Cosmo snatched the rose, bit off its head, and chewed viciously. Petals flew from his mouth. “Get. Out.”
Zedd gaped. His jaw clamped shut, nostrils flared. “You’ll come around. You always do.” He turned away and slammed into Royce.
The director gripped him by the elbows and practically hurled him down the hall. “Come back – ever – and I’ll call the police.”
Tears stung Cosmo’s eyes, his mouth full of rose petals. He pulled a wet breath through his nose. Should have worn the waterproof mascara.
Royce returned, straightening the lapels of his suit jacket. He stared at Cosmo, lips a tight line, then plucked out his pocket square and offered it. “I think you could use that Bloody Mary now.”
Cosmo swallowed petals and dabbed at his eyes. He probably could. But all he really wanted to do was finish his work and go home. And if he accepted the drink offer, he ran the risk of crying on Royce or boring him to death with his woes.
His phone vibrated, and he opened it. A text from Déjà scrolled across:
Royce waited ahead, hands clasped behind his back. Green light from the exit sign settled into the creases of his face.
“I need a moment to compose myself,” Cosmo said. He headed for the restroom and replied to Déjà:
As he dialed her number, he stopped in front of a mirror in the restroom and dabbed his smeared mascara with the edge of a paper towel.
She answered immediately. “What happened?”
“The same typical bullshit. It’s not worth getting into; he’s already left. I’m going to flip a coin and either work straightthrough my break so I can get out of here early or go have a slightly unprofessional cocktail with the director while on the clock.”
“Um,what? Isn’t he like sixty? Ew, ew. You are vulnerable and hurting, and I will not watch you go down in flames like this. Sleeping with your boss who is almost forty years older than you is nasty and not a solution to your problems!”
He scoffed. And she thoughthewas the dramatic one. “I have no intention of doing that. I don’t know where you got that idea from.”
“He flirted with you at the party last night. He wouldn’t stop talking about your sculptures, and he kept calling you stunning and unique.”
Cosmo had no recollection of that, but it didn’t matter. “Those aren’t flirts, darling. They’re facts.”
“Pompous ass.”
“I get comments like that all the time. Even from you.” He lowered his voice and glanced over his shoulder at the stalls, but they were empty. “And what does it matter if they are flirts? They only mean something if I want them to, and I don’t.Especially not now. If I can’t have the version of Zedd that I keep convincing myself is real, then it’s no one.”
The disgusted noise coming through the speaker was so loud that Cosmo pulled the phone away from his ear. “Excuse me, but Zedd should not be the litmus test for a loving, happy relationship. Not even your version of him that doesn’t exist. He’s average.Average.Nothing about you is average, and you deserve someone on your level.”
Cinereous Zedd had seemed anything but average in the beginning. As the lead singer of Snake Milk, they’d met after an energetic performance in which Zedd had vaporized his eyebrows by getting too close to the pyrotechnics. Conversation had been hard because Cosmo had to shout into his ringing ears, but it hadn’t mattered much when experimental punk rock and the intensity of their physical chemistry filled up the deficit.
But music and sex weren’t enough, even if you fell in love. Cosmo needed conversations at one am while he and his love stared out at the glittering city. He needed someone to try his baking and tell him if there was too much icing. Someone to read to him and stroke his hair as they lay in bed on a Sunday morning.
Déjà’s words were lost to the sound of his heartache. It sounded a lot like Zedd’s music, and Cosmo didn’t want to hear it. This was not the time to dream of things that couldn’t be. He had a funeral to plan. And maybe when he got home, he’d put onNon-Stop Erotic Cabaretand play “Tainted Love” as loud as possible over and over until the stylus on the turntable wore out. Especially if his neighbor was on the phone – which he always seemed to be. He wasn’t sure whether it was the guy in number twenty or number twenty-two, but godawful “on hold” music was always penetrating the walls. The poor man must have a lot of issues that required calling customer service.
Cosmo tossed his paper towel in the garbage and leaned against the sink. “I don’t want to talk about Zedd anymore. We’re going to throw a party, remember?”
“That’s the spirit.”
“Oh, it will be. It’s going to be downright spectral.”
4
