Muse

Muse is a nineteen-year-old member of Jacob Livingston’s support group and a colleague at Miss Independence Pies whose brisk teasing and fierce affection make her an important part of his support network. Her defining insight is that self-reliance does not prevent a person from being vulnerable to someone they love; she helps Jacob see care not as a surrender of independence but as a relationship in which people can hold one another up.

Identity and Introduction

Muse first appears at a domestic-violence support-group meeting where Jacob, still unsure how he came to be sitting among the women, introduces himself as a pastry chef. She laughs from behind two taller women and welcomes him with a teasing tone. Her first impression is deliberately prickly rather than solemn: she does not meet Jacob’s awkwardness with a formal welcome, but with humor that makes room for him in the circle.

Jacob notices that Muse only comes up to his shoulder and has a spiky, tattooed appearance. His fondness for her is immediate enough that he privately imagines giving her a little rhinestone leash and taking her for a walk. The fanciful image captures the mismatch between her tough exterior and his impulse to protect and dote on her, though Muse soon makes clear that she does not need to be cast as helpless in order to accept affection.

A later conversation establishes that Muse is nineteen. When Jacob reacts to how young she seems, she explains that her mother, Alice, runs the support group. Alice began that work after being hit by her boyfriend; Muse describes refusing to be a doormat as the family business. The exchange links Muse’s humor and confidence to a family history of intimate-partner violence, while distinguishing her own role from her mother’s leadership of the group.

Care Without Helplessness

At the support group, Jacob insists that he can take care of himself. Muse pushes forward and wraps her tattooed arms around his waist. She agrees that she can take care of herself too, but rejects the idea that self-sufficiency cancels out the power people give to those they love. Her embrace turns that observation into action: she does not argue that Jacob is incapable, but offers closeness without making it evidence of weakness.

The moment matters because Jacob’s confidence in his ability to protect himself has been shaken by the violence he experienced. He had been trained in Krav Maga and believed he could always look after himself, but that conviction did not prevent his partner from frightening him. Muse’s response does not deny his competence or blame him for being hurt. Instead, it gives him a way to understand why accepting support can coexist with strength. The scene also introduces the reciprocal quality of their friendship: Muse is not merely a source of comfort for Jacob, but someone who openly claims the same right to care and connection for herself.

Work, Friendship, and St. Nacho’s

Muse’s place in Jacob’s life extends from the support group into the work of Miss Independence Pies. She is among the people helping build the bakery’s daily routine: while Analise Salvador prepares custard filling for pecan pies, Muse processes apples. At another point, she stands at the mixer with Mary Catherine Jensen when Jacob arrives with JT. These practical details place Muse within a working community whose support is made not only through conversation but through shared labor.

She also carries knowledge of St. Nacho’s that Jacob passes on to JT. Muse has told him that the town cannot be seen unless it wants to be. Jacob expects JT to dismiss the claim as absurd, but JT does not. The exchange presents Muse as one of the people who voices the town’s mysterious reputation, rather than as an outside observer explaining it. Her remark becomes part of the way Jacob introduces JT to the peculiar logic of the place.

Her friendship with Jacob includes ordinary playfulness as well as grave conversations. At the beach, he asks her age while they watch the waves; elsewhere, she gives him a playful push while describing her ideal store. They make drawings and write down ideas, then discuss a menu built around starting small, doing a short list of things well, and expanding later. Muse is thus present not only in the bakery’s production work but also in its imaginative planning and the light, collaborative exchanges that make the enterprise feel like a shared life.

A Confidante During Jacob’s Conflict with JT

When Jacob is upset about JT and uncertain whether to talk about what happened, Muse offers him privacy without demanding a disclosure. She tells him that anything he chooses to share will go no farther than the four walls around them. Jacob registers the assurance with disbelief and turns back to making dough. Muse’s support lies partly in what she does not require: she gives him the option to speak, but does not force his private conflict into the open.

Muse also refuses to pretend that difficult subjects are easy. She says there is no point in lying, and Jacob finds that her frankness makes it bearable to think about JT and the way he believes he has mishandled their relationship. Her honesty does not solve the conflict or excuse Jacob’s behavior. It changes the terms in which he can face it, allowing him to see his distress alongside the other relationships and troubles in his life rather than as an unbearable, isolated failure.

Later, Muse is at the mixer with Mary Catherine when Jacob brings JT into the bakery. Her presence places her among the witnesses to Jacob’s relationship as it enters the shared space of his work and community. The scene does not assign her a dramatic intervention; instead, it shows the continuity of her role as someone close enough to observe the relationship’s changing place in Jacob’s life.

Friendship in a Crisis

After Jacob returns from the hospital following his brother’s injury, Muse runs to the car and wraps both tattooed arms around him. She tells him he is not allowed to be squished and growls that she hates hospitals. Her blunt, comic phrasing carries real alarm: the embrace comes before any attempt to make Jacob explain or minimize what has happened.

Jacob tells her that his brother has been hurt and admits, in the narration, to feeling hollow, as if he might not be able to stand without her holding him up. He gives in and hugs her hard. The reversal completes the earlier support-group exchange: Muse had helped Jacob accept that self-reliance does not rule out needing another person, and now he openly receives the steadiness she offers. Her concern is not abstract; it appears as a physical embrace at the car, at the moment when Jacob’s own strength feels insufficient.

Muse’s care also takes a smaller, practical form when she suggests that Jacob may need a talisman, specifically a healing crystal, after everything he has been through. The suggestion gives material shape to her wish to protect him without turning her into an authority over his recovery. Across the group, the bakery, and the aftermath of the hospital visit, Muse remains funny, direct, and physically expressive. Her importance to Jacob rests on that combination: she respects his capacity to care for himself while making it unmistakable that he does not have to do so alone.