You think we can put Humpty Dumpty back together again?Aster asked, and his expression softened into a smile.He crossed the small room and walked to the stairs.It’s not as easy as that.Come back down the stairs with me, and let’s see if we can find a solution together.
Moments later we sat in the living room of the house.I crossed my legs studiously on the couch as if I expected Aster to give me a professorial lecture.Aster, meanwhile, paced back and forth across the hardwood floor in a frenzy, alternately angry and desperate and thrilled.He clasped his hands together, twisting and rubbing them like a madman.
For a time, he didn’t speak.He said he wanted to get his thoughts in order.I said he could take his time.Then he pivoted.He faced me.He squeezed his hands together and began.I don’t need time.I already know… it’s you, Stella.From the moment I first saw you, I knew you’d be my end.
“What do you mean?”I asked.
You gave me something that never belonged to me before, something I wasn’t supposed to have.
I swallowed.Why didn’t he sound like he was blaming me, even at his insistence that he was?Why didn’t he sound vengeful about it?
Stella, you woke me up to a part of myself I didn’t know could have a life of its own.I’ve tasted the forbidden fruit, and it’s the same flavor as your lips on mine.I love you, Stella, but it’s not just that.I fell in love with you.And that is never supposed to happen.Not for a muse.I don’t even know what’s going to happen now.
My cheeks grew flushed.I wondered fleetingly if he wanted to rip my clothes off and ravish me here and now on the couch.I would have welcomed it.But there was a feverish, chaotic element of this that felt more violent than romantic.“Should I have stayed away?Followed the old rules?”
Aster shushed me.He leaned over me and then sat beside me and then wrapped an arm around me and hugged me tightly.It was an affectionate hug, not romantic or lusty.It’s not that I am incapable of going back to the creature I was.My essence remains the same.It’s that my desires have changed.I don’t want to be a muse anymore.I want to live, Stella.I want to live the way you do, to share in your temporary nature, to become an individual with a heart and fear and anger and not just ideas spilling over ideas.I am going to die, Stella, and you have already fired the arrow of my death.Don’t you know what we have done?
I sat still a moment, still feeling that he might pull off my shirt or twist me to sit on top of him.Neither happened.Instead we only looked deep into each other’s eyes and realized that even if we couldn’t understand it, we had crossed a point of no return.
THE DREAM
The next day,I woke to the sound of heavy raindrops pattering on the roof, gentle and consistent like an extra blanket pulled over the house.
Aster was beside me this morning.Usually I woke up to find him already showered and ready for the day, waiting for me in the kitchen or by my computer.Usually I also left my bed earlier than this.Aster and I still tried to catch the sunrise together when we could, though every day that passed made the ritual less of a rule to abide by and more of a fun tryst if we were both in the mood.
This was the second morning in a row that I had slept later than intended, and the first where Aster had slept in even later.
Before I got out of bed, I watched my muse’s form beside me and the way his chest rose and fell as if in timing with the rain.He slept on his stomach, his hair soft and yellow against the sheets and one of his hands curled around the comforter.He shifted while I watched, groaned and said my name, and for a while I wondered if he was awake as well.When he didn’t stir again, didn’t reach for me or continue his thought, I realized he was only dreaming about me instead.
I stood up and glanced out the window at the infinite shades of gray nearby.The rain was heavier than I’d thought, paired with a sweeping wind that caused it to catch in the light at odd intervals like so many prisms falling from the sky.
I brushed my teeth and showered, and by the time I descended the stairs for breakfast, I found Aster already waiting for me.He was wearing pajamas I’d never seen on him, white linen with blue trim, and some soft stubble had formed on his chin where I didn’t remember seeing it before.His hair was tousled in a look that could have been intentional or the result of letting it remain unbrushed.
Good morning, he said with a wave.I fixed breakfast for you.If you haven’t already had it, that is.
“Breakfast?I’m impressed.”Then came the collective smell of coffee, eggs and toast, and I saw the two plates Aster had already set up at the dining room table.
I stepped forward, taking a mental inventory of the meal already prepared.For drinks, we each had a mug of coffee with milk and a dish of sugar to prepare it with.Aster had also prepared small juice glasses of what appeared to be cranberry juice, which I didn’t remember buying.Then there was the food itself—eggs over easy, toast that was brown but not burnt, a selection of condiments that included butter and honey and peanut butter and grape jelly waiting to be selected.
I sat down in the thin chair on my traditional side and spread the napkin out on my lap.“I barely even eat breakfast.How did you know to prepare all this?How did you—where did you get it?”
I knew by now that Aster had no plans to reveal the extent of his mysteries to me any time soon.A smile appeared on his lips at my approval.He didn’t sit down at once but stood behind me and massaged my shoulders.A simple matter.I reached into your dreams while you slept and took what I found there.
Aster’s words caused me to tense.I turned my head, looking up at him and wanting him to give me a better explanation.“You can’t actually do that, can you?”I asked.“I don’t even know what I dream.And I don’t remember anything I dreamed last night.”
Do you want me to tell you what you dreamed?His hands left my shoulders in anticipation.
I picked up the juice glass, sipped, and realized that I’d never tasted anything so satisfying.“Yes.What did I dream?”
You had a dream that it rained all day, and the two of us were trapped inside.So we had a cozy breakfast together of eggs and toast.And then I did something like this.He smoothed my hair and tucked it behind my ears, and then he leaned forward and kissed me on a side of my cheek he had just exposed.
I touched the spot and turned to him in a silent plea for more.
Do you still not remember?he asked.
“I don’t remember dreaming at all, and I think you’re making it up,” I said.
Aster scoffed.Why would I invent a fantasy like this when I could just as well do it here and now?
