Near & Far (25 page)

SOME PEOPLE JUST seemed to come into my life exactly when I needed them. It’s like the universe’s way of handing me a solution to a problem in the form of a person. Like a homeless, slightly deranged woman who talks a little too much like one of those fire and brimstone TV evangelists.

So maybe my “solution” from the universe wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders, but Mar said a lot of things I needed to hear, just when I needed to hear them. She was like a homeless, American Buddha. We’d had so many late-night alley conversations that I’d started inviting her inside Mojo during business hours so we could share my lunch and chat. As far as atmosphere went, Mojo left a lot to be desired, but it was a hell of a lot better than a sitting in a dirty alley next to a putrid dumpster.

“And you’ve been with this boy for almost a year now?” Mar asked, waving half of my peanut butter sandwich at me.

“Yep. Pretty close.” I thanked Alex for filling our coffee cups by giving her a chunk of my Kit-Kat. Sid was not a big fan of me inviting a vagrant into his doughnut shop to “shoot the shit,” but after a little
convincing
from Alex, he’d turned a blind eye. Besides, half of his customers, including Sid, dressed like they’d dived their fair share of dumpsters. He couldn’t really turn his nose up at the real deal or else I was calling bullshit.

“You’re serious about this boy?” Mar asked.

I nodded and crunched into a carrot stick. I generally tried to keep my relationship with Jesse off the table with Mar. Not because I was ashamed or uncomfortable talking about Jesse and our relationship, but because I was afraid of what she’d say. She had a kernel of wisdom for every bloody topic in the universe, significant others especially. If the conversation even started veering toward love, marriage, and everything in between, oh, brother. I knew to sit back and strap in because Mar could have filled an encyclopedia by the time she’d stopped talking.

“How
serious
serious?” Mar shoved the rest of the sandwich in her mouth and moved on to the bag of chips.

“Serious enough I can’t imagine being with anybody else. Serious enough I can’t imagine spending my life without him.” I set my carrot stick aside and slumped into the booth. Talking about Jesse, even thinking about him, had been putting me into a sad, depressed mood for a while. I knew what the gloominess stemmed from—not getting to see him and missing him like mad—but sad and depressed weren’t exactly feelings I wanted to have when I thought of my boyfriend.

“You mean to tell me you’re actually considering marrying this country boy one day?” Mar froze in the middle of opening the chips.

“Well . . . yeah.”

“Oh, Girlie. You are not nearly as smart as I thought you were,” Mar said, whipping her head from side to side. “Nope. Not even close.”

At first, her unexpected insults had almost hurt my feelings. Now, they pretty much ran off my back since I’d heard a dozen different ones each time we talked. “And why does wanting to marry some amazing guy make me the dumbest person on the planet?”

“I don’t care how amazing this boy is. I don’t care how many gold stars he’s earned. You can’t expect someone like you to be happy settling down with one man.” Mar was wagging her finger at me. Her head started bobbing too, almost like a nervous tic. It only got that way when she was getting worked up about something.

“Who is someone like me exactly?” I felt like I had a general understanding, and what I knew of myself didn’t clash with the concept of spending my life with Jesse. Apparently Mar saw me in a different light. I was curious to know what she saw.

“An artist. A woman who needs to stay inspired. A creative person who needs to
create
to stay fulfilled.”

“And why does being with Jesse make none of these things possible?” I asked, taking a sip of coffee.

“You need someone to keep you inspired. You need a muse. No muse, no art.” Mar crunched into a chip, her head bobbing.

“Jesse is my muse. He keeps me inspired.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure he was. At first. The beginning of every relationship is the best we can ever expect out of one. It never gets any better than that first year. After that, it’s a slow, downward spiral.”

“Thanks for the uplifting words,” I mumbled.

“Prove me wrong,” she said, shaking her finger at me. “I bet some of the best art you’ve created was when you and your boyfriend were first together. Some true masterpieces came out of that early stage of your relationship.” Mar paused, letting that set in. “Am I right?”

I thought about it and, as much as I didn’t want to agree with her and her crazy theory, I nodded.

“And what about now? Compare what you were creating six months ago to what you’re creating today. How does it compare?”

Okay, I really wanted off her crazy train before it went any farther down the loony tracks. I might have thought Mar made a lot of sense at one time, but right then . . . I really wanted to believe she was full of shit. I wanted to believe she was the insane person I’d originally thought because then I could brush off what she’d just said. The questions she’d just asked.

I had not, in two weeks, been able to put a single brushstroke on canvas, nor had I been able to put charcoal to paper. It was like my creativity tank had suddenly run dry, and I didn’t know why or how to fill it back up again. I was an artist who could no longer create.

I’d been avoiding the reasons behind my dry spell, much preferring to believe I’d hit a wall or was burnt out after a busy year, but really . . . I knew the reason for my creativity hiatus. Jesse. I knew, in some way, he was connected to it.

I wasn’t blaming him, but whatever we were going through was what set the whole thing in motion. We hadn’t seen each other in weeks, we’d been missing each other’s phone calls, and when we did manage to connect, he was distant. I could feel his distance. Five hundred miles separated us, and I’d never felt far from him when we talked on the phone. Up until the past month.

Some things were still the same. I still loved him past the point of logic, and I knew he felt the same about me. Things just didn’t
feel
the same. The worries I tried to keep locked in the back of my mind were becoming more and more in-my-face with every passing day. I could almost feel Jesse slipping away from me, and since I had no idea why he was, I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t know how I was losing him, just that I was. Bit by tiny bit.

If I lost Jesse Walker, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep myself from the same fate.

“Take it from me. You don’t want to settle down with one man. You need a new man, a new adventure every year to keep the muse alive. You marry this boy, and mark my words, you’ll kiss your art career good-bye.”

