Page 1 of A Virgo's Muse
There’sa difference between being alone and being empty.
Alone, I can manage. I know how to take up space without needing to fill it with noise. I’m good at silence. I prefer it. Quiet feels like control. But this? This was different. This was hollow. This was the kind of quiet that eats at you.
I had been standing in front of blank canvas a lot lately. It was the fifth one this week. My studio smelled like lemon, eucalyptus, and gesso, but none of it moved me. The light from the big windows slanted across the wood floors, catching the dust I didn’t bother to sweep. Jazz hummed low from the speakers, but I couldn’t feel it. Not really.
My fingers twitched around the brush. I lifted my hand toward the canvas like I was about to perform surgery, but myhand dropped before the brush could even make contact. Again. I exhaled through my nose and tried to ignore the tightness creeping up my chest.
I hadn’t painted anything new in five months. Not since the fire. Not since everything I ever created burned down with that house.
Everyone said I was lucky I wasn’t home. They said that material things could be replaced. But no one talked about what it was like to lose your beginning… your first sketches, your rawest pieces, the ones no one was ever meant to see but were proof that you felt something once. I hadn’t felt anything since.
My phone buzzed across the room. I left the brush on the isle and walked over, already praying it was a cancellation or a rain check I didn’t ask for. It was none other than Sade.
Sade:
don’t flake. be dressed by 8. all black. and do not wear that sad-girl perfume you like.
I sighed, my thumb hovering over the screen.
Me:
I’m not going. I have a migraine.
Sade:
take two Tylenol and get cute. this club is invite-only. art collectors will be there.
and money.
She knew my pressure points… always had. She also knew my rent was a week late, and my assistant was politely asking when the next client would show. I hadn’t told anyone I couldn’t paint. I’d just… drifted… hidden behind old work, fake smiles, and gallery invoices I kept avoiding.
I stared at the canvas one last time, hoping it might whisper something to me. Still, nothing.
“Fine,” I muttered to myself.
By 8:12 p.m., I was in the back of Sade’s car wearing a black silk dress I’d only worn once back when I still felt like I belonged in it. My red lipstick was sharp and clean. It was the only thing about me that felt honest tonight.
“Okay, bitch,” Sade said, glancing at me through the rearview. “Didn’t think you were actually gonna come.”
“Neither did I.”
Angel’s Secret was hidden in a back alley with no signage. Just a single door, a velvet rope, and a man in a tailored suit who checked our names like we were applying for government clearance.
Inside, it was smoke and velvet. Gold light washed over the room, soft and heavy, making everyone look expensive. Sculptures rested on black pedestals. Paintings lined the walls like sins dressed up in color. A low hum of music and conversation swirled around me.
Sade was already drifting toward a group of men with watches that cost more than my studio. “You mingle. I sell your name. Don’t make it weird.”
She disappeared before I could even argue.
I walked slowly, ignoring the crowd, the drinks, and the meaningless small talk. I followed the tug in my chest toward the back where a small group of people surrounded a single sculpture.
It was made of metal, bent, scorched, and twisted into the form of a man’s back. His spine arched like he was collapsing under the weight of something invisible, something soul deep. My breath got caught in my throat before I could even understand why.
I stepped closer. The details were violent and beautiful… raw… honest. It didn’t whisper. It screamed.
“Does it speak to you?”
The voice slid over me low, rough, and laced with something that didn’t belong in polite conversation. I turned my head, and he was just standing there—tall, clean cut but not soft, sharp around the edges, black suit, open collar, no tie, eyes like smoke and something darker.
