Chapter 9 Alive and Kicking #2
Trying to understand how an interaction that had happened last night for Micah was years ago for Cosmo made his head hurt, and he didn’t want to think about it all until he had a couple drinks in him.
Instead, he turned his attention to Micah.
There was something oddly cozy about him.
He was slightly disheveled, his carob-colored hair a bit mussed and dried paint on his sweatshirt.
He looked comforting, like a home-cooked meal, a favorite chair, the softest sweater.
Cosmo squinted at his face. “I thought your eyes were two different colors, one darker than the other, but they’re not. You have a dilated pupil.”
Micah shrank, tucking his hands in his pockets. “My iris is paralyzed. From the assault.”
“Like David Bowie.” It gave him a unique allure, like behind the comfy man who painted Kinkade-esque landscapes was someone with strange secrets.
Micah scoffed. “I look nothing like Bowie.”
“I’m giving you a compliment. Who wouldn’t want to be compared to such a bicon? I find it sexy.”
Blood rushed to Micah’s cheeks. Flustered seemed to be his default. He pulled off his sweatshirt, revealing a plain black tee; strong, veiny forearms; and an ass that perfectly filled out his jeans.
“Now that I know you aren’t a ghost, you’re far less frightening.” Cosmo’s gaze lingered on Micah’s forearms. “I’m sorry for screaming.”
“Last night, or, well, the last time we talked, you didn’t seem frightened. We promised each other we’d try to move on.”
“We did, didn’t we?” That was going just swimmingly.
“I was in a rather dark mood at the time. I walked into the studio to get the last of my belongings, and when I saw a bed – with a person inside – in my otherwise empty apartment, I thought a new tenant was moving in already.” At the time, Cosmo had felt so lonely that he hadn’t cared who the person was.
Maybe they’d wake up and be company for a while.
“When I realized it was you, well. I was still scared, I guess, but not enough to leave.”
“Why were you writing messages to me on the mirror? ‘Everything will be okay.’ ‘You look fabulous.’”
Cosmo laughed. “Those were for me. I used to write little uplifting things to myself all the time. And when you started replying, I thought it was my ex.”
A line formed between Micah’s brows. “Oh.”
The bistro sign glowed ahead, but Micah slowed and looked like he’d had a change of heart. Cosmo pressed his thumb into the thorn of a rose. He’d thought Cosmo had been flirting with him with those messages. And now he was disappointed. Aw.
The fact that Micah had believed Cosmo was a ghost and was still into it was the exact brand of weird Cosmo could get behind. And he was good-looking company Zedd hadn’t yet scared away.
Plus, he simply had to have an explanation for what had happened in the studio – if there was an explanation.
Cosmo quickened his pace. “I’m starving. Are you vegan? Allergic to fish? Gluten-free?”
“God, no. I ate two muffins for breakfast.”
“Then you must have the lobster toast. It’s incredible.” He dug his cigarettes out of his pocket. “Mind if I smoke?”
“No. Go ahead.”
He poked a cigarette in his mouth, but fumbled the lighter. It clattered across the sidewalk. Micah retrieved it, but instead of handing it back, he flicked it on, cupped a hand around the flame, and held it toward Cosmo’s cigarette. Oh, Micah was a doll.
“Thank you.” Cosmo took a drag. “You don’t smoke?”
“No.”
“Good on you. Nasty habit. I only allow myself two a day. What is your drug of choice?”
“I don’t think I have one.”
“Everyone has one. Whether it’s coke or sex or working out.”
“There’s the torture dungeon, but it’s more of a closet. You know how small the studio is.”
Smoke rolled from Cosmo’s mouth as he laughed. Avoiding the answer. Intriguing.
They passed a secondhand clothing shop, a record store, and an ebike rental kiosk.
Soft jazz floated down the sidewalk as they approached the bistro.
Micah opened the door and ushered Cosmo inside.
It had been a while since he’d been here – hopefully they didn’t have a dress code.
Micah probably had some crisp button-downs and slacks hiding in his torture dungeon, but his harried I’m-busy-being-artsy look was cute.
Globe lights hung over tables of dark, glossy wood, and the scent of French onion soup drifted. Cosmo tucked the rose bouquet under his arm and checked his hair in the glass of the wine case. Merlot sounded fantastic.
Micah leaned toward him. “You look great.”
