Chapter 6
THEO
“I am so sorry,” I said the moment my bedroom door closed.
The room was almost exactly as I’d left it last time I’d been here—which was to say it looked like a high-end hotel room.
White and grey everything, a minimalist vase of beachgrass perched on each of the nightstands.
The only new thing was the lone decoration in the room—an abstract painting in greens and blues with a splash of orange hanging over the head of the bed, no doubt by one of my mother’s pet artists. It was the only thing with any soul.
“It’s fine,” Simon said, because he was always too nice, too quick to forgive. He sat down on the edge of the bed, looking up at me.
My lips tingled as I thought back to the kiss outside and I had to resist the urge to touch my fingers to them. Simon could not know how much I’d enjoyed that.
I wished I’d thought of that before I kissed him, because now…
“I take it we’re dating?” he asked.
Yeah. That.
I sighed, looking out the window. All the bedrooms in the house looked out onto the same central space. Like a hotel.
It wasn’t the ideal design for privacy, but at least there were blinds.
“And it’s got something to do with Audrey? Who, not for nothing, I think would’ve been happy with an invitation to be a third.”
I snorted, lips twitching despite the panic starting to rise in my stomach. Simon could not know how I felt about him. He was my best friend in the world. My only friend, really. I couldn’t afford to lose him.
Under normal circumstances, keeping my feelings under wraps was easy. I’d been doing it since the day we met.
Under these ones…
“I think my mom’s trying to set me up with her. Or she’s trying to get my mom to set us up, maybe?”
“You know I love you,” Simon said. “And obviously I think you have many great qualities and are objectively an attractive man, so I’m not, y’know, stunned or anything that someone would want to date you. But uh. Why her, and why now?”
I cleared my throat awkwardly. “A single man in possession of a fortune.”
When I glanced at Simon to check his reaction, his brows were predictably drawn in confusion.
“Uh,” I said, pacing up and down the space at the end of the bed. “Must be—”
“In want of a wife,” Simon finished for me. “Please. How many ice cream and wet Colin Firth sessions have we had?”
My lips twitched again. Whenever someone broke up with me, Simon sat with me and watched the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries and provided ice cream and sympathy. Besides, he’d read the book when I first mentioned it was one of my favorites. He knew the line.
“Where you lost me is fortune,” he continued.
Right. Because I’d never told him about the trust fund.
“I mean, we’re in the Hamptons, I’m not stupid, I know your family has money. But Audrey’s does too, right? She’s one of your crowd.”
“I’ve always assumed so, but… uh.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “The thing is, umm, when my dad died, my inheritance from him went into a trust. Which is set to mature when I turn thirty.”
“You’re twenty-eight,” Simon pointed out.
I nodded. “Right, so if she married me before I turned thirty, any pre-nup might not apply to the contents of the fund, because I don’t technically have it before the marriage. Or… I dunno, maybe she’s genuinely interested. Seems unlikely.”
Audrey had been hanging around with Delilah since high school and she’d never indicated before now that she knew my name, let alone harbored any secret fantasies about dating me.
“Wait, really? Does it work like that?”
I shrugged. “I’m not a lawyer. It might? If she had a good one. Dad said once that I shouldn’t marry before thirty and I had no idea why at the time. It might’ve been a joke. He also wasn’t a lawyer.”
Dad had been proud of being, he said, a salesman. He’d come from money, too, but he’d worked to make a lot more during his lifetime—Mom’s side of the family was where the old money came from, but a lot less of it.
He’d been a miserable asshole who hated women and The Gays—which I’d always been able to hear the capitalization of when he got on that particular subject—and had said some things to me about Simon that I’d never forgive him for. I didn’t particularly want his money.
So I hadn’t told Simon about it. Because I hadn’t wanted to talk about him, either. Hadn’t wanted to think about it.
“How much are we—no,” Simon interrupted himself. “No, you know what? I don’t want to know figures. I feel out of my depth enough around your family. You’re going to give me a number that has six zeroes after it and my brain might actually shut down trying to imagine that kind of money.”
“Eight,” I said, feeling like—despite what he’d just said—Simon ought to know, now that it was directly relevant to the mess I’d gotten us into.
“Eight million?” he squeaked.
I looked over to him, tugging on my earlobe as heat rushed to my cheeks. “Zeroes. Eight… zeroes.”
Simon’s mouth fell open.
It stayed that way while he stared at me in silence for five heartbeats, ten, twenty.
