Relentless. There’s something about a relentless man. You couldn’t ignore them. If they asked long enough, eventually they wore you down. Women looked for that, persistent interest. An investor. We were, in ourselves, an entire universe. We felt too much, talked too much, wanted too much—the anti-simple.

“You didn’t come to my show, Yara.” —David, at the bar again.

I watched him as I poured a beer. He was disheveled today, his hard side-part not so hard, and he had dark half moons beneath his eyes. He came twice a week now, sometimes in the morning, sometimes late at night. Whatever time of day he came, his eyes never left me.

“No,” I said, simply.

“Why not?”

I looked around the bar. Did I have time to answer that? I had four tables.

“Why do you want me to come?” I asked. I watched him think about it for a minute as he rolled his glass between his palms.

“So I can impress you.”

“Why do you want to impress me?”

A man at a table nearby was looking around, searching for his server. I pegged him for a ketchup guy. He wanted a side.

“I’m obsessed with you. I’m fascinated by the fact that I’m obsessed with you. This has never happened to me before.”

I smiled. I didn’t believe him, of course, but it was fun to hear.

“Yara, can you explain this?” He sounded distressed.

“I can,” I said. “Sort of. But I have to get ketchup for that guy over there.” I motioned with my head and he turned to look.

“Okay,” he said. “Hurry.”

I did. I hurried. I went to the kitchen and retrieved a steel ramekin of ketchup from the fridge, I set it on the table, and I smiled—not at him, at David—who wanted to know why I made him feel the way I did. David waited at the bar behind me, and I felt him waiting. Why was I playing this game? I said I wasn’t going to anymore. When I got back, he looked at me expectantly.

“What?” I asked him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Tell me,” he said. I sighed.

“Look, I’ve never called myself this so don’t laugh,” I warned him. “But I’ve dated a lot of artists. Probably exclusively artists,” I admitted, somewhat embarrassed. “They seem to need me for a while…to spark something. I really don’t know. But I’ve been called a muse.” My face was hot, a fever of embarrassment. I didn’t know why I was telling him any of this, I would agonize over it later. “It’s simple for me and complex for them.”

“What do you mean?” he asked me.

I looked around the bar at my tables. No one needed me, so I continued. “They’re…different when I leave and I’m the same.”

He considered that for a moment and then nodded.

“I can see that. I really can. And I’m not just saying that because I’m drunk.” He lifted his glass in cheers and took a sip.

“I need a muse.”

I laughed.

“I’m not kidding. I can’t write anymore. I feel stale. And then by chance, I was walking by and I saw you through the window.” He spun around on his stool and pointed to a spot on the sidewalk. “I was composing my speech, the one I was going to give Elizabeth. It was blah, blah, blah—I’m not the commitment sort of guy, and then I saw you and I wanted to marry you on the spot.”

“You’re full of it,” I told him.

David reached up and crossed his heart.

“Pulled one splinter and everything changed. I started to write. I’m on the verge of something and I need your help.”

“A coincidence,” I said.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Be my muse.”

“You’d have to fall in love with me. Have you ever been in love?”

He almost answered. Almost. His mouth was poised around the words. But then a couple walked through the doors and sat down at the far end of the bar. I looked at him regretfully and walked away.

“Go home,” I called back to him. “You’re drunk.”

By the time I was done taking their order, David Lisey’s bar stool was empty. I smiled as I cleared what was left of his dinner dishes, stacking them on my arm. He’d left a scrap of paper under his plate, his number scribbled on it. For Yara, it said. My muse.

I threw it away. No. Nope. Not happening, Lisey. Asshole haircut or not. Cut arms or not. Magical singing voice or not. The men I’d been with had been cloying in their need for me. They wanted and expected and it drained me until there was nothing to do but leave. It was entirely one-sided, but none of them ever thought that. That was the thing about artists, they didn’t often think of you. Their energy had a narrow focus, a spotlight on their art…their insecurities…the unfairness of the world. I’d tried dating a banker, an engineer, a botanist, but they’d been addicted to their careers in a different way, and I found them lacking the unbridled passion I was used to.

He didn’t come back for two weeks. I thought I was in the clear. I’d come to Seattle to focus on myself, to embrace aloneness, and I had done just that. It was almost time to go home.

“Yara.”

His voice startled me. The beer I was pouring flowed over my hand, pooling in the drain. I glanced over my shoulder and there he was, a beanie on his head, scruffy face, soft eyes—staring, staring.

“You again,” I said.

He laughed. Placing a hand over his heart, he said, “I hope you say that to me every morning.”

I hated that I smiled. That he could turn my jabs into something endearing.

“What time do you get off?”

“In ten minutes,” I said. “But I’m not coming to your show and we’re not getting a drink.”

“Okay,” he sighed. “I’ll just have a drink here then.” He slid into his usual bar stool and folded his hands on the counter, all proper like. It looked like he was preparing for a meeting.

“You’re so ridiculous,” I said.

“In love,” he corrected with a grin.

“Sure,” I shrugged. “It’s late afternoon so I’m not sure if I’m supposed to get you a beer or Jack and Coke.”

“Beer. Yara…let’s talk.” He tapped his palm on the bar top like he’d just thought of the best idea.

“Can’t. I’m working.”

He looked around the bar. “It’s empty.” It was true—he’d come in that in-between time, the witching hour between lunch and dinner.

“What do you want?”

He straightened up, cleared his throat. I almost laughed, but I was too weary.

“A muse.”

“You want a new fuck buddy, not a muse.”

A shit-eating grin spread across his pretty fucking face. Caught.

“What about both?”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t work that way.”

“Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t.”

“But what would you have to lose?”

I set down the rum bottle I was holding and stood in front of him, hands on my hips.

“Nothing. You’d lose. But, I’m not a cruel person, David. I don’t want to hurt people.”

“You’re not going to hurt me, Yara.” He said my name in the same way I’d said his: annoyed…condescending. I frowned at him. He had no idea what he was doing. Testosterone, lack of caution—the bull charging of men.

“So let me get this straight,” I said, looking around. “You want me to make you fall in love with me, and you’re giving me permission to leave and break your heart?”

He nodded.

“But you don’t think I’d actually leave, Lisey. You think you can change me, but that’s not how it works.”

He shrugged. “Let’s see how it plays out. Just come to our show. See what you think. Maybe you can help me, maybe you can’t. I don’t know how you decide these things.”

“I don’t,” I said. “My relationships with the men I’ve been with happened organically. I don’t go around putting ads on craigslist, for God’s sake. What you’re asking me to do is stage a relationship so you can feel inspired.”

“I already feel something for you so it wouldn’t be staged.”

“What about me?” I said, raising my eyebrows. “I’m just supposed to force feelings?”

He laughed through his nose, his lips puckering into a know-it-all grin. “Yara, we have chemistry. You can try to deny it all you want, but man is it there. I can practically feel you undressing me every time I’m in here.”

He wasn’t too far off base so I didn’t tell him to go fuck himself, but I did give him a dirty look before I went to hide in the kitchen.

“Fuck you, David Lisey,” I said under my breath.