The melody was taunting him.

Tobias cocked his head to the side, listening hard, trying to snag the strands of a song that began to whisper in his ear the moment he pulled out of the parking lot of The Backward Glance. He could almost see it; it was that close to being a reality.

Songwriting was feast or famine: either the melody and words came so quickly he could barely get them down or he sat in silence. Tobias was in the midst of a silent phase, had been for months. That is, until he saw Liddie again after the show.

Now, his muse was stretching, stirring, showing him a bit of ankle, the slight curve of her neck. He could already tell this song was going to be flirty, the aural equivalent of a panty flash.

Tobias closed his eyes, willing the muse to come out and play. So what if he was making breakfast? It wouldn’t be the first time he left the table in the middle of a meal to go scribble down lyrics or chords. He’d almost burned the house down more than once due to his absentmindedness during songwriting sessions. In fact, one of the last fights he and Candy had when they were married was because he’d let lima beans boil dry, but he was in his downstairs studio with headphones on and didn’t hear the smoke alarm. Whoops. The Hendersonville Fire Department had come out that time.

Tobias slid the bacon onto the plate, next to two fried eggs and two pieces of toast, while his muse leaned over to show him her cleavage. He studiously ignored the muse’s teasing as he pulled a jar of FROG jam from the refrigerator. One dip of a knife into the jam jar, though, and his muse had had enough. Suddenly she wasn’t being coy anymore—she was naked on a dock at midnight, the moonlight glinting off the water droplets on her skin.

He abandoned his breakfast, almost tripping down the stairs to get to the pedal steel guitar set up in the middle of the room. As he slid behind the vintage instrument, his muse purred. She was moonbathing, touching herself, beckoning him to join her. Tobias quickly set up the computer to record, then donned the thumb picks. He palmed the tone bar, its weight reassuring in his left hand. His muse leaned down and ghosted her lips over his ear.

“Now.”

She exhaled the melody in Tobias’s direction. Today, right now, he had no problem catching the strands and tacking them with the pick he wore on his right hand. Then he altered the notes with the tone bar, bending and smoothing the sounds, as his muse spun out the melody like cotton candy. Sound built until it was overflowing, almost uncontainable, and Tobias let it tumble out of his fingers while his muse writhed and wriggled with pleasure.

And then she began to wind down now that she’d given the majority of the melody to Tobias. As she released the last strands, she kissed him again and whispered the end of a wordless story in his ear before disappearing.

Tobias double-clicked the mouse to turn off the recording and leaned back in his chair, breathing heavily. He wasn’t surprised that he was more than halfway hard. After all, the melody his muse presented was the embodiment of that last night with Liddie, before she disappeared from his life forever.

His muse peeked through the riverside hemlock grove. “Not gone anymore,” she whispered before disappearing again, but Tobias ignored her this time because the fact that Liddie was physically nearby but not willing to see him reopened thirty-year-old wounds. He made some horrible decisions in the aftermath of her leaving the first time; he didn’t know if he could survive a second.

He got ready to play back the recording but, at the last moment, decided not to, at least for the time being. The melody was still running through his head. He could see the colors of it refract like the prisms both his mother and Liddie loved so much. He wanted to savor the purity of the inspiration, so he thanked his muse before rising stiffly from the chair and going upstairs.

´*•.¸(*•.¸ *¸.•*´)¸.•*´

His muse woke up when he did, or maybe she was the one who roused him in the first place. She danced around his head to the melody he’d recorded earlier, crooking her finger at him, enticing him toward the French doors that led to the backyard. He looked beyond the porch and woods to the riverbank, to the slip that jutted out to the river that formed the edge of his property. That slip was the whole reason he bought this house.

He hadn’t been out to the slip since he’d gotten the call that his father had passed away. After that news, he’d carried a bottle of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes to the dock, where he’d sat until both the bottle and box were empty. Then he’d stripped and slipped into the cold river, treading water until he was so exhausted he could barely climb out of the water. That was the last time his muse had talked to him, until yesterday.

“Toby, come on!” The muse pulled on his hand, hopping from one foot to the other, each bounce releasing a fountain of notes from the ground. “Trust me, Toby.” She leaned into him. “Have I ever let you down?”

Tobias shook his head. She’d never let him down. His muse always came through, even if he despaired that she wouldn’t. Her dependability was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that it put food on the table and allowed him an escape, and a curse in that it made his father even greedier and more demanding.

“See? I’m not going to abandon you now, not after everything we’ve been through together.” The muse stepped through the glass and motioned him outside.

Tobias stepped onto the porch. He paused at the edge of the stairs that led down to the backyard and watched the trail of melody stream from the muse’s fingertips as she dashed back and forth across the grass. She twirled around, giddy, her joy infectious.

“Come on, Toby! I want to go swimming.” She ran over to him, stopping short, leaning into his space. “Night swimming.”

“It’s not nighttime.” Tobias gestured at the sky even as it began to darken. Night wasn’t far off, and yes, it would be a perfect night for night swimming.

“Just come to the slip with me. You won’t regret it.”

Toby woke with a start, the dogs barking like crazy at the glass doors that lined the back of the house. Man, he hated dreams in which he woke up. It fucked with his head. The dogs increased their barking.

“All right, girls. Hold your horses.” Tobias snorted, imagining the two short-legged dogs atop a hansom cab. Harper, you are losing your damn mind.

Toby sighed and opened the door, and then the dogs took off toward the river. As he picked his way tentatively down the path, the melody from his earlier session filled his head. Yes, that was a solid tune. He knew he’d be noodling with it a good while. Tobias hummed the melody, testing out some variations, as he approached the dock. Then he saw a girl in a blue dress, sitting at the edge of the slip with her feet dangling in the water.