Chapter 14 #2
“He still made you go along,” I grumbled, glancing at the place where Simon’s shirt had been pushed up again. “Does it hurt?”
“Only if I move. Or breathe,” he said, laughing again. “I’m okay. Don’t worry about me.”
But I did worry about him. I wanted to trace the outline of every bruise with the gentlest touch, press the softest kisses to the sorest spots. To, for once, take care of Simon the way he’d always taken care of me.
A sudden bang behind me made me jump.
The fireworks had started.
I turned to look just in time to see the first one fizzling out. Another two shot up either side of it, then three between them, bursting one after another and filling the sky with a rainbow of light.
“I know they’re dangerous and bad for the environment and whatever,” Simon said. “But they’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
His attention was already on the show, mouth turned up into a soft, warm smile I could’ve stared at for hours without getting bored.
“I used to be terrified of them,” I confessed, taking advantage of his distraction to watch him. It wasn’t as though I didn’t see Simon happy all the time, but there was something… unguarded about him right now. Something I wasn’t sure I did see all that often. “When I was little.”
I’d never told Simon that. It’d never come up. The last time we’d watched fireworks together, it’d ended…
“Yeah?”
I nodded, toying with my beer again. “The noise,” I said. “Hated it. Made me jump every time.”
“We can go,” Simon offered, turning to look at me. “Sneak inside, or whatever.”
I shook my head. “I’m fine now. It was just when I was a kid. I was over it by twelve or so.”
I’d also never told anyone else, Mom and Dad included. I knew better than to show that kind of weakness, even then.
Simon was the only person I’d ever told. Simon…
I glanced over at him again as another group of fireworks went off.
The colors played over his face, lighting up the familiar angles—the curve of his mouth as it fell open in quiet awe, the line of his brow as it rose.
His glasses reflected them, making his eyes look like they were sparkling. I’d only seen that once before.
I’d made a stupid mistake the last time I’d seen him like this.
In the back of my mind, I knew I was about to make another even as I moved to do it.
But this wasn’t real life. What happened in Montauk stayed in Montauk. We were going to forget all about this weekend after it was over. Simon had promised me that, and Simon had never, in the entire time I’d known him, broken a promise to me.
And I wanted.
I could taste the pineapple the beer label had promised on Simon’s lips the moment mine touched them.
It was completely the wrong thought to have while my heart was hammering in my ears so hard my head was spinning, when I was doing something that terrified me, when I should have been waiting for Simon to push me away.
Like he had last time. Slowly, gently, but unmistakably.
Ten years to the day since I’d last kissed him on this dock. Ten years to the day since he’d pushed me away and never mentioned it again. Ten years of knowing I couldn’t have this, that it was the one thing Simon wouldn’t—couldn’t—give me.
I wasn’t surprised when the push came. My heart sank, but it wasn’t a shock. I’d known it was coming.
“Theo,” Simon said, more a breath than a word, still so close to me I felt it brush over my lips. His glasses reflected another burst of fireworks, flashing red, white, and blue. I couldn’t even hear them anymore over the pounding in my ears.
“I’m—”
Simon surged forward, kissing the sorry right out of my mouth.
It was like being hit by a six-foot swell. I had been, once, on the beach not so far from here. Dragged out into the Atlantic, helplessly struggling and gasping for breath. I’d had to be rescued by a lifeguard in a little blow-up raft.
There was no raft coming for me this time, but I trusted Simon not to let me drown.
His hand curled around the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair and sending a shiver down my spine. I made a needy little sound, inching closer. It seemed impossible that this was happening, but it was, and I didn’t understand why, but I wasn’t about to argue.
“Don’t be,” Simon murmured against my lips, letting me breathe just as my lungs had started to burn. “Tell me you’re not sorry.”
What happens in Montauk stays in Montauk. This isn’t real life.
“I’m not,” I confessed. I wasn’t. I hadn’t been sorry when I kissed him, and I wasn’t sorry now.
“Good.” Simon pulled back far enough for me to look him in the eyes, the fireworks still bursting overhead and painting him in a shower of light and color.
This close, I could see his pupils were blown, eyes glinting as he looked over my face.
“Good,” he repeated. “I’m not sorry, either.”
I couldn’t have stopped the smile that spread over my face if my life depended on it.
“Simon,” I said—sighed, really, the kind of breathless sigh I’d always wanted someone to say my name in.
Not someone. The specific person in front of me.
“That’s what you call me,” he said. Another person wouldn’t have heard the tremor in it. Any other person wouldn’t have thought Simon was ever nervous about anything. Any other person would only have seen the larger-than-life extrovert he showed the world.
I knew him better. I heard the tremor.
The thought made something warm and soft flood the pit of my stomach. I groped for his hand without moving my face, gripping it tight when I covered it with my own.
“Is that offer to sneak inside still open?”