Muse. | Fionn Whitehead

14. Sad, brown eyes

FIONN

It's weird. It's weird how I was the first she thought of calling tonight. At the same time though, I am glad that she did.
It's weird how drunk she is, but still so self aware.  I can see the vulnerability through her golden brown eyes and the sadness it holds. There's so much and I had no idea. Lola's usually the one with a much more positive outlook in life, texting me messages like, 'Good morning, I hope your day goes well', 'Fionn, stop being so negative and see your mom. Just tell her what happened. She loves you anyway', 'Hi Fionn, hope school is treating you right'.

Not this time though, not tonight at least.
As she was telling me her story, I didn't know what else to do but hold her hand and listen to what that asshole did; that asshole that drugged her.
The one that took her innocence when she was only looking for love. She kept saying she got carried away, but I was the same with Jenna.
You always think things when it comes to a person you think you love. When things don't end well, you have days, nights where you can't stop thinking about thoughts of regrets and the moments that happened prior. It's haunting. You could only wish it would stop. It doesn't. It doesn't stop and it never will.

Lola would pause as she spoke, looking so deep into me, almost as if she was searching for something. "Do you view me any different?" she asked me innocently. It pissed me off when she asked me that. She did nothing wrong.
Lola is, perhaps, one of those that blame themselves for everything bad that happens in their life. She didn't and I know I have to embed that into her mind. She's too feeble, fragile, and I would have never thought I would be apart of a moment like this with a girl I met at this very spot.

It's been nearly a month since I met this girl with long, dark hair braided to her side in Wingston Park. Her head was down, looking through photos from her camera. She was biting her bottom lip as she focused on what she was doing.
I was slightly — probably very — annoyed  that she was sitting on my favorite bench. I thought she would move right when I took a seat next to her, but she didn't which annoyed me even more. I said her photos were bland, but it was a lie.

Like the jerk that I was just to get her to move, I pulled up a cigarette from my pocket. Girls hate the smell of smoke, I know my mum does. Lola narrowed her eyebrows and told me to move and that she had asthma. That was that and she stayed put. I proceeded to smoke right next to her anyway, but to be nice, I exhaled on the opposite direction like it would help.
I could care less then, but at this moment as I'm holding her hand,  I can say different.

"My muse," she said to me and rested her head onto  my shoulder. She called me her muse that night I dropped her home for the first time. I didn't  know why, but I was flattered. A muse — a person or personified force who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist. I don't know how, why I give her inspiration because I don't find myself an inspirational person at all. She's an inspiration. She finds the good in everything and it makes me want  to do the same. When she told me about her parents, she didn't say it in this way, but she basically said her dad is literally her only parent and her mum is hardly ever present in her life. "Sometimes I would wish that she did the same things for me when I was kid, like she does for my siblings. . . oh. . pretend I didn't say that, that's so selfish of me," she said that one night I took her home from the store. She's too nice. She can easily say that her mother is a bitch, like how I call my father a dick, but she doesn't.

I carried Lola's frail body to my car and I'm stuck with the thoughts of where to take her. Her dad would kill me and definitely  her too if he sees her like this. Her friends are surely hammered as well. I hope she's not confused if she wakes up in my place and thinks anything happened. Does she know that I wouldn't take advantage of her like that? I hope so and if her first few thoughts are that, I'll do my best to explain what happened tonight.

I am no artist, but she is my source of inspiration and in my mind I know this counts.

"You're my muse, too," I say silently, hoping she's not half-awake to hear that.