A white cat with heterochromic eyes stared up at him, purring loudly. He drew in a steadying breath, then sat on the floor. The cat immediately hopped into his lap.
“Wow. You’re friendly.” He tentatively scratched behind her ears, and she kneaded her paws into his thigh. Her coat was silky, and she wore a collar that looked brand new. “What’s your name, little phantom?”
The cat mewed loudly and butted her head against his chest. He chuckled and leaned back against the oven, stroking her fur. She’d surely vanish soon, but not before getting him completely hairy and possibly knocking over something else. That was alright. This was a haunting he could deal with.
12
OBSCENE PHONE CALLER
Cosmo - Present Day
Wearing velvet leggings instead of actual pants was a mistake, and Cosmo knew he should have grabbed a heavier jacket. Dead grass and fallen leaves covered the ground. Bright sun filtered through massive maples, casting dappled light onto headstones and monuments pitted by time and the elements. A brisk wind curled around him.
Micah, clearly, had thought his own outfit through. He wore a crisp button-down the color of dried blood, and the collar hung open, revealing a peek of dark chest hair. Black jeans hugged his ass and thighs, and an alluring scent of jasmine and amber floated around him. He’d slicked back his hair, but it was rebelling, his bangs teased by the wind and curling across his forehead.
He looked so fuckable, and the reminder that he was ace kept popping up in the back of Cosmo’s mind. Certainly, he’d met ace people before, but he’d never had a relationship with someone who was. The thought kept knocking him off balance because he didn’t want to do anything that would make Micah uncomfortable.
The thought of Zedd catching wind of his new inamorato and scaring him away took up even more of Cosmo’s headspace. He’d never seen Zedd threatening one of his love interests firsthand, but he still half-expected him to pop out from behind a tombstone and hiss at Micah. And the poor love didn’t need any more encounters with menacing men.
Cosmo stumbled over uneven earth, and Micah snatched his hand. His grip was clammy, fingers chilly. He smiled, his eyes bright and cheeks rosy from the brisk air. “Careful.”
He could have chosen a newer, maintained cemetery with manicured lawns and paved paths, but Cosmo wasn’t sure how much trouble they would have gotten into if they were found by a mourning party or the groundskeeper. And besides, the weedy tracks and overgrown graves felt more welcoming. Most of the deceased here had likely suffered their second death – no one still alive who remembered them or spoke their name – but they weren’t completely forgotten. Nature was still working on bringing them home, folding the dead back into her bosom.
Micah rubbed his hand on the leg of his jeans, but didn’t offer it back to Cosmo. It was cute that he got so worked up over each of their interactions. Cosmomeantsomething to him. It was obvious in all of his glances, in each flush of his cheeks, and in the slight tremble in his voice. And those portraits he’d done of Cosmo… There wasn’t anything provocative about them, but the intensity and care with which they were drawn did something to his insides.
How long had it been sinceMicahmeant something to someone? How long since Cosmo had been the one with clammy hands and shortness of breath? If he fell too hard, he was going to get sloppy, and Zedd would find out. But if he didn’t, if he kept a barrier between himself and Micah to spare them both future heartache, that was going to hurt Micah anyway.
Cosmo wanted to fall for someone. He wanted love in return. But it never worked out, and if it was going to this time, he had to be careful. No mentioning Micah by name, no pictures of him on social media, and if they attended any parties or gallery showings together, it had to be as friends only.
“I wish the weather were a bit nicer.” Micah shifted the basket hanging from his arm. White lilies peeked from the top. “But I do have a backup plan if it gets too cold. We can climb into a coffin together. I’m sure the current resident won’t mind if we move them.”
How romantic! Cosmo imagined cuddling Micah in a silk-lined casket, his nose pressed to his chest hair, and the warmth from his skin soaking into Cosmo’s bones. Their quickenedbreath filling the confined space, Micah’s lips against Cosmo’s ear– Okay, this was becoming sexy. “I rather hope the temperature drops.”
A shy smile formed on Micah’s face. Goodness he was cute.
They stopped at a patch of grass with enough space to spread out without sitting on top of anyone’s grave. Crows hopped along tree branches; leaves in butter yellow and vermilion shivered on the trees, backlit by the sun. Cosmo unfolded a blanket, and Micah took the bundle of lilies from the basket.
He slid one out and handed it to Cosmo. “The others are for everyone else here. Don’t be jealous, okay?”
“That is so thoughtful.” Cosmo clutched the lily to his chest. The dead here had been forgotten, but not by Micah. It was a struggle to resist snapping a photo of them both for Flashbulb and captioning it,Feast your eyes on this sweet morsel of a man I’m with!But even if he kept the wording benign, he was attracted to multiple genders, and people wrongly assumed that meant he couldn’t have platonic relationships. The only caption that might work was,On a picnic with my very heterosexual cis friend!But he couldn’t say such a horrible thing about Micah.
They sat on the blanket, and Cosmo pulled out a bottle of pinot noir and plastic, stemless glasses. Micah produced finger sandwiches and sliced watermelon. Cosmo twisted the corkscrew into the cork. This wine wasn’t the only thing he’d been reserving for the date. Micah had mentioned other apartments in the complex seemed to have crossed timelines as well – including the new one he’d moved into – and over the past few days, Cosmo had been pondering the situation. He looked forward to giving Micah an answer, even though it didn’t do anything to solve it.
“There are two schools of thought when it comes to how time functions.” Cosmo popped out the cork, then poured Micah a glass of wine. He surveyed their items, then untied the decorative twine from around the bunch of lilies and placed it in a straight line on the blanket. “Imagine spacetime is a piece of string. Some people believe in presentism, in which the future doesn’t exist until we reach it. The string would represent all of history that has already happened, with our present moment at the very edge of the string. As the days/months/years proceed, the string grows longer.”
“Makes sense,” Micah said. “From our perspective, that’s what’s happening.”
“Right. But the other theory is eternalism. That we live in a static block universe, and all points of time that have ever happened orwillhappen are already on the string.” He pressed his finger to the twine. “If we are in the middle of the string, that doesn’t mean that everything ahead of us doesn’t exist. It just means we can’t see it from where we are. All of time exists simultaneously, and what it is for us – past or present or future – is completely relative.”
Micah’s wine glass hovered at his lips. It was hard to tell whether he was giving any credence to the idea, but he finally said, “So past-Cosmo would still exist the same as you do. Past-me would still be here too, and he’d be moving into the studio likely in less than a week. That fits. But why are the timelines melting together? If time is string, we should be too far ahead to see or interact with our past.”
“I thought about that.” And Cosmo was quite pleased that he had an answer, even if the theory of time as string was a rather crude comparison. “String can get tangled. I don’t know how, but I propose that a knot has formed in the timeline directly within the apartment complex.” He made a slipknot in the twine, then placed it back on the blanket. “The past has looped over the present, and these moments are crossing into each other. Maybe it fluctuates and at moments it’s very strong, like when you and I were able to see each other and objects passed through, and at others it’s fainter. Only sounds or scents. And I don’t think this is the first time in history it’s happened.”
Micah’s gaze was distant as he clutched his unsipped wine. “Certainly not. I’ve seen ghost hunting shows where this idea fits perfectly. A bar in a ghost town randomly fills with jaunty piano and the scent of cigars.”
“Exactly!”
“In one, the investigators asked a ghost where they were, and the reply they caught on audio was, ‘I’m right here. Where are you?’”
