Chapter 15
TIME (CLOCK OF THE HEART)
Micah - Snagged Thread
Micah stared at the dark ceiling. The water heater hummed, and the faucet in the bathroom kept a rhythmic pat-pat that he’d tried counting to help him fall asleep. It hadn’t worked.
His pillow was too warm, and he kept flipping it over hoping for a cool side but he’d done it too many times and now the whole thing was wrinkled and hot and none of the thoughts tumbling around in his head were any that he wanted to entertain.
Phantom the cat had suddenly appeared and curled into a white loaf near his feet, and if Other Micah materialized beside him in bed, he was going to unload all his problems whether his other self wanted to hear them or not.
Trying to keep Cosmo out of harm’s way hadn’t succeeded. Déjà had texted Micah with words he never wanted to see in that arrangement again: his creepy boss was trying to stick his tongue down Cosmo’s throat.
That pervert of a director violated Cosmo, and the thought made Micah sick to his stomach.
The only thing Micah had managed to do was piss Cosmo off enough to reveal what Micah already knew but didn’t want to face – that he and Cosmo were too different to be compatible.
Anytime his mind gave him a reprieve from that topic, it shifted to the fact that he had somehow suddenly known about a milkshake place he’d never been to and Cosmo had never mentioned.
He drew the covers up to his chin. The only logical explanation – and he used that term very loosely – was that Other Micah knew about the milkshake place, so now Micah did too.
Déjà had insisted they all go there to sort things out, which seemed like a terrible idea because it was only going to risk Micah getting heartbroken again.
He had finally agreed so he could get off the phone and go take out his frustration on a harmless inanimate object, but he was too confused by the milkshake thing to hold any of the fire inside him.
And if he’d been hard-pressed to dig out the core of his worries, it wasn’t that some new weird thing had happened.
He’d already met his future self; how much weirder could it get?
It wasn’t even that Cosmo’s words had jabbed him in a vulnerable spot or that he’d slapped him hard enough to see stars.
The biggest thing on his mind was Cosmo’s safety, and his failure to secure it.
Trying to remind himself that Cosmo was in charge of his own choices wasn’t helpful, because the visual of seeing his own face for the first time after the assault kept appearing every time he closed his eyes.
He’d been near unrecognizable, his skin an eggplant purple and dark stitches winding around his eye socket and through his eyebrow.
He hadn’t helped himself then, and he’d failed to help Cosmo last night.
By the time late morning rolled around and he slid into a booth in the soda shop in question, he felt like he’d swallowed an anchor.
An oldies song he couldn’t place floated from the jukebox in the corner.
A huge glass of outrageous dairy was the last thing his stomach wanted right now, but greasy corn dogs and fries sounded worse.
“God, it’s been ages since I’ve been here.” The light cadence of Cosmo’s voice made Micah slide out of the diner booth so quickly that he nearly tripped a roller-skating waitress.
Cosmo stood beside Déjà in skin-tight light-wash jeans, a rainbow block print shirt, sculpted clay earrings, and geometric bangle bracelets.
Micah kept his fists pressed to his sides.
“Hey.” He suddenly wasn’t sure which side of the table to sit on.
He sat next to Cosmo, then decided that was the wrong choice, but it was too late to switch because Déjà dropped into the seat across from them and set her backpack beside her.
Her outfit wasn’t quite as flamboyant as Cosmo’s, but it still made Micah look like the odd one out.
“I don’t fit in here. Maybe I should go sit in the tax prep place next door. ”
Both Déjà and Cosmo glanced at Micah’s sweatshirt. It had been a joke, but nobody laughed, and now he was self-conscious. Smooth, Micah.
Cosmo leaned against the table and tugged on his curls. “You do not fit in better in a tax prep place. Your unique look is just less surface-level than ours.”
Right. Because he couldn’t take off his scars like Déjà kicking off her platform goldfish pumps on his rug.
Cosmo pulled a greasy, laminated menu from a rack beside the salt and pepper shakers.
He tugged at his bottom lip as he looked it over, exposing charmingly crooked teeth.
How perfectly imperfect. Cosmo’s unique look was more than surface-level too, although the glittery lime eye shadow at the corners of his eyes was doing something to Micah’s insides.
“I’m fine, Micah,” Cosmo said. “Stop staring at me.”
Cheeks burning, Micah looked away. “It’s okay if you’re not fine after what happened. Assault isn’t something to just be brushed off.”
