As soon as the front door closes behind us, I turn on him. “Why did you tell them?”
I thought stopping time was just for us. It feels so personal, so real and vulnerable. It’s not the sort of thing you talk about. Stopping time was a bubble, a perfect protected thing, away from everyone else. By telling them, he popped that bubble. He let people in, and I didn’t even know.
“Why?” I ask again.
“I need to show you something.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cosmos leads me around back to a homemade greenhouse, hobbled together by a random collection of window panes. He doesn’t stop until we’re inside and the door is closed. It’s dark, but there are Christmas lights strung overhead, giving the whole place a warm, dim glow.
He doesn’t say anything right away, just keeps rubbing at his face, like he’s trying to work up to whatever it is he wants to say. He seems so uncomfortable, I actually take pity on him.
“So, does your sister always talk about sex at the dinner table like that?” I ask, changing the subject, even while my heart still aches. Maybe we both need to take a step back for a second.
“Cece?” he asks, confusion creasing his forehead. “Usually, she’s worse.” The hand that’s been rubbing his face runs up into his hair, scratching at his head.
I finger the soft petals of a rose and survey thegreenhouse. Ferns grow in pots scattered across the floor. The middle row is all roses, but the edges of the greenhouse are all kinds of other flowers, many I recognize, but couldn’t name.
Cosmos breaks the silence. “This thing we can do… it’s not a complete surprise to me.”
My heart wilts at his words. “You mean you’ve stopped time with someone else before?”
“No, definitely not.” He smiles at me before walking down the row of flowers. “My parents’ relationship… well, they had magic like we do. Only it was different.” He pauses and picks a dead leaf off a plant, crumbling it between his fingers.
I want to ask a million questions, but I don’t. If I say anything, he might stop talking, and I want to hear where this is going.
“You know how people talk about feeling butterflies when they’re around someone they’re attracted to?” He turns and looks at me again, and I know exactly the feeling he’s talking about. My insides flutter like there’s a thousand butterflies between my ribs.
“My parents got that feeling every time they looked at each other, but something more happened. Real butterflies showed up. It didn’t matter whether they were inside or outside. It was like they were the Pied Piper of butterflies. Sometimes it was just one or two, sometimes a lot more. You should see the pictures of their wedding. There were hundreds of butterflies all over the garden where they were married. Everyone kept asking how they got themto stay there and not fly away. It was like a fairyland.”
“Sounds magical.”
“Yeah.” He turns away from me, and for the first time I notice a butterfly fluttering on a nearby orchid. Cosmos slowly reaches out his finger, and the butterfly flaps its wings and lands on him. He smiles and holds it up for me to see.
“They had to put a mosquito net around their bed to keep them out.” He chuckles. “Apparently, they swarmed when my parents were… intimate.”
I have to stifle a laugh, picturing what it would be like to have butterflies swarming around me while having sex. Which just gets me thinking about sex… and sex with Cosmos.
“It’s even how I got my name,” Cosmos adds.
I look at him in confusion.
“My mom was expecting another girl, so all the names they’d picked out were girl names. They didn’t have a boy name they agreed on. When I was born, two butterflies landed on a cosmos flower in the bouquet my dad brought to the hospital. They decided it was a sign and named me Cosmos.”
“That’s… beautiful.”
“My little sister’s story is even better. My father was dead set on naming her Ivy, and my mom wasn’t certain. So, when she gave birth, he bought her a bouquet with nothing but Ivy in it.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. It’s like something out of a movie. It’s also kind of adorable.
“What was he like?”
“My dad?” Cosmos runs his hands through his hair, then scrubs them down his face. “He was one of those people who didn’t talk very often, but when he did, people listened. But he was always distracted. He would stare off into the distance, and I would call for him a hundred times, but he wouldn’t hear me. I used to think he could see all the magic in the world, like he could lift the veil and see into another realm.”
I can understand how it would be easy to believe in magic growing up in a house full of butterflies. Another butterfly lands on Cosmos’ hair, and he gently brushes it away before moving down the next row of flowers and turning to face me. We’re standing on opposite sides of a rosebush, beauty and thorns between us.
“I always loved their story,” he says. “I wanted something like that.”