It was a reassurance, an insistence of the truth, not a flirt with an unspoken part two: You look great, and I’m dying to ravish you.
Micah stared at his reflection – unless it was the wine selection he was frowning at – then brushed hair from his brow and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
They were ushered to a table, and once they both had wine before them and an appetizer of fromage fort on the way, Cosmo turned his thoughts to their peculiar situation.
They swapped details: Micah had heard Cosmo’s music, and Cosmo had heard Micah on the phone, but it fluctuated, sometimes only faint and at other times incredibly clear.
Both of them dissolved into some kind of otherworldly mist. The marker Micah had been writing with had remained in Cosmo’s possession, and Micah had a shower curtain ring and a tube of Cosmo’s lipstick.
“Oh!” Micah pulled out his phone and slid over in the booth until he was next to Cosmo.
He hit play on a video and held it out. “Desperate” thumped from the speaker, and Cosmo’s disembodied handwriting formed on the bathroom mirror.
After the video played through, Cosmo started it again.
God, he looked young and in denial, and he’d lost that sweater again.
The waitress set the fromage fort, crudités, and crackers on the table. Micah spread melted cheese on a seeded cracker and took a bite. “What do you think?”
“I can see how you thought those messages were addressed to you. And this is a different perspective than mine, but merely reinforces what we already know. I don’t see anything here that might give us a clue to what’s going on. What do you think?”
He popped the rest of the cracker in his mouth. “That the canned cheese I have at home has little bacon bits in it, and this doesn’t.”
Cosmo wrinkled his nose, and Micah said, “That was a joke. My canned cheese doesn’t have bacon bits.” He pointed to the fromage. “It’s delicious. Great choice.”
“You’re going to keep me on my toes with your jokes. I never know when they’re coming.”
“Would you like a warning beforehand?”
“No. Thank you.” Cosmo smiled and dunked a wedge of radish into the dip. “Are we dealing with some kind of time travel? From your perspective, you’ve been interacting with past-me. The me of three years ago. But I was interacting with future-you. A future ghost.”
“Well, we all are, aren’t we? Future worm food.
Future ghosts. But I see what you mean.” He frowned and squinted at the globe light over their table.
“I haven’t had much time to process any of this, but time travel hadn’t crossed my mind.
I had jokingly thought earlier that maybe we’re in a simulation, but maybe it isn’t a joke. ”
Cosmo was open to a lot of odd ideas, but that wasn’t one he personally believed in. “I’ve gone through too much in my life to have those experiences cheapened by the fact that none of it was real.”
“They’d still be real to you. But I’m just tossing out ideas. And I think I like that one because it’s simple. ‘Whoops, the universe had a glitch.’ Makes my head hurt less than anything else.”
Nothing about this seemed simple. Radish spice tingled in Cosmo’s mouth, not quite tempered by the cheese, and he chased it with a swallow of wine.
A dull ache settled in his chest as he thought of Déjà.
It was times like these that he really wished he could call her.
She might not have an answer, but her presence alone soothed the anxiety of the unknown.
And this certainly wasn’t the first time he’d had that wish.
After breakups, during shopping trips, when he went to the movies.
Lying alone in the dark at night, staring at the ceiling.
He had other friends, and he certainly didn’t regret taking Mom on some of his stranger outings, if only for her reactions, but no one quite filled the absence that Déjà had left.
“I wish you would have known more about me when we’d first started interacting in the studio.
You were essentially from the future; you could have warned me that my decisions were ghastly and the consequences I wouldn’t be able to bounce back from. ”
Micah scooped cheese onto a snap pea. “I was waiting tables at the Supper Club over on Highland Street three years ago. I wish a future-someone could have told me to listen to my gut when it came to who I eventually let into the studio to draw. I had a weird vibe from him, but…” His mouth pulled to one side.
“He had such an interesting look. I wanted to do his portrait, so I pushed away the feeling.”
“I’m so sorry.” Micah wanting to draw a stranger was far more innocent than Cosmo deciding to take Zedd back for the umpteenth time, but whether the universe was a simulation or not, it certainly didn’t care if your decisions were harmless or self-destructive.
You could still be hit with awful consequences.
“I didn’t mean to turn this conversation into a downer,” Micah said.
“You’re perfectly fine. So, you do portraits? I pinned you for a landscape painter.”
“God, I hate doing landscapes.”
“Maybe you could do my portrait some time.”
