Chapter 6 Tainted Love #3
Dad had been begrudgingly tolerant of Cosmo’s feminine traits as a kid, but he’d tried to throw Cosmo out at sixteen after catching him kissing a boy on the doorstep. Mom had thrown Dad out instead.
His heart swelled, and he crammed the memory back into the vault it came out of before he teared up on the sidewalk. No wonder she’d kept those paintings hidden.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” he asked.
“Eh, it’s one of those things that just…
I don’t know. I almost told you after kicking your father out, but I didn’t want to take away from what you were going through.
You had queer friends your own age who you could probably relate to better.
I figured if I ever got a girlfriend, though, I’d let you know. ”
He chuckled. “You can come to the party. If you want. Of course you can.”
“I want to decorate.”
“Absolutely.” He said goodbye, then tucked the phone back in his pocket. Mom’s revelation floated with him as he walked home. Snores drifted from the bed as Cosmo came back inside. Hopefully Zedd didn’t have anywhere to be this afternoon.
Detouring into the bathroom, he was met with yet another message that Cosmo needed to stop playing Soft Cell. Odd. Soft Cell wasn’t even going right now. And that wasn’t much of a flirt.
Well, the lug needed to get out of bed and eat anyway. Cosmo slid his pink LP of Cruelty Without Beauty out of the sleeve, flipped it to side B, and set it on the platter. He pushed the power button on the receiver, cranked the volume knob, and set the stylus on “Desperate.”
Zedd startled at the sudden blast of synthesizer, then sat up in bed and rubbed his face. “Jesus. What time is it?”
“Pizza time, darling. Put some clothes on.”
Zedd pulled on his pants, shook a cigarette from his pack on the coffee table, and walked out onto the balcony. Cosmo headed into the bathroom and picked up his marker.
I LIKE KEEPING YOU UP
He ran a blush-pink lipstick across his lips, then kissed the mirror. Things were going to be okay. It was different this time.
A gentle hand grazed his shoulder. He smiled and turned, prepared to kiss the rest of the lipstick off on Zedd.
A bespectacled white man with dark, tousled hair and an eye socket of scars stood directly behind him.
Cosmo screamed. He scrambled for the door, certain the man would slam it shut and trap him in here to do god knew what. But the man evaporated. Some unperceived mist swallowed up his wide-eyed face, and he disappeared.
Clawing at the doorframe, Cosmo lunged for the hall. His foot slipped on something cylindrical, and he slammed into the ground. A marker rolled away, stopping at Zedd’s foot.
“Shit. You okay?” Zedd gripped Cosmo by the arm and pulled him up. “What the hell is going on?”
His shoulder and wrist throbbed from the impact with the floor, but he barely processed it. “There was a m– A man. In the bathroom.”
Zedd poked his head into the bathroom then ran into the front room and ripped open the curtains. “Where’d he go?”
“Disappeared. A ghost.”
“The hell he is.” Zedd flung the sheets away from the bed and peered underneath. “I know he didn’t go out the front door, because I was smoking out there. Where’d you go, asshole?”
Cosmo picked up the marker he’d slipped on. Black, like the writing on the mirror. “Did you write the replies to my messages in the bathroom?”
“What?” Zedd yanked open the fridge door as if someone could actually hide inside.
“Did you write ‘You’re beautiful’ and ‘Stop playing Soft Cell. It keeps me up’ on the mirror?”
“No?” Zedd slid open the closet and shoved clothes away. He looked back. “That guy left you a message that you’re beautiful? I’m going to smash this creep.”
Cosmo pressed a hand to his still-throbbing heart. This ghost was watching him, listening to his music, leaving him messages. Cosmo had been planning his own funeral, caught up in the romanticism of death, and the first thing he did upon seeing an actual ghost was scream.
Zedd opened the front door and stared out. “Wherever he went, he’s not here now. Must have slipped inside when you were getting the pizza.”
“He’s a spirit.”
“No such thing.”
“I need to call Déjà.” Cosmo picked up his phone and opened his contacts, but his fingers trembled and he clicked on the wrong name.
“That witch who’s always telling you to leave me? She’s putting weird thoughts in your head. You don’t need her.”
“Excuse me?” Cosmo put a hand on his hip. “You don’t get to choose who my friends are.”
Zedd closed the door and stopped before Cosmo. “You sleeping with her?”
Cosmo scoffed. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“That’s not a ‘no.’ And why else would you hang out with her so much?
Why else would she try to drive a wedge between us?
She’s making you all morbid, writing up obituaries and planning a death party.
No wonder you think you’re seeing ghosts.
She’s probably making a voodoo doll of me that she’ll stab in the balls anytime I get near you. ”
The band constricting Cosmo’s chest ratcheted tighter. He thought of her hunched shoulders in the soda shop, confessing that ghosts were everywhere. Encouraging him to find someone who would treat him like a queen. Zedd was treating him like anything but.
When Dad had caught Cosmo kissing his date on the doorstep, he’d yanked Cosmo inside and slammed his fist into the drywall right beside his head.
He’d called Cosmo the f-slur and swore Cosmo wouldn’t spend another night in the house.
Mom had loved Dad, but she didn’t hesitate for even a second to start throwing his clothes out on the lawn.
In the end, Dad had gotten on his hands and knees, crawling after her and sobbing like the pathetic worm he was.
Mom had been married to him for close to twenty years, and in a split second she’d mustered up the conviction to throw him out. She never took him back.
Cosmo’s throat welled with rage as he stared at Zedd. “Get out.”
“What?”
“You will not bad mouth my dearest friend, and I won’t stand one more moment of you treating me like shit.
The audacity of you! Accusing me of being the one to cheat when your cock is in every willing participant you find!
Maybe I would have fallen for Déjà because she is warm and wonderful and mesmerizing, but she isn’t into men.
” Cosmo wasn’t so sure he was a man, but that was beside the point.
“You can forget crawling into a body locker with me; I will rise from the dead to drive you away. Now get out!”
He flung open the door, snatched Zedd’s shirt, shoes, and cigarettes, and hurled them over the balcony.
“Goddamn it!” Zedd clanked down the stairs after his items.
After hauling the giant stuffed alligator out the door, Cosmo punted it over the balcony railing. It bounced off a rose bush, then rolled into the parking lot.
Tears needled his eyes, but he sucked them back. He was not crying over this fool again. Zedd wasn’t average, but he wasn’t any good either, and Cosmo was an idiot in a haunted studio, clinging to love that didn’t exist.
He grabbed his phone, his keys, and the pizza, and hurried down to his car.
Zedd was pulling on his shoes, but he abandoned one and strode towards him.
Cosmo jumped into the car, put it in drive, and hit the gas.
It lurched onto the sidewalk and Zedd leapt away, cursing.
The car thumped over the stuffed alligator.
Cosmo backed over it, then peeled out of the parking lot.