Exit Interview

By Leonardo Cossari

I walked into the bar expecting oblivion in a glass, maybe a regrettable hookup. Instead, I noticed a man in a white tank top—too still for that bar, too composed for the heat and noise and bad decisions.  

Our eyes met through the bar soup. Not sparks—something colder, like air slipping under your clothes before you noticed. 

My dick voted yes before my brain made it to the ballot. I gave him the look. He took me in slowly. Not appraising—confirming. He nodded, like I’d met some requirement he didn’t invent but still had to enforce. 

I zigzagged through half-naked men, inhaling Friday night—beer, sweat, molly. Jake clocked me and gave a lazy wink. Bless him. I caught my reflection in the mirror—neon hum, eyes not quite lined up with my skull, my face slightly off. He was the only thing that stayed in focus, standing there, waiting like he already knew how this ended. He smiled—not hunger, relief, like he was afraid I might not be the one. 

Up close, he smelled like fresh rain on warm earth. There was a stillness to him, like he’d learned how to breathe by copying other people. For a second, his eyes flicked to my mouth, then away—like he was reading a ledger. 

'You okay?' I asked. 

He nodded. 'Yeah. Just—making sure.' 

We were nose to nose, mouths colliding—feral, familiar. I’d kissed a hundred boys in bars. This one felt less like starting than remembering. 

We tumbled into my apartment. Clothes vanished. His body against mine felt less new than inevitable, which was either romantic or a massive red flag. I didn’t stop to vote. 

Afterward, he grunted, like someone yanked his power cord. His arm dropped across my waist, heavy and proprietary. The second his skin settled on mine, something in the room clicked over. Not a sound exactly, more like pressure changing before a storm. 

I stared at the water stains on my ceiling and tried to work out why he didn’t feel like a stranger. Usually that was where I’d start worrying. Instead I was busy hoping he wouldn’t disappear before morning. Maybe this was what Rabbi Goldstein meant, though I doubted he had bathhouses in mind. 

Five, then seven-thirty. I must’ve fallen asleep. 

Sunlight filtered through dusty blinds and pinned us in amber. His chest swelled. Not a ton. He woke half asleep, half wolf, and pulled me back into bed. 

Later—much later—3:17 a.m. He jolted awake like he was late for something. The room was all shadow. His face went hollow, panic undisguised. 

'A bad dream?' I said. 

'No,' he said, like he’d just received terrible news. 

When he looked at me, it wasn’t sex in his face anymore. My chest tightened like I’d just been called on without warning. 

He tilted his head upward, like he was listening for something I couldn’t hear, and then he breathed, slow and deliberate, like it took effort. The look on his face gave me the strangest feeling, like I’d seen that expression before—somewhere under fluorescent lights, my name being called from far away. 

'What’s wrong?' 

He looked past me, tracking something I couldn’t see. 

'Time,' he said. 'It’s not ours.' 

I didn’t ask which time. 

'Kiss me,' he said. 'Now.' 

In the dark our mouths met and something moved through me, not heat, not lust, deeper than skin. He took my hands like I was the only thing left that was real. The space between us was gone, no neat margin, nothing that was distinctly him or me. 

By dawn, a quiet, treacherous thought: this might be something. 

The phone rang. I didn’t answer it. Bob’s voice crackled on the machine. 'You’re off the hook. Deadline moved.' Then the machine clicked off. 

He sat up fast, like the sound called him by name. 

I nodded toward the kitchen. 'Water?' 

'None for me,' he said, watching the condensation slide down the glass without touching it. 

'I once stopped going to a job without quitting.' 

He just stared with those whiskey-dark eyes, my stomach flipping. 

'They emailed. I ignored them. Eventually they got the hint.' 

His expression didn’t change. 

'Truth is, I was heartbroken. My man left me for a naked yoga instructor.' 

'Some people don’t get to choose when they’re done,' he said. 

He pulled me closer, like he was trying to keep me in one piece. 

'What?' I asked. 

'Just like looking at you.' 

Sunlight came through the blinds but bent strangely around him. He leaned against the frame. His eyes looked spent. I crossed the room and wrapped my arms around him, expecting warmth. 

He was cold. Not chilled—wrong. 

He went rigid, and his face caught the light and I was eighteen again—passenger side window blown white with rain, tires screaming, a body leaning over me where no body should’ve been. Then it was gone. 

'I’ve got something to tell you,' he said. 

'Five days. Nobody was picking out curtains.' 

He stared at the floor like it owed him an answer. 

'What—secret wife in Kalamazoo?' 

