FIVE secrets my muse has:
1. She’s always tired. Tiana prides herself on the fact that when other kids were nodding off in high school after late-night study sessions, she was always alert and earnest. But that ability came less from superhuman stores of energy and more from a copious amount of caffeine. She’s not always kind to her body, but it’s a system that’s kept her alive this long. By now, she’s too stuck in her ways to make a change.
2. It’s difficult for her to bond with people. Her circle is small, and it always has been. While it’s not really a choice she made, she’s also not looking to expand it. Tiana can be a little bit intense, and she doesn’t expect new people in her life to understand why. She’s got her mama and Lottie, some co-workers she can crack jokes with - that’s good enough for her.
3. She wishes she could be the fun one, sometimes. Tiana’s been the responsible, mature one for as long as she can remember, and while it’s a title that she holds proudly, it can be hard looking out for everyone else. It would be a change of pace to be impulsive for once, to do things without thinking about the consequences. There are a lot of things on her bucket list that she’s less and less sure she’ll ever get around to.
4. She keeps a diary. It’s an on-again, off-again sort of journal; she can go months without writing and then spend two days working furiously to transcribe everything that’s happened to her. It’s mostly recipes at this point, but there are a few truly poignant entries (like the one from when her father passed away) that she feels will be important to look back on one day. Her whole life seems to pass in a blur, so when she has a moment to breathe, she tries to write things down so she won’t forget them.
5. She’s always been jealous of Lottie. Not that she’d ever act upon it, of course, because it’s not like Lottie wished to be born into wealth. But Tiana can’t help but notice that when she caters for the big country club events, she’s an outsider looking in on her best friend’s world of opulence and glamour. She’d never take a handout from Lottie, but it’s a fair point that if she had Lottie’s life, she wouldn’t have the navigate the politics of money quite so carefully.
THREE guilty pleasures my muse has:
1. The Bachelorette. Tiana doesn’t watch a whole lot of television, but when she does, she’ll catch up on The Bachelorette. It’s cheesy, she knows it, and yet the old-soul romantic in her does like the idea of being wooed. She wouldn’t want to do it in front of the entire nation, but courting’s an uncommon concept nowadays, so she’ll take it where she can get it.
2. Flowers. She doesn’t have anything close to the time to keep a garden going (and really, Tiana doesn’t have much of a green thumb), but her mother does and the blooms she grows are some of the loveliest things Tiana’s ever seen. She’ll buy some lilies from the shop on a good day and leave them around the house. They’re an extra expense, but they always cheer her up, so she thinks it’s worth it.
3. $1 tacos. Don’t ask her, because she doesn’t get it either. Most fast-food she finds disgusting and frankly morally reprehensible, but taco stands have a special place in her heart. She tries not to be seen fraternizing with the enemy too often.
ONE thing my muse can’t live without:
Her poster. It’s old and faded by now, edges ragged from where she ripped it out of some old magazine. The restaurant it depicts is old-fashioned, all the patrons dressed in silks and furs. Scrawled across the top half of the photo is pin-straight handwriting is “TIANA’S PLACE” and it sits proudly on the shelf above her bed as a reminder of whose memory she tries to keep alive every day.
