“Which brings us back to what I was saying.” Jules paid for her slice and followed me to a table in the back. “This purpose thing you have. I might not know what you’re going to devote your life to, but I know it’s going to be incredible and I hope like hell it’s not, like, facilitating some dude’s personal journey. Because . . .”

She made a barfing noise.

“It’s not like that,” I assured her. “We are facilitating each other.”

“Dirty!” She folded her slice. “Speaking of which . . . ?” She smirked.

“We haven’t. Not that.” I took a bite and chewed, smiling. “We’re getting to know each other first.”

“You are such a goner.”

“I know.” I rested my forehead on the table. “Ugh, I know.”

•   •   •

“Sorry for the muse thing,” Oscar said the instant I set foot in his apartment that evening. “So pretentious. I couldn’t think of a better word!”

“They were powerful creatures, right? I can’t remember my Greek mythology.”

“Goddesses.” He sat on the edge of his kitchen counter, legs dangling. “The living embodiment of each of their disciplines.”

“Oh, that.” I snorted. “Well, then I’m definitely not a muse! Dad should have seen right through it.”

Oscar cocked his head. “You totally embody classical music to me.”

“You heard me play.”

“And I’ve heard you sing. And hum. And I’ve seen you listen and analyze and walk and . . . you are music.”

Shame flash-flooded me. Had he seen my Lincoln Center poster? Was he teasing me? The bold print caption “I AM MUSIC” had been cropped out of the photo hanging in the hall.

Even then, they must have known how laughable it was.

But Oscar’s eyes were warm. Those words were a coincidence.

“Sometimes when I’m working and I need to concentrate, the instruments drop out, and I hear you humming the melody.”

“Really?”

He shrugged one shoulder, smiling. “Plus I am picturing you in a tiny toga right now, and I have to say, it’s working for you.”

I walked over and shoved him, mostly as an excuse to bridge the distance, to invite him to pull me between his dangling legs and “apologize,” kissing my earlobe, my neck as he slid down standing.

He pulled away before I wanted him to—but his whole body looked like it was smiling. “Wanna help me work?”

“Is that a euphemism?” I half hoped it was, but he laughed, striding into the morass of strewn papers to grab some blank sheets and his keyboard.

“I’ve got threads in my head for how to develop the second movement—it’s about dichotomies, the arts, the street, those hidden portals we talked about . . .”

I nodded as if I had any idea what he was talking about.

He sat on the edge of his bed with the keyboard seesawing on his lap.

I put it to the side. “Come play on my piano.”