“Cosmo, please,” Micah hissed. “This is an emergency. I’ll explain on the way.” He snatched Cosmo’s arm and tried to tug him away. His cheeks reddened as he glanced at their new audience at the tables around them.
Cosmo ripped free of his grip. “It’s an emergency? Or am I just embarrassing you? You know, I didn’t think anyone in the art scene bought into rumors. It happens to all of us so we have a healthy dose of skepticism. But you don’t have rumors about you, huh? In order to get them, you’d have to leave your house once in a while!”
Micah looked like Cosmo had just slid a dagger into his stomach. “Right. Well, this mentally ill, anti-social recluse is still intent on getting you out of harm’s way.” He snatched the placket of Cosmo’s shirt and yanked him forward.
Cosmo slapped Micah across the face hard enough to send his glasses askew. “Stop grabbing me like the misogynistic knight in a fairytale! I’m not your fantasy!”
Putting up his hands, Micah took a step back, mouth agape and chest heaving. His cheek was an angry pink, wire-framed lenses crooked, and there was a look of abject devastation in his eyes.
What the hell had just happened? Cosmo had sunk the knife too deep, thrown Micah’s PTSD back in his face, and slapped him like he was Zedd. As Cosmo opened his mouth to apologize, Micah turned on his heel and strode away.
“Micah–”
The beer bottle fell off the decorative edging beside the flowers as Micah hopped up and pushed through the bushes. It bounced off the concrete and rolled toward Cosmo, bumping into his shoe.
Well, good. Cosmo had wanted him to go away. Hadn’t he? The amber glass of the beer bottle doubled in his vision. His emotions tugged him in separate directions until he felt like the figures in Dalí’sThe Burning Giraffe, all the drawers of his soul pulled open. The contents were too jumbled to make sense of any of it.
A firm arm slipped around his shoulders, and he startled. Royce’s woody aftershave filled his nose, his windbreaker crinkling. “Come sit down with me.” He pulled Cosmo toward the taco truck.
Cosmo tried to look back. “Hang on–”
“You’re making a scene.” Royce sat him down on the bench he’d occupied previously. His voice came out with a hard, commanding edge that wasn’t normally directed at Cosmo. “Button your damn shirt. People are staring at you.”
It was hard to see the buttons through the blear in his eyes, and his fingers were shaking, but he managed to get his shirt done up again. Royce’s expression was unreadable, and Cosmo couldn’t bear to have the director disappointed in him.
He hunched his shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
Royce’s voice softened. “Oh, to be young and gorgeous and have too many men after you.”
“It’s wretched. I’m so tired. I should just move away and change my name.”
Royce rested his hand on Cosmo’s shoulder. “I know I won’t be around every time to scare these guys away, but I’m here for you. You know that, right?”
“Oh, Royce.” Cosmo sniffled, and when Royce tugged him closer, he leaned against him and pressed his nose into Royce’s collar. A tiny seed of doubt sprouted in his mind, entertaining the idea that Micah might be right about the director’s intentions. But Cosmo immediately crushed the thought. He was not going to let the words of a jealous romantic interest drive a wedge between him and one of his only remaining sources of support. He said to Royce, “You’re so good to me. Do you want to go snap Zedd’s neck to get rid of one of my man problems?” He looked up at him and batted his lashes. “Pretty please?”
Royce’s gaze lingered. “That’s… very tempting. But I think what you need right now is some food, hm? What do you want?”
That tongue burrito didn’t sound so appealing with his stomach twisted in a knot. Everything felt too monumental right now, too overwhelming. “I want a drink.”
“Ah.” Royce’s eyes crinkled in a smile, creating waterfalls of crow’s feet. “Finally going to let me buy you that drink I’ve been offering for years?”
Cosmo let out a humorless chuckle. “Seems like something always came up, or I wasn’t in the mood. But I’m absolutely in the mood now, and I would love it if you joined me.”
“Well, there happens to be a bar across the street. But you shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach. Want my last taco?”
Cosmo forced down a few bites. They crossed the street and headed into a pub he didn’t catch the name of. The scent of beer-soaked wood enveloped him, and the clack of billiard balls came from the other end of the room. He sat on a vinyl seat with a split down the middle and pushed away a sticky napkin.
Royce ordered two mind erasers. What Cosmo needed was a heart eraser. Just scrub away all the feelings inside him until they turned to gummy pink eraser dust and blew away.
The bartender set a fizzy coffee cocktail in a rocks glass before him, and he pounded it back. A rush went to his head, and he blinked at the neon signs behind the bar.
Royce snorted. “I don’t think you’re supposed to hammer it down like that.”
Fire ran into Cosmo’s stomach, and he raised his finger to the bartender to request another. “I’m going to do what I like. Are you going to stop me?”
“Not at all. I’ll take care of you.”
After several more mind erasers, they started to do their job, though he couldn’t quite rub out all thoughts of Micah. Cosmo shuddered to think he’d been so close to throwing himself into his arms. He’d thought Micah was different, and it hurt to be this wrong. Using the threat of danger just to get them back together! That was cruel.