'It’s not that.' 

'Then what?' 

He swallowed—or pretended to. 

'Terminal disease?' 

'It’s worse,' he said, which was not what anyone wanted to hear after terminal. 

That vein in my forehead started to pulse. 

He looked up. For the first time, I was afraid. 

'What if I told you I’m dead?' 

'We’re all a little dead inside by the time we’re thirty.' 

He shook his head. 'Buried.' 

'Like a ghost?' 

'Close enough.' 

'Then how?' 

'I’m dead,' he said. 'Just not entirely gone.' 

'That’s not a real answer.' 

'It’s the only one I can give.' 

I saw him properly then—the stillness, the rise and fall of his chest, like breathing was something he had to remember to keep doing. 

'So this'—I gestured between us, the bed, his body, the whole impossible mess—'what is this? A layover?' 

His mouth lifted. 'Something like that.' 

I reached for him and my palm slid over his chest—cold, not dead-cold, wrong-cold. Like marble that remembered being warm. 

'And this is how you looked?' 

'Close enough.' 

'Close enough?' 

'I made adjustments.' 

I looked him over. 

'For the job?' 

He met my eyes. 'For you.' 

My hand stayed where it was. I could feel him holding still beneath it—as if even then some part of him was listening for permission to disappear. 

'Dead I can handle,' I said. 'You leaving scares me.' 

His hand covered mine, held it there—not stopping, not encouraging. Just… making sure I felt it. 

'I’m not leaving,' he said. 'I’m here for you.' 

Against every rule I had, I believed him. 

He shifted against me, and there it was—immediate. I glanced down, then back up at him. 

'Oh,' I said. 'Good to know that still works.' 

'You don’t have to,' he said. 

'I know.' 

I pulled him back into me anyway. Not because I wanted him—though I did—but because I needed something that still felt like mine. Moonlight turned his skin thin as paper. I fell asleep thinking, idiotically, that maybe he’d stay. 

I woke with chalk in my mouth and reached for him. The sheets were cold, but not empty. 

'Seriously?' I muttered. 'You swear you’re staying, then Houdini out at dawn?' 

The room tilted. For a second, depth gave up. I stood and saw the body on the bed. One arm flung over the pillow like sleep. Mouth half-open. Mine—pale, still, unmistakably me in a way that made my stomach drop like I’d missed a step in the dark. 

No. I stepped closer. 

The air had that sweet, off smell—flowers left too long in water. The radiator clicked. A smoke alarm hiccupped. My mouth opened. Nothing came out. 

It happened whether I was ready or not. This was what he meant by I’m here for you. 

'Where the hell did you go, you lying bastard?' 

Then he was there—no thunder, no smoke. Just standing in the doorway, calm as a clerk waiting for paperwork.

'I—I’m dead.' The words stuck. 

He nodded. 'It’s okay.' 

'Easy for you to say.' 

I threw myself onto the bed, clawing at my body—skin like cheap vinyl. 

'Put me back.' 

He was there instantly, lifting me like something breakable. 

'Put me back,' I said again. 

'I can’t,' he said. 'It was your time.' 

'My time?' I jerked away. 'What about everything I didn’t do?' 

The half-written novel. My sister’s unread message. I looked down at myself on the bed. Still got abs. Years at the gym. Protein shakes. Saying no to bread. 

For this. 

'That’s it? That’s my exit?' 

'Yes.' 

'It’s not fair.' 

'I know.' 

'I never even learned how to make a decent omelet.' 

'Nobody does,' he said. 

'When did I…?' 

'Three hours ago.' 

He took my hand and suddenly I was somewhere else, the glare of sun on water, waves pulling me deeper in the riptide, my lungs burning as I fought for the surface. Then sand beneath my back, my body coughing up seawater as a man leaned over me, pumping air into my lungs. 

The room came back. 

I pulled my hand from his. 

'You.' 

Tears came from nowhere. 

He wiped my face, and this time I saw it clearly—it was him. The same him who was inside me. 

'Why didn’t I know?' I said it into his shoulder. 

'Time folds,' he said, like that explained anything.

My knees gave. 

'So this was some celestial exit interview?' 

'No. We had to connect.' 

'You always knew.' 

He didn’t answer. Just looked at me. 

'Yeah,' he said. 

'So what,' I said, 'you were just going to let me… what? Finish? Get attached? Tip you on the way out?' 

His mouth twitched at that, like it almost remembered how to smile. 

'My job was to make it painless,' he said. 'Everything else was… extra.' 

'Right,' I said. 'God forbid we complicate the experience.' 

