Chapter 8
THEO
“So I’ve got pistachio and raspberry, dark chocolate and peanut butter, cookie dough, or salted caramel brownie,” Simon said, tossing four brightly packaged protein bars on the bed. “There’s more where they came from, but those are the only flavors. Take your pick.”
I met his eyes, insides filling with warm, fuzzy cotton wool. He’d brought these for me. He’d brought these for me because he knew I wouldn’t eat in front of other people if I was uncomfortable or upset, and he knew I’d be both at some point while I was here.
“You barely even picked at dinner,” he said, confirming what I’d just been thinking. “You’ve gotta eat something.”
I wanted to kiss him. As relieved as I’d been to close the bedroom door behind me thirty seconds ago, I wished, for a split second, that we were back downstairs amongst the rest of the wedding party, so I could make an excuse to step into his space, put both hands on his face, and kiss him until we both ran out of air.
Not that I was all that surprised. This wasn’t the first time Simon had done this for me. He’d even remembered what flavors of protein bar I liked.
Of course he had.
“Do you know you’re amazing?”
Simon smiled wryly, rubbing the back of his neck and shrugging. “If you starve to death, I’ll be here all alone.”
I picked the dark chocolate and peanut butter bar off the bed, sitting heavily on the edge of it. The solid warmth of Simon’s body settling beside me cut through the knot in my stomach, and before the mattress had even stopped creaking under his weight, I was suddenly starving.
We sat in silence as I tore the protein bar open and bit a chunk off the end, making a happy noise. Tension ebbed out of me as I chewed, the stress of having been seated between Audrey and my mother beginning to ease.
“Madelaine knows,” Simon spoke up. “That we’re faking.”
I stopped chewing.
“It’s fine,” Simon continued. “I mean, she told me she’s not planning to say anything.”
“What gave us away?” I asked, taking another, more cautious bite.
“You failed to mention me on the drive.” Simon shrugged. “If we’d been dating for real, you wouldn’t have been able to shut up about me.”
“Oh.”
Madelaine knew me better than I’d thought, then. She was right—I had a habit of overtalking about people I was dating.
I didn’t talk about Simon very much to other people at all.
He was mine. About the only thing I really felt was mine.
I didn’t want to share.
“Like I said, it’s fine, she won’t tell. I guess now I know for sure none of this was premeditated.”
I turned my head to look at him so fast my neck twinged. “You didn’t—”
Simon waved me off with a laugh. “I knew it wasn’t. Desperate times, and all.”
I wished now that I’d thought to ask Simon to pretend to be my boyfriend before we’d arrived.
I hated that I’d sprung it on him, that he hadn’t really had a choice.
He theoretically could have asked me what the hell I was doing, pushed me away, but I’d known he wouldn’t.
I’d known as soon as I asked him to play along that he would, regardless of how he felt about it.
I tried so, so hard not to take advantage of him, and the fact that I’d done it made my stomach pinch again.
“How was sitting next to Audrey?”
“Awkward. She asked about you, though,” I said, shoving the last of the protein bar in my mouth.
Simon laughed again. “Like, what are you doing with that idiot over there who can’t even wear a suit right?”
I raised an eyebrow, mouth still occupied with chewing.
“Something Madelaine said. I’m, uh. Wearing it like I’m going to prom and it’s my dad’s, apparently.”
I wrinkled my nose. Simon looked great. Okay, he was always a little awkward around my family, but so was I. They were awkward people.
I shrugged, licking chocolate off my fingers. “I think it looks good on you. You’re just not used to it, is all.”
“I think that was her point.” Simon smiled wryly. “Do you want another one of those?”
I turned around to consider the selection still lying on the bed behind us.
“No,” I decided. “Thank you.”
“No need to thank me. I’ll bust you out of here and take you somewhere nice for breakfast in the morning.”
“You really don’t have—”
Simon raised a hand to stop me. “If you starve, I will be left alone with your family,” he repeated. “You wouldn’t wish that on me, would you?”
I would not. I wouldn’t have wished it on me. The fact that Simon was here with me was the only thing keeping me from having a breakdown. Or at least hiding in the bedroom as much as possible.
“Never,” I said.
Simon nudged my knee with his own. “There you go. I’m taking you to breakfast and you can’t stop me.”
I went to respond, but as soon as I opened my mouth, it turned into a yawn. Now that I’d eaten, I felt as though I’d been hit by a truck full of melatonin gummies.
