Chapter 8 You Make Me Feel （Mighty Real）
YOU MAKE ME FEEL (MIGHTY REAL)
Micah - Present Day
Micah lay in bed, burrowed in the sheets.
A car sighed past on the street below. The fridge kicked on, its hum filling the dark studio.
Someone coughed in a neighboring unit. Shutting his eyes, he strained for more sounds, but each car that passed, each noise from his neighbors, only made the emptiness in the studio more acute.
His thoughts drifted to fantasies he’d played until they were threadbare: sometimes he was standing at the bathroom sink when mint green block letters appeared on the mirror, spelling out a new flirty message.
Sometimes he was hunched over the drafting table and would catch a moving shadow in his peripheral vision.
Occasionally he was leaning against the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee when footsteps padded down the hall.
No matter the setting of the reverie, the enchanting specter haunting his apartment would always–
Something gripped his arm. He yelped and sat up, staring into the dark. He scrambled for his glasses and inadvertently knocked them on the floor. Cursing, he found them and put them on, then waited for his eyes to adjust, the sensation on his arm lingering.
“Hello?”
The only sound cutting the silence was his thudding heart, then a voice drifted, soft and lilting: “It’s you.”
Micah slapped a hand over his mouth. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out a silhouette cut through with moonlight.
It seemed to solidify the longer he stared at it.
Cosmo stood with slightly hunched posture, gripping his elbows.
Interestingly, instead of the sweater he’d worn previously, he was in acid-washed dad jeans and a busy button-up shirt.
He was back, and he was talking. Okay, Micah had thought about this… a lot. He had to choose his words carefully. Be smooth.
“Um… Hi.” Christ. That wasn’t smooth. He scooted back against the pillow and tugged up the sheets.
In his daydreams, Cosmo would always touch the portraits of himself hanging above the drafting table, and Micah would have the opportunity for an easy icebreaker about art.
He hadn’t expected the reality to be closer to that Dolly Parton operator’s cheesy fantasy of Micah in nothing but his briefs.
He couldn’t sit here and have a conversation in his underwear.
After sliding out of bed, he hastily pulled on a shirt and a pair of sweats, then ran a hand through his hair.
“I’m – I’m sorry for frightening you. Before.
In the bathroom.” He suddenly wondered if Déjà’s incense and bag of herbs were hurting Cosmo. “Have I caused you harm?”
“No, I’ve done it to myself.”
“Ah.” The syllable sounded trite and callous in response to something so heavy.
Micah smoothed out the comforter, then sat down and patted the space next to him.
“I’ve never tried to hurt myself – not consciously anyway – but I know very well how it feels to not want to exist anymore.
You don’t want to die, you just don’t want to be here. ”
“Oh, too true.” The foot of the bed creaked as Cosmo sat down – he seemed capable of becoming solid at will, which was an interesting concept to ponder later.
Right now, he focused on the idea that he might be the only one who could help Cosmo move on to something better than the state he was currently stuck in.
“Do you want to talk about what happened?” Micah asked.
The moon limned Cosmo’s curls and the slope of his nose.
He was silent for so long that Micah was certain asking the question had been a mistake.
Cosmo sighed and said, “I killed my old life, but I’m still here.
What’s changed? All I did was destroy the good thing I did have.
Now I have to face the future alone, not knowing what’s waiting for me… What’s your name?”
“Micah.”
“I’m Cosmo.”
Micah swallowed. This was happening. Cosmo was company. Inside the studio. And it felt okay. Maybe it was the darkness between them, the ease of speaking to someone who wasn’t actually there, or the fact that they might have similar experiences, but he didn’t want him to go.
Clenching his teeth – whether from giddiness or fear, he didn’t know – Micah pulled in a slow breath and said, “I’d offer you a drink, but there’s only one kind of spirit around here.”
Cosmo let out a surprised laugh, rich and velvety, and Micah’s insides melted. Cosmo turned, his amusement shifting to interest. “I told you mine,” he said gently. “You tell me yours. What happened to you in this studio?”
It was only fair. And he wasn’t a therapist who was going to tell Micah to give up art. “I, uh, I let someone in that I shouldn’t have. I fought back, but–” A sudden sting filled his sinuses, and he cleared his throat. “It wasn’t good enough.”
Moonlight kissed Cosmo’s sharp cheekbones and webbed his lashes. “Well, then. Here’s to no more bad decisions. Whether they be accidental, or” – he tapped a long, slender finger against his heart – “self-inflicted. We can toast with our own spirits.”
