But Sunny’s room, even after a mere week, was more thanlived in. It was like the room had absorbed her irrepressible energy and was now bursting with half-finished projects and good intentions. And it felthomey. The bed was piled with pillows and blankets she’d foraged from the unused bedrooms;she’d gotten a fire going in the small Victorian fireplace at the far end of the room; and there was a scattering of screenwriting books, highlighters, and chewing gum packets on the coffee table nearby. One side of the room was dominated by what looked like a murder wall from a detective show, excepthappy, with neon-colored sticky notes, sparkly yarn, and a small whiteboard propped on top of a dressing table. Her laptop was next to the whiteboard, and it was covered in an improbable amount of stickers—one of which was a strange brown lump with the wordspiccolini cuscinounderneath it.
It was #writercore’s colorful, messy twin, and I kind of loved it. I had the brief fantasy of sitting on the sofa by the coffee table, listening to the fire crackle as I played with words and rhymes, smelling coconut and stealing sticky notes for no good reason.
The fantasy vanished in an instant, however, because reality suddenly presented something much better as I stepped all the way inside the room.
A juicy backside, clad in skintight leggings, angled enticingly toward me as Sunny leaned out of an open casement window.
There was half a second before my brain caught up with my body and reminded my disco stick that it wasnotokay to stare at an ass without a prior ass-staring agreement in place. But that half a second was filled with memories of exactly how soft and round that bottom was, how very slappable. How it moved when I drove into her from behind, how it filled my hands. How I could spread it apart to expose her pretty pussy.
And then I remembered not to be a perv and also she turned around, saw me, and managed to beam at me with her tongue still sticking out of her mouth.
She’d been catching snowflakes on her tongue.
I’d never suffered from cute aggression and dire horniness at the same time, and it felt like my entire body was coiled andtrembling with the simultaneous need to squeeze and to fuck. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to nibble on her cheeks or unzip my pants and push her to her knees.
“The snowflakes are so big today!” she said by way of greeting. She gestured eagerly for me to come see, and I went, although having spent my childhood winters in Aspen, snow was not that much of a novelty for me. But Sunny was impossible to resist, and I joined her at the window and agreed thatyes, the snowflakes were big.
And they were, actually. Giant and fluffy, the kind of snow that looked like feathers. Leaning out the window, I could see the flat stretch of garden and lawn in front of the mansion, and then the snug little town of Christmas Notch below, all of it through the eiderdown of the snow. It was cold and quiet, and for a moment, my thoughts felt as light and soft as the snowflakes.
“You’re supposed to catch one.” Sunnytsked, and then stuck out her finger. A snowflake as big as a marble landed there, already melting, and before I could react, she pushed her finger into my mouth. There was a bloom of cold and then the snow melted on my tongue. It tasted like rain and a trace of minty gum.
Our eyes met as Sunny slowly pulled her finger out of my mouth, and as I heroically didn’t crowd her against the wall and pushmyfingers past her lips.
“Sorry,” she said, her eyes wide, her cheeks going rosy. “That was weird of me.”
“I didn’t mind,” I said, gruffly enough that I worried she’d be able to tell howmuchI didn’t mind.
She didn’t want to be my muse, and we’d already agreed that what had happened at the motel was a one-night stand... or a two-night stand... or whatever it was called when you one-night-stood with the same person twice.
I didn’t want to creep her out, even if I had spent all of last night brooding about why she didn’t want to be my muse. Maybe I was too depressing or too boring to be around. Maybe I was bad in bed. Or maybe I shouldn’t have asked at all—maybe muses didn’t work like that. But what did I know? I’d only ever had the one, and it wasn’t like I’d been looking for a muse at all when Brooklyn and I had started dating. Our managers had plopped us together for PR reasons, I’d expected to be miserable, and instead found myself happily and wonderfully obsessed for twelve years.
It was the kind of thing that happened to a person only once. And whoever I found as a muse now might be enough to help me with my music, but could never help me with my heart.
I shook off the gloomy thoughts and refocused on the snowflake-eating siren in front of me.
“Ready to hunt down a Christmas miracle?” I asked.
“So where are we going again?” Sunny asked over the heavy rumble of the truck I’d bought off a farmer my first week here. It was not a nice truck, or even a decent truck, but it turned over every time I started it and it could handle the snow. After a lifetime of being driven around in cars trimmed with buttery leather and glossy wood, I found the truck a welcome change. You couldfeelthe rusty beast doing its job; you could feel the road under the tires. There was something reassuring about that.
Also people generally didn’t look twice at an old pickup truck, which meant I could drive around with some anonymity. Best twelve hundred dollars I’d ever spent.
I glanced over at Sunny, who was fifty kinds of adorable in a stocking hat, scarf, and vintage coat. Her onyx hair was spilling everywhere, caught with thick snowflakes, and the tip of hernose was bright pink. Probably because the truck didn’t have great heat.
Or great AC.
Or great anything.
“Whenever you’re looking at an old case, it’s important to reinterview your sources,” I said, turning back to the road. We were rolling into the town itself now, snow-frosted houses lining the street like gingerbread confections, and people already milling around the downtown area with paper cones of sugared nuts and steaming cups of hot cocoa or mulled wine. From Thanksgiving onward, Christmas Notch was packed with visitors, and the town square was converted into a bustling Christmas market, complete with stalls, rides, and music.
Since it was still early in the day, the crowds were manageable, and I had no problem getting to our destination: the Christmas Notch Visitor’s Center. Which was also the city museum.
And also the trolley depot.
“Okay, but my source was a stripper,” Sunny said as I turned off the truck. “Christmas Notch is kind of progressive for a place with this many diesel pumps, but I don’t know if they’re ready for a pole at the town visitor’s center.”
“First of all, there’s a Unitarian Universalist church here, so you never know. Second, our source isn’t your stripper. It’s your stripper’s source.”
Sunny’s mouth fell open. “You talked to Comet?Without me?”
