His Muse

Lost sleep and Kieran's beautiful face

Copyright © 2018. All Rights Reserved.

Nic spent the rest of the night in a giddy daze.

After finding Sav, the two of them spent another hour dancing before deciding that frat parties just weren't their scene. The music was too loud, and Nic's ears hurt as they exited the foyer and out into the bitter cold air. He passed Sav her jacket, and she asked, "Hey, wanna get some of that pizza? I heard it's excellent drunk-food."

"Sure, sounds good to me," he said. As they started walking through the cold, Sav checked to make sure everything was still in her jacket pockets. Nic did the same, and in the midst of checking the time on his phone, she asked:

"So where were you? You just... disappeared."

Nic's ears heated up. He scratched the back of his neck and said, "I, um... might have hunted Kieran down. He's letting me paint him on Thursday."

There was a moment of silence. It dragged on as they crossed the street in a rush to prevent the oncoming cars from running them over. Eventually, Sav looked at him, eyes squinted, "You're kidding, right? Why wasn't I there?"

"I dunno! I ran all over the frat house looking for him!" he said, flinging his arms around. "And I don't think he would have said yes had his friends not badgered him into it. I kinda feel bad—I don't want it to be weird or anything."

"He didn't flat out say 'no,' so I'd say that he wanted to do it. If he didn't want to, he woulda said no, and that's that," Sav reassured him, and Nic shrugged. "I doubt he was just doing it out of courtesy. He didn't seem like that type of guy."

"Yeah well, I'm starting to think he isn't really any type of guy. One of the girls I ran into said he was fucking awesome at beer pong, and another said he wasn't hardcore enough to smoke, but he used someone's vape stick... I don't know what to think."

"Shit, what a dilemma."

"I'm serious Sav," he whined, but still laughed over it. "He used a vape stick."

"Whoop-di-do. So what? That's pretty basic if you ask me," Sav scoffed with a roll of her eyes.

They got to the pizza joint, with the wide floor-length windows showed the single line of barstools, and the counter beyond that. There were a few people waiting in line, and the smell of pizza was so fucking tantalizing at midnight. Nic's mouth was watering by the time he got his slice of grease and claimed a barstool to start devouring it. Sav spun up next to him, and together they sat there munching on awful pizza, and recovering from the exhaustion of dancing in a sweaty living room.

They sat there eating, and staring at their reflections in the window. Nic stared down at his free hand, and studied the faded ink the star stamp left behind. Sav still had her's on as well.

After a while, Sav said, "I've decided I don't like grinding."

"Yeah?" he hummed, mumbling around the cheese in his mouth.

"Yeah. I tried dancing with a guy and it was just... meh. Kinda made me feel all yuck, ya know?" she said. "That was when you were off on The Hunt for The Guy."

"Damn, I missed it," he laughed. "I mean, was it a problem? Did he force you to dance with him?"

"Nah, he just asked, and I was like, 'Fuck it' so we danced for one song and I left," she confessed, frowning down at her pizza. "Is it weird? That I don't like dancing with guys?"

"Well, I mean, it's not like we're all trained to like dancing with the opposite gender," Nic commented, lowering his pizza down so he could gesture with his hands. "Like, we get to high school, and it seems like a social checkmark to dance with the opposite gender at least once in school. But it's not a requirement. It's just something you don't check off on your list because you don't want to. I never smoked or anything in high school, so that checkbox isn't marked for me."