The Fate of the Muse - By Derrolyn Anderson Page 0,21
raised my throbbing head to see her panicked face. From the look of the mess I’d made, I’d just keeled over onto the table, and as I sat up I could feel all the eyes in the room on me.
Bill rushed over with a bar towel, “Are you okay?” he cried, “Did you burn yourself?”
I looked down to see the coffee I’d knocked over spattered onto the front of my dress.
“No… no, no,” I said numbly. My tongue felt thick.
“Should we call an ambulance?” Shayla cried, “She just face planted!”
I took a deep breath, and the familiar pain in my head began to subside, “I’m fine… I’ll be fine… I just need to go home and get some rest.”
Great. Another weird vision– why did this always have to happen around other people? I stood on shaky legs and apologized to Bill for the spill. My mind was racing, trying to figure out what this one meant. I couldn’t even really call it a vision, for it was mostly just sounds and smells. Strange.
Megan offered to drive us home, but once I got out into the cool night air I was nearly back to normal. I managed to convince everyone that I was fully recovered, but the look in Megan’s eyes told me she knew what had happened, and I had some explaining to do.
“Call me,” she said as I pulled away.
Shayla and I drove along in silence, and I could feel her speculative eyes on me.
“What?” I snapped, “Spit it out!”
“Marina?” she asked solemnly, “Are you knocked up?”
I laughed for a while, stopping when I realized that she didn’t believe me.
“Shayla, it’s not possible… I mean we haven’t… we don’t…” I could feel my face burning.
“Really?” she said incredulously.
I bit my lip, embarrassed, “Well, I never have, so we’ve been kinda taking it slow… and with everything that’s happened, the timings never been quite right… and now we’re thinking about–” I stopped myself, wondering if I should tell her about our engagement.
“Whoa,” she said quietly, “Ethan’s a really good guy.”
“I know.”
“Man,” she said, looking out the window, “All the dudes I’ve ever dated would dump you if you didn’t put out.”
“You just haven’t met the right one yet.”
She sighed, “That’s for sure.”
I wanted to tell her not to worry, that soon she’d have more suitors to choose from than she could handle, but instead I dropped her off at her mothers, arranging to pick her up Monday to get started on the studio clean-up. When I pulled up at Abby’s, Ethan was waiting for me on the porch, and I could swear my heart skipped a beat when he stood and smiled at me.
“Hey,” he said softly, as I climbed the stairs, “How did it go at Evie’s?”
“Great,” I said, slipping into his open arms, “Shayla got an agent, and she’s coming to Paris for fashion week with us.”
“What happened to you?” he asked, looking down at my stained dress.
“We stopped for coffee,” I said sheepishly, “I had a little accident.”
“Are you okay?” he asked, brushing the hair from my eyes.
I kissed him, and I think he got the answer he wanted.
CHAPTER FIVE
RIVAL
I woke up late that beautiful Sunday morning, my strange vision from the night before slipping away as if it were simply a bad dream. Pulling the curtains aside, I let the bright sunlight stream cheerfully into the room. School was finally out, and summer stretched out before me like a long, lazy cat.
I thought about my plans for a summer spent on the waves, just me and Ethan, and frowned. It didn’t look like it was going to work out that way. I wished I could go surfing with him every day, but as usual, he was already hard at work, so I decided I’d visit him at the farmer’s market. If I wanted to spend time with him, it was going to have to be while he was working.
I put on a white eyelet sundress that looked like summertime itself, fluffing up my hair in the mirror. The aquamarine on my neck sparkled in the morning light, and I automatically reached up to touch it, thinking about Ethan. When I rounded the corner into the kitchen Abby looked up with a big smile. She had a pen tucked behind her ear and a telephone in her hand.
“You look pretty this morning. Are you off to see Ethan?” she asked.
I returned her smile, nodding yes, “What’s all this stuff?”