Then he flopped back on the bed with a thump, staring up at the ceiling instead. Mouth still hanging open.
“I wish you hadn’t told me that,” he said as I sat down beside him.
“Sorry.”
“I knew, y’know?” he continued as though I hadn’t said anything. “I knew your family had money beyond my feeble human comprehension. I’m not stupid. It just…”
He finally looked at me, eyes soft and searching. “You were always just Theo to me.”
I swallowed around a lump in my throat. “Does this change that?”
It might. If not because Simon had a figure now, then maybe because he hadn’t had one before. Because I’d been hiding this from him.
Not on purpose. If he’d ever asked, I would’ve told him.
But he would never have thought to ask, and I hadn’t volunteered the information because I was afraid that—
Warm fingers slipped under mine, threading between them. I let out a breath I hadn’t meant to hold, looking down at Simon’s hand linked with mine to confirm that was definitely what I was feeling.
When I risked a glance at his face, his lips twitched into a wry smile.
“Not as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “Although it is possibly making me look like the gold digger, here.”
I huffed. “You wouldn’t.”
“You know that,” Simon said. “Not that I care what your mom thinks of me. She could hardly think less.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
Honestly? It’d been part of the appeal of him when we’d first met. He was so unlike anyone else I’d ever known and I knew Mom would hate him being my friend.
Then it hadn’t mattered anymore what she thought. It’d only mattered that I got to spend time with him. That he was mine.
Even if not quite in the way I wished he was.
He’d made it clear a long time ago that he didn’t want that. Ten years, almost to the day.
If I’d thought a number with eight zeroes after it would change his mind on the subject, I wouldn’t have felt the way I did. Simon couldn’t be bought at any price.
“What I don’t get is why mom’s in on it,” I said, flopping back onto the bed beside Simon. We’d have to share, I realized belatedly. Not that we were strangers to sharing a bed.
This felt a little different, though. If we were pretending…
“I do not aspire to understanding anything about the way your mother thinks,” Simon said. “Okay,” he added, taking a deep breath and letting it out as a huff. “How are we playing this?”
“You’re taking it well,” I pointed out. Now that I was horizontal, my heart was finally starting to slow down. Things seemed so much easier when I was lying next to Simon.
That was how they were supposed to feel when people who loved you were nearby, I was fairly sure.
Simon shrugged, the mattress shifting under the movement. “Would it help for me to start freaking out? Because I can, if that’ll make you feel better.”
A smile tugged at my lips. Simon had always had a way of cutting right through anything I was worried about and making it seem ridiculous. Without making me feel ridiculous.
“How long have we been dating?” he asked. “Because that’s gonna come up pretty much first thing.”
I poked my tongue out between my lips while I thought. “It has to be recent,” I decided after a moment. “But since before the wedding announcement got to me. So maybe… two months?”
“Two months,” Simon agreed. “Works for me. Maybe I confessed my feelings on your birthday?”
My birthday was the fifth of May. So that’d make it almost exactly two months.
“You did?”
“I did,” Simon confirmed. “They know you, but they don’t really know me. Better if you’re giving me a chance rather than trying to pretend your taste in romantic partners has completely changed overnight.”
I hadn’t thought of that. From my perspective, it hadn’t.
“Would they think that?”
“The ex-boyfriend your sister’s marrying is an underwear model,” Simon said. The bedsheets rustled as he turned to look at me. “I’m not. And I’m not a lawyer or a doctor or a Nobel laureate, either.”
“I’ve never dated a Nobel laureate,” I said.
I’d never realized what all of that must’ve looked like from Simon’s—and everyone else’s—perspective.
“No, but there was the one Pulitzer winner. I’m a complete nobody. So. I told you I’d been in love with you for years. On your birthday.”
I wished.
“Okay,” I agreed. “I haven’t regretted a second of it, though.”
“Not even when I leave my towels on the floor?”
Simon did leave his towels on the floor. I’d never minded either hanging them up or tossing them in the laundry hamper. He always unloaded the dishwasher because I hated it. I’d cleaned the kitchen. He’d done the laundry. We’d worked well together. We’d always worked well together.
“Not even then,” I said, turning my head to look at him.
There was less than an inch between our noses. I was rarely this close to Simon’s face—partly because I was afraid that if I was, he’d finally notice the way I couldn’t help looking at him.
The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled.
“Not even then,” I repeated, softer. “You’re the best boyfriend I’ve ever had.”