The doors opened with a groan. Cosmo squared his shoulders and sucked back his tears. Guests gasped as Royce escorted him up the aisle, then they erupted in applause.
Rye lifted Cosmo’s filthy, shredded veil, their eyes dancing with delight. “Assemblage sculptor, my ass.Youare a performance artist. Fantastic!” They raised their drink and turned to the crowd. “Cosmo has crawled from his grave, resurrected!”
Someone pushed a glass of wine into Cosmo’s hand. People patted him on the back and squeezed him in hugs. They showered him in congratulations and wished him well in his newborn life.
But Cosmo wasn’t reborn. All he saw was death.
8
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 wasdestroy the good thing Ididhave. 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.Insidethe 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.”
