The Muse (26 page)

When I did, she responded with a forest of exclamation points. “You outdid yourself.”

“You really think so?”

“I can’t wait to work on this. We need to meet up and discuss. What is your mailing address, by the way?”

I soldiered past this question. “I’ll get it to you. Hey, have I told you lately how much I adore you?”

“I adore you more.”

Several weeks later, she showed me how much she adored me when she sent me a link to a YouTube video. I sat in my cubicle and bawled. She played the school principal who rose to the occasion and helped turn bullies and victims into young men and women who walked with purpose and conducted themselves with respect by standing up and honoring their unique talents and abilities, by serving each other, by bringing out the best in each other so they could bring out the best in themselves. Doreen, my confidant, cried along with me. I had told her everything, about my alter ego and about my growing love for Eva. We dabbed at our eyes and sniffled as we watched the rolling credits, including my pen name Janie. Eva captured my story and brought it to three-dimensional life in a twenty-eight minute short film.

Eva got started right away on planning the anti-bullying event. She would hold it in Washington D.C. and open it up to five hundred guests. The proceeds of the twenty dollar ticket would go to fund a new Heroes Program, and this program would start at Travis’s school, with Travis leading the group.

I adored this girl.

Chapter Thirteen

I continued to write short, romantic stories for Eva, and these stories pulled us closer together. “I’ve never met you, yet I can’t imagine life without you,” she wrote one day. “I feel so connected.”

I understood the reason had more to do with her connecting to my words than me.

Our flirts intensified by the day. I pushed up the danger level. I couldn’t help myself. I’d say things like, “Imagine the sweetness in our first kiss?”

“You’ll stop my heart. I know you will,” she’d say back.

“You know what I'd love to do?” I toyed. “I’d love to run my fingers through your hair. I can just imagine how soft it would feel.”

“Ah. I would love the touch of your fingers.”

“I’d love to touch them to your lips,” I dared braver.

“I’d love to kiss them,” she said.

“Oh I would love the feel of your lips on my fingers.”

“Come hang out with me under this bright blue sky. We'll snuggle up under a tree and take a nap together. Mmm, how nice would that be?” she asked.

“I’d love to kiss you.”

“I want to kiss you for real,” she wrote. “When are we going to meet?”

I stood out on the ledge and wavered, then wrote, “Tell me what you'd do to me if I were really right there in front of you. Come on, make me tingle (wink).”

“I would take you in my arms and hug you, then kiss you softly. I might even nibble on your lips before I play with your tongue.” She continued. “Then, I’d kiss your neck and slowly travel down to explore more of you.”

Oh this girl knew how to make me tingle. “Go on.”

“I’d travel all around you, discovering your sweetness and caress you very tightly at that moment when I send you over the edge of ecstasy.”

I sat in my cubicle drenched. “I wouldn't even know what word to type to express what your tease just did to me.”

“I need to meet you.”

“I know, babe.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“That’s not good enough. I need a date.”

Could I do this? I could prep for this. I could arrange a hair and makeup session, clothes shopping, a manicure and pedicure. I could workout endlessly until she arrived. I could mentally and emotionally prepare to reveal myself. It had to happen eventually. I had played this CarefreeJanie game too well. “When are you coming to town again?”

“I’ll be there in another two weeks.”

My heart skyrocketed.

# #

Travis and I met up for regular talks. I confessed my love for Eva during one of them. I told him about my fears of revealing my true self to her. With the maturity of a fifty-year-old man, he counseled me, advising that I needed to have faith in myself and to love myself and all the faults and scars that came along with being me, Jane.

He understood my fear. I trusted him.

“When you’re ready, you’ll know,” he said on more than one occasion.

Well, the time had arrived, ready or not.

I prepped for Eva’s visit with excruciating detail, determined to come out to her as the real deal.

Larry set me up with an appointment with his stylist, a transgendered girl named Eloise who stunned all in her stiletto heels and fitted summer dress. Her impeccable makeup mystified me with its perfect lines. She smelled like a field of wildflowers. She sat me in her chair, examined me, and set out on what I could only guess would be the hardest job of her life. She slathered color goop on my roots and weaved colored foils throughout. As I sat with this goop on my hair, she asked her assistant to manicure my nails and paint them red. When it came time to rinse my hair, her assistant massaged my head with shampoo that smelled of mint and tingled like menthol. When I finally landed back in Eloise’s chair, she wore a sneaky grin. “I can’t wait to shape your hair. You do own a Chi iron, I hope?”

I just shrugged and sat like a helpless fool. She assured me she’d set me up with all the right stuff and then started chopping, texturizing, slicing into my hair like an artist chiseling. Thirty minutes later, smelling like I just escaped from a perfume factory, I bounced out of the hair studio looking like a superstar. Eva would arrive later in the week and I prayed I could replicate the look.

When Larry picked me up at the salon, his jaw dropped. “Hello, CarefreeJanie!”

