I blink and look around the room, but the moment I do, everything is back to normal. I feel sick. My stomach does nervous flips as my heart pounds. On the television, Meg Ryan moans. “Yes, yes, yes… Oh… Oh… Oh… Oh…”
The tension in the room was high enough already. Now, with Ryan’s fake orgasm added to the mix, it’s excruciating. I reach for the remote, but Mom pulls it to her chest. Her eyes stay fixed on the screen, but she’s wearing the biggest smile I’ve seen on her face in weeks. It doesn’t seem like she noticed anything out of the ordinary, but she’s 100% trying to get me all hot and bothered in front of this man.
Or maybe she’s trying to get him all hot and bothered.
I look at him out of the corner of my eye and find he’s looking at me with an expression somewhere between curiosity and awe. The movie stops again. Everything stops. This time I immediately look atMom to see if she’s stopped, too, but the second my gaze shifts everything resumes and a woman’s voice fills the silence with one of the most iconic lines in Hollywood history:“I’ll have what she’s having.”
“I’m Hazel,” I blurt, sticking out my hand. Whatever just happened was too intimate for two people who don’t know each other’s first names.
A stray lock of dark hair falls into his eyes, and he brushes it away with a flip of his head. He doesn’t take my hand, but covers his chest with one palm. “Cosmos.”
“Like the flower?” My cheeks heat as soon as I ask the question. Most people don’t even know there’s a flower called cosmos, and I’m sure most guys don’t want to be compared to a type of sunflower. He probably thinks of himself more likeCosmos: the universe.
But he doesn’t seem offended. He smiles. “My mom’s favorite.”
I always liked them too, but I’m not about to tell him that. He seems confident enough as it is. I pace the room, anxiously trying to gather my thoughts. When I turn back around, our eyes meet, and it happens a fourth time, if I don’t count last night, which I guess wasn’t a dip into insanity or a prank.
Everything stops. Like someone hit pause on life. “You see this, right? I mean the TV… and… and the clock? I’m not hallucinating, right?”
“If you are, so am I.”
“How are you not more freaked out over this?”
“I just know… it’s…” He shakes his head, breaks eye contact, and looks down at Mom’s chart. It trembles ever so slightly in his hands. He has nice hands. Long fingers, neatly trimmed nails. Good hands for surgery. Dexterous. Hands that make it easy to reach hard to reach places. I rip my eyes away, but that just leads me to look at his strong jawline and lush lips. What is wrong with me?
I’m clearly making him uncomfortable, because he takes a quick step backwards. Entirely understandable. I’m being a total creeper, but I can’t believe we just did that. I want to know everything about him, about how that happened, and what it means.
“I need to check on some other patients,” he says.
“You’re leaving?” I want to add‘right now’in an incredulous tone, but I don’t. I self-consciously look down at my hands, so dry the skin cracks in places, and pick at a broken nail, trying to come up with something to say, some reason to keep him here.
But I understand the need to retreat. This is too much. It doesn’t fit into my understanding of the world, into any paradigm I have for existence. But there has to be some explanation, right?
“You’ll come back, though?” Mom says. There’s something devious in the look she gives him, and I frown. I’d almost forgotten she was here.
Cosmos looks just as startled and almost drops his clipboard. His laugh has a nervous edge to it, but he covers it quickly. “Any patient who loves romance novels deserves a little extra checking up on. Next time, you can tell me if you’re more into historical romance or contemporary.”
Mom laughs. “I don’t care. I like it all.” She putsher hand to the side of her mouth and mock-whispers, “Even the monster stuff.”
“Woman after my own heart.” Cosmos gives her a smile so bright it almost makes me jealous.
He seems to have recovered from whatever shock he was experiencing, but mine has only grown. I can’t believe he’s standing here chatting about romance novels with my mom when we juststopped time!
He looks at me, and I no longer hear Mom’s laugh.
“I’d like to see you again, Hazel.” He says my name like he’s testing it out, seeing how it tastes on his tongue. “If that’s okay.”
I nod once, slowly.
“After my shift.”
Silence wraps around us for a single breath. Then, he’s gone.
Chapter Five
It’s 2am when I turn off the TV and stop waiting for Cosmos to come back. Mom’s been asleep for a while, and I’m tired of watching old movies that aren’t good enough for prime time slots. I still have to write ten pages for Dr. Paatel. I should do that instead of moping around wondering when Dr. Obnoxiously Hot is done with his shift, but I can’t stop thinking about what happened this afternoon.
Did we really stop time? How is that possible?
