Reflections of a Cool Girl, entry #5: On Cocorico Behaviour, Cosmic Twins, and the Mortifying Privilege of Being Perceived

The man had what he described as “resting bitch face”.

A look of deep contemplation (hint of judgment lol) adorned his face at rest, but he said, it really just meant he was processing.

It was a curious thing, the way his face could go from blank to animated, like a marionette whose strings were cut then yanked back mid-air. 

It was almost unsettling.

Zero to pantomime.

But, without the fakeness of all the pretending. 

It was more the exuberance of the exaggerated act that was shocking.

It struck personal.
Like a mirror. 


When she’d first asked what he was called he said “Zozo les beau carreaux”.
She was bad at French but thought it meant ‘pretty tiles’.
A name that sounded like bougie soap or a teen idol Eurovision entry meant, no doubt, to compliment the unreal aqua blue of his eyes. 

They were truly unreal too, like glacial wiper fluid or the Virgin Mary’s tears. 



And the rest of him was pretty, she hated to admit.
In that specifically French algorithm of arrogance and angles.
He shrugged off his gifts while somehow still making you notice, like a rooster strutting past a mirror and pretending not to look.
She liked that about him.
It was also very her. lol

Sometimes he’d slip her mental snapshots of his POV – in the water, amongst the flowers, taking inventory of the facial expressions of rocks.

Once, early on, she’d asked if he lived in a haunted tree house to which he’d asked if she was some kind of wizard, but assured her his was not haunted.
She hadn’t known how she knew.
Only that she’d seen it, like he’d shown her.

She was still unsure if this was on purpose or not.

(Maybe she’d just stolen them like the psychic pickpocket she was) or…

Could it in fact be, by some universal law, reciprocal?

He did have a knack for reading her mind too. 

They were alike in so many other ways, why not also this one?

He never apologised for the intrusions either, if she pointed them out.
Instead sort of claimed them with a cheeky emoji or Aquarius pride silence.
Another thing they shared 🌚.

Recently, the snapshots had felt so intentional, or, that was her interpretation anyway.

It felt, at least, that he felt more free to express himself with her now.

A part of her would have loved to immediately romanticise this as factual indication he did want her to see his POV, to know him, to understand. 

That he wanted to see hers, know her, understand her, in return.

But, she also knew from experience, that the freedom she gave everyone to express themselves authentically confused less developed characters. 

Specifically the kind not used to the alluring beam of someone’s genuine attention and curiosity so they often immediately mistook it for lust. 

Or, on the flip, specifically those who just liked attention, regardless.

Maybe he was the latter. 

His Ascendant was in Leo. lol
Then again, maybe she should just trust her gut.
Was that not always the lesson?

Her gut said he saw her.

She knew how rare and intoxicating that kind of attention could be. 

And he did give it back.

Their particular cycle of giving and receiving was respectful, more than anything else. 

Playful and platonic, one could argue, an acknowledgment of equality on some unsaid spiritual plane. 

Which, in a way, might be the even more romantic notion:

Intellectual/inexplicable/intuitive interest being worthy of emotional investment.

To see and be seen, what a mortifyingly, beautiful privilege. 


Little Twin Stars. 

It was imagery becoming synonymous with him.

The first time it had clicked in her mind like an answer was on their first date.
(When the intent behind their meeting was still unknown – enemies to lovers, strangers to friends, pawns to players, or something else).


It was after gelato, at a high bar table outside, surrounded by Birds-of-Paradise and curated beach town stores, day darkening into night that a strange moment passed between them:

He said “Twins” at the exact time she’d clocked twins walking by.
She replied, “Twins are weird”.

He’d really looked at her then.
Or, maybe, that’s just the impression she got because his eyes were so clear and it felt like he was staring into her.
🧿👄🧿


But it was then.
Then that it occurred to her that he – and this, and whatever was passing between them – reminded her of something…
the Little Twin Stars.
Beloved Sanrio characters of her youth.


Is that us?
Recognition hit like deja vu from all the alt timelines.
not memory but knowing.
Like when you turn a corner in a dream and understand you’ve walked this maze before, always next to the same electric eyes.
It made her internally lol thinking about it.

And maybe he had also said words or made a follow up noise but mostly she had just KNOWN he meant “the universe really did a thing with twins and cellular sharing…” and they both’d knowingly nodded at the exact same time and said, 

“Oh the twin telepathy thing is—“

Then stopped speaking and took in one another, probably thinking,
“Oh God.” lol. 

Of COURSE they had both done the weird twin telepathy thing while speaking about the weird twin telepathy thing just as twins walked past and her spoon hit the gelato cup with a clink that sounded like the Sanrio universe winking.

She’d been struck from the start when they’d first started talking by how many “coincidences” intertwined their interactions.
The frequency and accuracy and familiarity was too present to even bring up at this point.
It would sound made up and incessant if she pointed out the endless synchronicities.
It had spiralled from their first interaction and had only seemed to get more and more ridiculous since. 

And two years of it had passed now.

The Little Twin Stars.
Boy and Girl, blue and pink.
Just like a picture (actual, not mental) he once sent of the moon from his window casting a pink and blue double overlay, that was them.
An Aquarius communion with the universe, looking up from different points but understanding the same thing: They were just two lunatics seeking validation and giving it by seeing each other.


Her real love language.

She had brought up coincidences once and he’d responded with:
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” but didn’t add any other context so she’d had to trust that what he meant was he believed in fate and everything was as it should be because that’s how it had always been written.

She noted how the admiration he had for writers was qualified in this belief as well.
He’d even once said “God is a woman”, so honestly she knew that, in his eyes at least, she was allowed to be god-like.
Because above all things, she also knew deeply within her soul:
she was a writer through and through.
When she’d told him, he believed her.

And that, was enough.