He didn’t rise to it. Just stayed there, which was somehow more irritating. 

'Did you kill me?' 

He looked up at that. 

'No,' he said. 'We don’t do that.' 

'Great,' I said. 'So what—my body just clocked out mid-performance? Heart attack? Aneurysm? Extremely on-brand exit?'

He pointed gently at my head. 'A bleed.' 

'Wait,' I said. 'You said we.' 

'There are others.' 

'Doing this?' 

He nodded. 

'What the hell?'
 

'I’m not allowed to explain.' 

'Figures. So what was I on some kind of cosmic list?' 

His attention drifted past me again, like there was something just over my shoulder he had to keep watching.

'There are rules,' he said. 

'So why me?' 

He rested his forehead against mine. 'You were already halfway gone. I’ve been assigned to you for twenty years.' 

I laughed, because what else was I supposed to do with that. 

'That’s not romantic,' I said. 

'You almost went three times,' he said. 'I didn’t get you.' 

Something in the way he said it—flat, but not careless—made me stop. 

'When?' 

'You don’t remember.' He sighed. 'That’s part of how it works.' 

'So what,' I said, 'you’ve been haunting me professionally?' 

'I don’t choose when,' he said. 'Just who I stay with.' 

Something flashed behind my eyes—hospital light buzzing overhead. Rain needled across shattered glass. The sun burned white off the water. A soaked hand pressed hard against my chest. A thumb rubbed circles against my wrist while someone waited for me to come back. 

Always him. 

It felt like love. I hated that. 

'Yeah,' I said. 'The migraines. The white-outs.' 

He only watched me. 

And that’s when it landed. 

Not the headaches. 

The bags I never unpacked, my sister’s message still sitting there unopened, sex I couldn’t quite remember, just the outline of it, and buying things I didn’t want just so I’d have somewhere to be. 

'It’s time to go,' he said, like we were leaving a bad party early. 

'Go where?' I backed away. 'I just got used to being dead.' 

Golden light moved under his skin—beautiful, wrong. 

'I’m not ready.' 

'Nobody ever is.' 

'What if I stay?' 

'That’s not how it works.' 

'What if I refuse?' 

Something in the room tightened. 

'I don’t get to stay.' 

'Where do you go?' 

He looked tired in a way sleep didn’t fix. 

'Away from you,' he said. 'No one else will meet you. And once it closes, it closes.' 

'What does that mean?' 

'It means you die again and again,' he said. 'Until someone else comes.' 

'Someone else.' 

'Yes.' 

'And if it’s not you?' 

'It won’t be.' 

'Oh.' 

I scanned my apartment—the unwatered ficus, the mail I hadn’t opened, a chair I bought because the salesman was hot. I touched the unopened envelope with my thumb. OVERDUE stamped across the front. I didn’t pick it up. 

I’d already lived that life. 

I didn’t want to die doing it twice, especially not the boring version. The one where I kept my real desires tucked behind jokes, behind good manners, behind whatever version of me made other people comfortable. More than I ever let myself ask for. Things I only admitted to in the dark. 

But he knew. 

And stayed. 

'Okay,' I said. 'I’ll go.' 

He turned back, relief breaking through him. 

'But wait,' I said. 'What if this is just… cosmic Grindr?' 

'What do you think I waited twenty years for?' he said. 'There is no other.' 

'Fuck,' I said softly. 'What if you’re the best thing that ever happened to me—and it still sucks?' 

He shrugged. 'You didn’t like anything here either.' 

I stepped back because, even then, I needed to make sure he was still perfect, like I had a choice. He was—still unfairly beautiful. 

He took my hand. His fingers were cool, but the grip was certain, like he’d done this before and knew hesitation only made it worse. 

The world thinned. 

'No,' I said, and took one step back. 

He pulled me close and kissed me—the same electric jolt. 

Behind him, the apartment was already losing detail—the blinds, the chair, the body on the bed flattening into light. 

I didn’t pull away. Before I could change my mind—or make a joke that ruined it—we stepped forward. 

---

Leonardo Cossari (he/him) is a Melbourne-born writer based in Umbria, Italy. He studied at the Victorian College of the Arts before continuing his training in writing and directing at New York University and The Writers Studio in New York. Having lived in New York City for more than twenty years, his fiction often explores queer lives, belonging, and the uneasy space where humor and heartbreak intersect. He is the founder of Centro Storico 21, a cultural and literary blog focused on Italian life, food, and art. Follow Leonardo on Facebook: @centrostorico21 and Instagram: @centrostorico21