When my phone buzzed, I came close to sighing from relief. I didn’t want to think anymore about what Mar said or how much sense she made. I checked the phone, hoping it was Jesse. That time, I did sigh when I saw it wasn’t.

“Hey, Jax,” I greeted, shoving the rest of my uneaten lunch at Mar. My appetite was gone. It had been gone so much lately, my clothes were getting a little loose.

“Where are you?” Jax sounded breathless, almost like he was . . . excited.

“At work. Why?”

“Good. Stay there. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“What? No, tell me whatever you’re coming here to tell me on the phone. I hate suspense.” Plus, I didn’t need another stomach ulcer.

“Not even. I want to see your face when I tell you this.”

“Jax—”

“See you soon.” The line went dead.

I groaned. The night had started out strong. I’d packed my favorite candy bar, I’d gotten a hold of Jesse for a few minutes before starting my shift, and Sid had announced I’d be getting a fifty cent an hour raise starting next week. Yet there it was, not even ten o’clock, and I had Mar preaching to me about not marrying the man I loved or else, Jax pulling a hurry up and wait on the phone, and I wouldn’t even enjoy a stick of my Kit-Kat because Mar had just downed the rest of it in two bites.

Night fail.

“Was that a former muse or a future muse?” Mar asked, the melted chocolate of my coveted candy bar coating her teeth.

“Neither,” I grumbled.

“You want to talk about it—”

“No,” I almost snapped. I was in a pissy mood, and I couldn’t even blame part of it on PMS.

Mar stayed quiet for a couple of minutes, devouring what was left of my lunch. The whole time, I sat there stewing and getting angrier and angrier. Angry because of what she’d said? Maybe. Angry because of what she’d implied? Probably. Angry because, deep down, I was worried she was right? That,
that
question was the one that made me angrier just thinking about it. I tried to not think about it, I didn’t allow myself to answer it, but it wouldn’t go away. It had leeched to my brain and wouldn’t stop sucking the life out of it.

Before I knew it, the anger was spilling from my mouth. “Where do you get off giving me relationship advice anyways? What makes you think you’ve got all the answers and I’ve got none? What makes you so sure the man I’m with is so wrong for me?”

Mar popped the last chip in her mouth and watched me with an unfazed expression as she swallowed. “Experience.”

“Experience? Please. We’ve all got experience.” That was the laziest excuse for making one a know-it-all on life.

“Maybe. But not all experiences are created equal, Girlie.” She waved her finger at me again.

“And what makes your experiences superior to mine?”

Mar extended her arms to the sides and ran her eyes down herself purposefully. “My experiences left me penniless, homeless, broken-hearted, and alone. Does that answer your question?”

I bit my lip, feeling the slightest bit of regret for going off on her. Her rhetorical question got me thinking. I didn’t know much of Mar’s past, just like she knew little of mine. We really just talked about everyday things, along with her peppering in her random gems of wisdom and the occasional pointing and staring wide-eyed at the ground like she half-expected little demons to come crawling from it. I’d guessed she had a tumultuous past, but I didn’t know the details surrounding my assumptions. Or if they were even true. “What happened to you?”

Mar’s head bobbing picked up. God, the neck pain that woman must get. “A man.”

“A . . . man?” I suppose that explained why she spoke so bitterly about them.

“I was an artist like you when I was young. I wanted to create something the world had never seen before. Something it would never see again. I wanted to paint billboards around the country, a new one every month. I wanted to share what was inside of me. I wanted to share the gift I’d been born with.”

“You wanted to share your art?” I asked to make sure I was tracking. Mar was getting that crazed look in her eyes she got when she was about to start talking about the land of fire and judgment just below our feet. I always boogied out when the conversation went that direction. That special brand of crazy was only meant for a psychiatrist's ears.

Mar nodded. “But then I met a man, and he ruined my life. Right before running away once it was good and ruined.”

Shit. A chill just ran down my back. I couldn’t tell if it was from her words, her tone, or that look on her face. It was probably the combination of all three. Mar was opening her mouth to continue, and I was on the edge of my seat, when Jax burst through Mojo’s front door.

“Rowen!” he shouted, jogging my way.

From the corner of my eye, I noticed Sid give him an annoyed look before turning it my way. I guess Sid wasn’t down with me having more visitors than he had customers.

“What’s the big surprise, for crying out loud?” I asked, glancing over at Mar. She was talking to herself and her eyes were bouncing like pinballs.

“Are you sitting down?” Jax skidded to a stop in front of the table.

I lifted an eyebrow at him and waved my hand elaborately at the booth I was seated at.

“Fine. Why don’t you stand up just so I can watch you pass out when I tell you?”

Jax rarely did excited, probably because he thought he was above such a passé and overused emotion. Also because Jax Jones was an arrogant, elitist ass. For him to be as close to excited as I’d ever seen him meant one thing. “What Playmate did you lure into your bed now?”

Two months ago, it had been a runway model. Last month, a fashion model. Sticking with what I knew of Jax’s preferences, and that each girl had larger breasts than the last, a Playmate was the logical guess. And yes, that I was thinking that hot on the heels of being so upset about my relationship just proved how much I was trying to repress those gloomy feelings.

“Rowen . . .”

“Fine. Which
two
did you lure into your bed?”

“My god, you are a royal pain in my ass.”

“My sentiments exactly,” I grumbled.

“Rowen Sterling, would you shut it for five seconds so I can get out what I need to tell you?” I was just about to answer him when he clamped his hand over my mouth. “No response is required. A simple nod will do.” I gave him a “simple” nod. Jax’s hands gripped both of my shoulders as he kneeled in front of me. “Guess who just landed the hottest internship in the Seattle art community?”