Cosmo kept looking at the menu, but he flinched slightly. “It doesn’t deserve to be called that.”
“I’m not sure what else to call it if it wasn’t consensual.”
“It feels wrong to put it in the same category as…”
The same category as Micah and his fucked-up face.
“We don’t need to break out a measuring stick to see whose trauma is bigger.
I hate that it happened to you. The only good thing, I guess, is now you know Royce is a threat.
If I’d gotten you to come with me, the non-consensual bar incident wouldn’t have happened, but he could have put his hands on you at some other point in time when no one was there to stop it. Which might have been worse.”
Cosmo seemed to shrink into the booth more with each of Micah’s words. “I’d really rather not talk about it.”
Déjà looked ready to unload a prepared speech, but she sighed and said, “Then let’s talk about Micah’s mind-reading ability.”
“That’s not what it was,” Micah said.
“Future prediction then.”
“Not sure that’s it either. And if it is, why now?”
Cosmo twisted the bangles on his wrist. “I had a premonition yesterday that you’d be waiting for me at the taco truck. But it didn’t happen the way I expected, so I thought it was just wishful thinking.”
Wishful thinking. But Cosmo hadn’t been wishing for Micah when he exposed his whole chest and demanded Micah check to see if the rumor about him was true.
A waitress stopped at their table, beaming a bubblegum pink smile. “Hello! Are you ready to order or do you need a few minutes?”
Cosmo’s gaze was distant. He pushed his menu back into the rack. “A pumpkin shake, please.”
“I’ll have sweet potato,” Déjà said. “With three maraschino cherries.”
The waitress looked up from her notepad. “It comes with a toasted marshmallow on top instead of a cherry. Do you want to substitute it?”
“No. In that case, I’d like three marshmallows. It’s fine if it costs extra.”
Micah reached past Cosmo for a menu. His arm brushed Cosmo’s, the warm scent of raspberry and spice overwhelming him. Skimming over the milkshake list but not processing any of the words, Micah looked up at the waitress and said, “Surprise me.”
He pulled the paper band off his silverware and rolled it into a tight tube.
Once the waitress left, he said, “You know, yesterday, after I failed to get you to come with me, I thought it must mean that no matter how we try to change things, the future is set in stone. But that isn’t true, because originally our argument never happened.
Maybe… Maybe we only slightly altered something.
” Other Micah hadn’t sat helpless and alone in a Dairy Queen, thinking about his ineptitude until the place closed and the teenage employees kicked him out.
“Did it occur to you that maybe you shouldn’t have meddled with the future?” Déjà asked.
“No. It really didn’t.” Micah flicked his napkin band across the table. “My only thought after the initial shock of meeting myself was keeping Cosmo from getting hurt.”
“I don’t want him hurt either, but what if you weren’t supposed to do that?
Maybe it felt like nothing much changed, but you weren’t supposed to be there.
People saw and interacted with you who shouldn’t have.
Not just us, but Royce, the people eating by the taco truck, whoever you encountered on the way back home, insects you stepped on… ”
“Insects,” Micah said. “So, what, I stepped on an ant I shouldn’t have and now I’ve prevented a future president from being born? That seems over the top.”
“Does it?” She looked at Cosmo. “You said you knew Micah would be waiting for you yesterday, and he was. And Micah, you knew he had been thinking about milkshakes even though he never said that to you. Something’s been altered.”
Micah knew Déjà wasn’t the source of his sudden anger, so he tried to cram it down, but he couldn’t help but say, “And you weren’t supposed to be at the bar.
We don’t know what would have happened if he didn’t have anyone there on his side, but I bet it would have been worse.
And whether that screwed up the universe or not, I’d do it again to keep him from getting hurt.
” His voice rose. “I’d run to help Cosmo in any universe. In any timeline.”
Déjà raised her already dramatically arched eyebrows. Cosmo stared at Micah, his lips parted.
“Besides,” Micah muttered, “the premonition of me showing up didn’t happen the way he thought it would. What good is a premonition if it’s wrong?”
“What flavor is your milkshake going to be?” Cosmo gathered the menus and hugged them to his chest. “You knew we were going to come here, which means in our original future we were here and had milkshakes. So what flavor did you get?”
“Um…” He didn’t have any sense of being here before, and couldn’t remember any of the shake flavors. Squeezing his eyes shut, he pressed his fingers to his temples and feigned concentration. “Shrimp.”
Cosmo grimaced. “Shrimp?” He looked at the menus clutched in his fists. “Is that an actual flavor?”