Page 84 of The Muse (Beautiful Magic 1)
Love…it makes us all human.
And so many of us love art, in so many forms.
Sophie and I are taking tap-dancing classes together. I had no idea what tap dancing was or that it would be so much fun, and for a while, that was my new favorite thing. The thing before that was the online video game Simon and Lucy taught me. (I play as a powerful healer, of course, indispensable on raids.)
Julien and I like to go to the ballet—on our first visit, the lights came up at intermission and he found me teary-eyed and sniffling.
“What’s wrong?” He’d put his arm around my shoulders, his thumb brushing soothing circles on my skin. “Does this make you miss being a Muse?”
I’d shaken my head in vehement denial.
“It’s just so beautiful,” I’d said, wiping tears from my cheeks.
I told his friend Emilie the same thing when we met her after the performance. Like many in Julien’s circle, she seemed puzzled when we first met, as if trying to come up with why I looked familiar. Most accept at face value the story that Renoir’s model for Woman Wandering in the Irises is my ancestor. Though I still catch Adaline studying me with speculation every now and then.
Whatever she’s thinking, she’s been welcoming almost since the day I walked into the flat with Julien on that summer afternoon four months ago.
First, she had to recover from the shock of Julien bringing a girlfriend home “out of thin air”—a phrase more appropriate than anyone knows.
“Join us, Adaline?” I ask now, and nod to the empty chair.
She raises her mug in a sort of toast and points toward her side of the flat. “Thank you, but I have a video date.”
“On Christmas?” Julien asks, but his sister is already gone.
“Love knows no season,” I tell him sagely.
His brows climb into his tousled hair. “Love? You think?”
“I don’t just think. I know.”
Adaline, as an expert and curator of such a large collection of Renoirs, consulted on an international forgery investigation, resulting in the capture of an infamous father-daughter forger duo who had come out of seclusion to flog what a London newspaper called “the most convincing Renoir forgeries that experts had ever seen.”
When Oliver and Cass Middleton were arrested, Julien and Simon bought a round at our usual pub to celebrate. Julien suspected they’d taken what they’d learned from the spirit of Renoir and painted some new “lost” masterpieces.
The authorities theorized that they’d been inspired by the recent rediscovery of Woman Wandering in the Irises, and had overplayed their hand.
I’d toasted to them being jailed because Cass was the one who’d dealt my man all the bumps and bruises I had soothed that night under Van Gogh’s starry sky.
And Adaline has been dating the Interpol agent in charge ever since.
Even as a Muse, I couldn’t have inspired a result that had made so many people happy.
Funny that Renoir brought about so many good things by trying to keep good things from happening to humankind. He’d trapped me in the painting because he wanted to hoard inspiration and beauty—and love, in a way—for himself and those like him. He tried to stop an age of human enlightenment, and instead his actions brought Julien and I together to fall in love.
A love large enough to uphold a world full of art.
Wide enough to span the globe and bridge the gulf between everything eternal and everything mortal.
Strong enough to let me choose who and what I wanted to be.
Strong enough to bring me back to Julien.
Loving him has fundamentally changed me. We’ve changed each other.
Maybe our love will change the world, or maybe it will just change our small piece of it. I just know that it deserves to be nurtured and tended. That I want to see it reach its potential. That I will pour myself into making us thrive.
But I’m not a Muse anymore, and Julien, while beautiful to me, is not a painting.
And I’m so glad about both of those things.
Because when I pour my love into Julien . . . I get so much love in return.
And kisses. Lots and lots of kisses.
Like now. With his sister in the other room, I set down my mug, then his, and I loop my arms around his neck.
“Kiss me, my muse,” I demand playfully.
“Anytime,” he says, all too happy to oblige.
As he brushes his lips to mine, all thoughts of art and paintings fade away.
I am all woman, and I love this brave new life.
Epilogue
Julien
* * *
When the ballerinas first danced for me, I was shocked. When the cat leaped out of the painting, I was amazed.
When the good doctor repaired the woman I love, I was overjoyed.