“Cheers… So what now?”
The ghost’s sigh was the sound of wind whispering through bare-branched trees. “We move on, I guess. No choice.”
A tiny surge went through Micah’s heart. Maybe he was helping. Although he was a hypocrite, because he wasn’t moving on. Everett and Ximena would say so. Otherwise he would be in therapy and checking his mail. “Do you have a grave somewhere?”
Cosmo leaned back on the bed. “What a strange thing to ask. How did you know?”
It seemed obvious, but before Micah could reply, Cosmo said, “At the end of Cherry Lane. But there’s nothing inside but my disillusions. Let’s promise each other something. We won’t be hung up on the past. We’ll move forward, unafraid of the future.”
“I can’t keep that promise.”
Cosmo tugged on his bottom lip, staring at the space between his feet. “Then we promise to try. Please. We’re haunting ourselves, darling, and it’s not a good look.”
“Haunting ourselves.”
Was that what Micah was doing? Haunting himself in this studio with the door locked and curtains drawn?
When had he actually gone somewhere? He thought about doing it all the time – heading to the aquarium, the theater, going out on dates.
But he always made excuses not to. When was the last time he’d traded houseplant propagations with someone or actually bought a muffin from the coffee shop on the corner?
The farthest he’d been in weeks was taking trash to the dumpster.
His therapist said his trauma had turned into agoraphobia, and Micah had scoffed. He wasn’t afraid of going outside, he was afraid of letting people in. And yet… He never left unless he had to.
“Are baby steps okay?” he asked.
Cosmo smiled, his pearly teeth floating in the dark. “I think that would be just fine.”
“Okay. Then I promise.”
“Good. As do I.” Moonlight pierced Cosmo’s face, diffusing him into a frantic mist. Micah reached for his hand, hoping to keep him there a little longer, but he snatched at empty air.
“Thank you for the stimulating chat, handsome. I’ll let you go back to sleeping like the dead.” Cosmo’s laugh faded into the dark.
It took Micah a long time to fall asleep.
In the morning, he walked outside, locked the door, and headed down the steps to the sidewalk below.
A muffin. He was going to buy a muffin. No, two.
And a coffee. There was nothing monumental about it, but the tightness in his chest eased as he pulled in crisp fall air and the perfume of Ximena’s rose bushes.
She stood on the sidewalk, prodding at a sprinkler head in the grass.
“Buenos días.” Micah stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Something wrong?”
Her mouth fell open. “Buenos días, mijo! The timer on these sprinklers isn’t working. Not coming on when they should. Where are you off to?”
“The Seventh Circle of Java. It’s a pain to avoid the pitchforks and open flame pits, but they have the darkest roast you can get.”
“Sounds wonderful.”
“Do you want something? Coffee? A muffin? Only costs your soul.”
“Is that all? It so happens I have a couple extra from tenants who were late on rent. Not doing me any good. I’d love a latte and a blueberry muffin.”
“You got it.”
She squeezed his arm. “Micah!”
He chuckled. “What?”
“It’s just… so nice to see you out and about this morning. You look well.” There wasn’t any pity in her face today; instead, her smile threatened to burst at the seams.
“I feel pretty good.”
“Has the music at night stopped?”
“I haven’t heard it in a while.” He thought of the slender fingers on Cosmo’s hands. Of Cosmo calling him darling and handsome. Maybe he wouldn’t complain so much the next time Soft Cell started up.
“Oh, I’m so glad,” she said. “I sent out another memo. This one must have gotten through.”
“It must have. Thank you.”
“Let me go get my purse, and I’ll give you some money for my order.”
“Absolutely not. It hardly makes up for all the food you’ve brought me over the months.”
The sprinkler hissed, and an errant stream of water lashed Micah’s jeans. He jumped back and so did Ximena.
She wiped at the skirt of her dress. “Twenty minutes late.”
Behind them, water bubbled from ground tubing beneath the rose plants. Micah glanced at the frilly petals. “I, uh, want to pay my respects to someone later. Can I take a few flowers?”
“Take as many as you’d like.”
Which ones? Blush? Mulberry? There were more bushes farther down, with other colors. “Can I ask you a weird question? The tenant who passed away, Cosmo… What color do you think was his favorite?”
Ximena’s gaze drifted from Micah to the roses. “You’ve been thinking about him a lot, huh? Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t want you getting depressed and morbid.”
“I swear I’m not.” He shrugged. “Well, not any more depressed than I have been. Today, less so, actually.”