latest piece, still held by the easel I’d created it on, my most intimate work meeting its inspiration face to face, a blooming iris in the throes of a storm, a woman cloaked in plum at the center of its petals, a familiar profile of chaotic curls peeking from