A drop of wine sloshed out of Micah’s glass as he brought it to his lips. He took a sip that seemed uncomfortably long for a wine this dry. “I’ve already drawn you. A few times.”
Cosmo tugged his earring. “I’d love to see.”
“I could bring them by the gallery sometime.”
Really? No, Why don’t you come home with me so I can show you? No, My drawings of you will outshine every installation in Identical Dog?
Even Marla, who’d wanted a relationship and not a one night stand, had flirted Cosmo into submission on their first real date.
He’d presumed this was an opportunistic date, but maybe Micah was just lonely and wanted attention and a friend wherever he could get one, even if it was in the form of a ghost.
The waitress arrived with their lobster toast, and Cosmo cut through the soft wedges of meat adorned in béchamel and salmon roe.
“Unless you think coming to the studio might help our situation somehow?” Micah cut into his toast and his knife squealed across the plate. “I don’t want it to cause some kind of inter-dimensional rift that implodes the universe. That’s not a joke. I don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
Cosmo wasn’t sure what he was dealing with either. Something within the studio had connected them both, but he didn’t know Micah’s exact intentions, which left him on unsteady ground. People normally didn’t make him guess.
He brushed his knee against Micah’s. “And if I did come over, what would you propose we do?”
“It’s a little short notice to go haunt someone together.
” Micah’s fork quivered as he brought it to his mouth.
A chunk of lobster fell off and hit the table.
He set down his fork, tucked his hands into his lap, and gave Cosmo a tense grin.
“But I could show you my portraits – I’d love to know what kind of art you do – and maybe write out a list of theories about our situation. ”
No suggestive banter. Hmm. “I want to figure out what’s going on, and the studio seems like the best place to start. But I’d like to know a bit more about you first. Are you queer?”
Micah blinked. “I thought that was obvious. Please don’t tell me I give off hetero vibes.
I’m trans, by the way. And that reminds me that I’ve forgotten to ask.
Are your pronouns he/him? I saw pictures of you in dresses on your Flashbulb, and of course cis people can be gender non-conforming, but I don’t want to assume one way or the other. ”
“I find that trying to put a name to who and what I am only invites people to make assumptions.”
Micah nodded. “I get that. Everyone in my family is tall with a strong jaw, and I’ve been on testosterone since I was seventeen, so I don’t fit what some people ‘expect’ trans masc to look like. Like it’s only one thing.”
Cosmo sipped his wine. This was a refreshing conversation in comparison to what he was asked at parties, and Micah deserved more than a party answer in return.
“I’m not cis, and I’ve been thinking about trying different pronouns, but I’m not ready for a label yet.
Perhaps that will change in the future. But I don’t care what gendered language you use for me, darling. ”
Parties used to be fun. Life used to be fun.
Working at the gallery and attending art events had been stimulating; nights were spent with Zedd or mingling with creatives; there were day dates with Déjà and parties and dancing.
But then Cosmo went and killed his old life and everything had gone downhill from there.
His career at the gallery was stalled, the creatives were tedious, Déjà hadn’t spoken to him since the funeral, and Zedd constantly turned up like a cancer.
Meeting Micah felt like the burst of inspiration Cosmo got right before creating one of his favorite sculptures.
Green paint lined the edges of Micah’s fingernails.
A single hoop earring hung from his lobe, and a small beauty mark punctuated the corner of his tea rose lips.
Dark chest hair curled from the neckline of his shirt.
Cosmo lightly touched his wrist. “Let’s head back to your place. I’m willing to risk implosion. And I’m quite eager to see your portrait style.”
Micah’s throat flexed, and he downed the rest of his wine. “You don’t want to see the torture dungeon?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It’s a little cluttered. I’m not usually expecting… company.”
“We can’t all have spotless torture dungeons.”
“My maid refuses to go in to polish the handcuffs.”
Heaven’s sake, the blistering innuendo that would spawn from this banter if it were someone else.
Coming from Micah it sounded downright G-rated.
There had to be a NSFW version of this man beneath the soft sweatshirts and gold-rimmed glasses.
It was refreshing not to see it during a first date, though.
After finishing their meal, they headed toward the entrance. A group of diners walked toward them, and Micah pressed his hand against the small of Cosmo’s back to guide him away from a collision. The touch was electric, racing up his spine.
He had no idea what to expect when they reached Micah’s studio, and the thought was exhilarating.