“Do you think it’s too much? Maybe I should’ve had her do fewer highlights?”

“Darling, you could show up with gray roots at this point and I think she’ll still want to toss you up against a wall and take you on a ride.”

“My tummy just rolled.” I swallowed the knot in my throat.

# #

Larry dropped me back at the office. He pulled up to the building and wished me well. I climbed out of the car, straightened my skirt and then looked up when I heard a motorcycle zoom down the row. “Oh my God, it’s her.” I jumped back in the car.

She slowed down and parked her bright blue motorcycle in the front spot near Sanjeev’s BMW. She looked every bit like the star in a sexy action flick. My heart pounded. My face flushed. “She’s a week too early.”

“You can do this,” he said.

I looked to my friend and to his stoic eyes that warned of the dire actions he’d take if I screwed up this moment. “No. No I can’t.”

From Larry’s front seat I stared at her. Her hair flowed out from underneath her helmet. Her long, sleek legs, adorned in a pair of black dress pants, dangled like beautiful vines, free and stretching. She removed her helmet and tossed her hair around, easing it free with her fingers. She stood tall and dismounted, looked around with a smile on her face.

“She’s gorgeous,” he said.

I searched my brain for CarefreeJanie. I needed her confidence, her wit, her intellect now more than ever. “What will she ever see in me?”

“Darling” he said. “You’ve been virtually sexting each other for long enough. Stop acting like this is some sort of arranged marriage meeting. If you don’t like her, you walk away.”

“If
I
don’t like
her
?”

“Just get out of the car.”

My skin itched. She walked towards the building, light and bouncy as if a soft jazz ensemble gathered in her head. A flirty gaze rested peacefully on her face. “I’m not ready for this.”

“Get out of the car and stop acting like a fool with a goofy crush.”

My legs trembled. My fingers fidgeted with the car door lock. “But I am.”

He pushed me. “Seriously, out.”

I fell out of the car and onto my wobbly feet as my best friend shoved me into the wild with little more than my new highlights and a burning desire to bolt to the tree line. As I managed an unstable smile, my cynical brain said things to me like ‘stupid move to bait her about Old Bay seasoning’ and ‘you never should’ve mounted that bike’ and ‘you couldn’t have called yourself PlainJ instead?’

I treaded water too deep to swim in, too rough to be brave, too awe-inspiring to call natural.

She trekked forward, her smile growing, her hips swaying, her hair flapping around her like a model posing in front of a fan. What if she took one look at me and regretted the months of flirting? Would I know? Would she be too polite to be honest and just go along with me anyway for the sake of being a good cyber lover?

I checked my skirt; checked my lipstick; ensured my smooth hair; and then cleared my throat.

By the time she walked halfway over to me, I wanted to faint. My breathing chopped. My eyes squinted. My nose itched. My head fogged. I searched the far recesses of my mind for protection against the inevitable panic attack that would soon wrap itself around all sense of reason and choke me. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t face the humiliation of her not liking me, of me disappointing her, of jumping into my first kiss with someone as beautiful and experienced as Eva. I couldn’t do this.

Just as I reached down and grabbed for the car door handle, Larry backed out of the spot and sped off with a wave. Eva closed in on me now with more determined steps. Her hair flittered around her, wild and messy. I stood, arms hanging down by my side like useless branches on a dying tree. My chest bellowed in and out.

She landed in front of me smiling, her face all aglow, and a sparkle in the center of her large pupils. “We meet once again,” she said in a playful whisper. She brushed her wild hair away from her face, tossing it over her shoulders.

I nodded. She stood before me with an easy smile. I searched for my voice deep down under the rubble of my fearful years and could only manage to bite my lower lip and hold my erratic breaths from spurting out and ruining a most perfect romantic moment.

She moved in close, so close I could see the shimmer of her blush and eye shadow, so close I could smell her minty breath, so close I could hear her light breaths tickling the air between us. She placed her hand on my forearm and cradled it. Her light, caring touch sent shockwaves through me. They raced through every nook and cranny of my being; speeding up as they weaved down my arms to my fingertips, up to my heart, down to my belly button and to the tips of my toes. Warm and comforting, I stood in her grace, admiring her beauty and relaxing under her embrace. “Are you okay? You look like you’re about to faint.”

“I’m not feeling well.” I searched out Larry. He had stopped at the entrance waiting on nothing. No cars traveled by. He just waited. All the confidence I needed faded into the milky air and left me alone to fend for myself.

“Let me see if I can track your friend down.” She waved her hands to Larry and headed towards him. Her hair bounced around the middle of her back, happy, jovial.

Larry’s brake lights flashed and he backed up, circled around and opened his window for Eva. I panicked, praying Larry would not say anything stupid. I just wanted to run, hide from this awful mess that pinpointed a time in my life where I knew a year, two years, twenty years from then I’d look back on and regret.