Page 49 of The Artist and the Muse

She looked like everything I’d ever want for the rest of my life, but I couldn’t say that.

“George?” she said, poking me with her elbow. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“This is how I always look at you.” It might have been more convincing if my voice didn’t come out as a strangled croak. I wanted to paint her—to capture her under the golden glow of the streetlights mingling with the moon smiling down on us. But more than that, Iwanted to know how she’d look in the next moment, to preserve what she’d do in the one after that. To depict her expressions and laughter and poses, for the rest of our lives.

She arched an eyebrow but fell quiet.

We fell into companionable silence on the way to the restaurant, neither of us feeling the need to say anything else.

“Buonasera, signor, signorina,” the waiter greeted us when we stepped into the cozily furnished restaurant. With dark red wall hangings, velvet chairs, and golden wood tables that shone as if freshly polished, the restaurant was a feast for the senses. The aroma of cheese and fresh pasta and crusty bread only added to the ambience. “Do you have a reservation?”

“Yes, under George Devereaux, for six. Unfortunately, four members of our party fell ill, so it’ll just be the two of us tonight.”

He led us to a small, intimately cozy table in the corner by the window. “Your waiter will be with you shortly.”

I pulled out the chair for Georgia before she could do it herself. She sat down, and a wave of her perfume washed over me.

“Thanks,” she said as I sat across from her. The waiter came by and brought us two menus, his gaze lingering on Georgia for longer than I liked.

Or perhaps I was being paranoid.

We aren’t together. We never really were.The more I tried to remind myself of that fact, the more I wanted to change it.

“Would you prefer tap or bottled water?”

“Tap is fine,” Georgia said. I bit back a smile, remembering how the first time we’d dined together in Italy, she’d been surprised by how they charged for water and in some places, had even charged a “sitting fee” on top of the bill.

“Here is the wine list,” the waiter added, laying a laminated sheet of plastic in the centre of the table, next to a flickering candle.

I tucked it to the side. I needed to keep my head, and ordering alcohol wouldn’t help with that. We were in public after all, on an academically sanctioned trip.

They brought us complimentary breadsticks with our water as we perused our menus. I was a sucker for lasagna, so I decided on that. I snapped off a chunk of a breadstick and dipped it in olive oil.

“Did that menu offend you in some way?” I joked as Georgia shut her menu after glancing at it for only a second.

“Nope,” she said too quickly for me to believe her. “I’m just sure about what I want to order.”

“As long as you don’t get calamari, I think you’ll be fine. I haven’t been here before, but I’ve heard the food is amazing.”

Sebastian had been the one who recommended the restaurant to me years ago. But I didn’t mention that. I didn’t want to say anything more about the food, since I’d promised not to talk about her eating habits any more. Though I was happy to see her ordering something more substantial than salad and water.

We ordered. I had the lasagna with a dish of meatballs as an appetizer, and Georgia got the mushroom ravioli.

“Have you been working on any new art lately?” Georgia asked me.

“Not recently, no. After my dad died, I fell into an artistic slump. You saw my apartment in Los Angeles. It was a mess.”

Georgia had seen my place in California when she’d gone with Katerina and Alexander to track me down. My sister had then brought me to New York so I could attend her wedding. They’d seen the wreckage of my creative breakdown—a short phase when I’d given up painting and tried working with a camera instead. It hadn’t gone well. My apartment in L.A. had been strewn with paintbrushes thatI’d chucked at the wall in anger and grief, along with dusty cameras I’d bought on a whim.

“I’d never seen so many broken paintbrushes in my life. And I thought you never liked photography.”

“I prefer painting to photography. Photography feels too… harsh. Too clinical. I dislike the constant need for staging and lighting. It’s over in a moment when you click the button. I’ve always preferred painting because it takes time. You have to practice, to slowly build a collection of brushstrokes into a masterpiece.” Not that I was dismissing photography as an art form—there were some truly incredible things people had captured in photographs, but painting had always felt more human to me. More organic.

“I never thought of it that way.”

“Have you ever thought about taking up some art form? As a hobby?” I’d asked her about it once during our brief time together in Italy. We’d talked about almost everything that mattered back then, yet none of the particulars. I’d never told her who my family was or why I had left Canada. She’d never told me that she was supposed to be fake-dating that jerk, Sergio Cavalli, when she got back to New York, or that she was a model.

“No, I thought we were talking about your artwork.”

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