The pit of my stomach twisted again at the thought of curling up in bed beside Simon. We had shared a bed before—more times than he should have let me—but we’d never gone to bed together. Not like this.
“Tired?”
“So tired.”
“Me too.” Simon yawned, covering his mouth with his hand. “Bed time?”
“Bed time,” I agreed.
We both went through our bedtime routines quietly, moving around each other with the same ease we had when we’d lived together. Simon’s hand brushed over my shoulders, my arm, my hip as he squeezed past me. Never lingering, just enough to know he was there and to stop me stepping backward into him.
I’d missed this. The quiet, domestic intimacy of sharing space.
I’d been chasing it since I moved out, leaping at every scrap of it I could get from anyone, but it never felt like this. Being around Simon wasn’t just as easy as breathing. Being around him made it easier to breathe.
For the first time ever, I crawled into bed before Simon did, curling up on my own side and closing my eyes.
My stomach swooped as the mattress dipped under him, an ache pulsing in the center of my chest as he joined me.
The bed was big enough that we could each have more than enough space without touching—bigger than Simon’s double, where there was just barely enough room for two grown men.
I wished it was smaller.
“Night, Theo,” Simon murmured. “Sweet dreams.”
“Night, Sy,” I responded, cracking my eyes open to look at him. All I could see in the moonlight filtering through the blinds was the shape of his body under the covers, but I would have known it anywhere.
My fingers itched to reach out and touch.
I closed my eyes and rolled over, curling my fingers into the sheets so I wouldn’t be tempted.
“Sweet dreams.”
“As promised,” Simon said, passing me a paper cup of coffee and setting maybe the most appealing breakfast sandwich I’d ever seen down in front of me. Bacon, avocado, and a fried egg on thick-sliced seeded bread, the soft-cooked yolk dripping decadently over the rest of the filling.
I licked the salt the breeze coming off the water had left on my lips, raising the coffee to my mouth and letting my nose rest against the rim of the cup.
The food truck Simon had stopped at had sailed so far past pretentious that it had circled back around to earnestly kitsch, with gingham and lace curtains, a handwritten chalk sign, authentically burned drip coffee and absolutely zero kale-containing smoothies on the menu.
The rich scent of frying bacon joined the salt on the breeze, the sounds of laughter and children playing on the beach punctuated with demanding seagulls milling around people’s feet and under tables.
One of them was perched on a little girl’s bike and wasn’t moving, no matter how petulantly she pleaded with it.
The sun was shining in a cloudless blue sky, the day already starting to warm up. Simon’s foot nudged mine under the table, and when I looked at him, he smiled a lopsided smile I couldn’t have stopped myself returning if I wanted to.
“You’re too good to me.”
Simon huffed, leaning back in the seat opposite me, drumming both hands on the weather-worn wooden table between us.
The table was small enough that we couldn’t avoid our feet tangling under it, and far enough from the growing line in front of the truck that it felt private, even out in broad daylight.
“Eat your breakfast,” Simon said, lifting his own sandwich and taking a bite out of it. He moaned, wiping a drop of what I assumed was hot sauce—since his mouth was apparently made of asbestos—from the corner of his lips with his thumb before licking it off.
“Staring at me,” Simon said around his third mouthful, which was when I realized I’d been doing that instead of eating.
I shrugged and looked down at my sandwich, which I’d gotten as far as picking up but not actually taken a bite of yet.
“I like watching you eat.”
Simon raised an eyebrow, mouth too full to say anything.
“You like eating,” I explained, realizing that had sounded weird. I wasn’t sure I was making it sound less weird now, but since I was already digging a hole, there wasn’t much point stopping now. “I like seeing you happy.”
Simon made a sound that might have meant oh, I get it now, or you’re so weird. Whichever it was, though, I knew it was meant with affection.
“I like being sure you’re not going to drop dead of starvation,” he said once he’d swallowed his mouthful. “Eat.”
I obeyed, partly to make Simon happy, partly because I really was hungry again this morning. Yesterday had been more exhausting than I’d thought. I was grateful for the coffee—burned or otherwise.
“You pass out from low blood sugar one time…” I muttered between mouthfuls, rolling my eyes. I’d been fine. It really only had happened once, when we were still in college.
It’d freaked Simon out, though. That was obvious from the fact that he’d refused to let me go hungry in his presence_—and sometimes out of it—ever since.