Chapter Four
After half an hour at the wrap party, Simon might bare his teeth at the next person who tries to hug him. His skin feels prickly
with unwanted contact. The smell of perfume has lodged in that place behind his eyes where headaches start. The restaurant
the production company booked is one of those places with too-high ceilings and terrible acoustics, where conversation dissolves
into a buzz and there always seems to be a draft coming from somewhere.
Jamie gets him a glass of ice water with a lime wedge, which looks enough like a mixed drink that nobody ever asks him why
he isn’t drinking. Which, he does, but not when he’s in an environment composed entirely of migraine triggers.
Wrap parties always have a little last-day-of-school energy, probably because of the combination of work finally being done
and the knowledge that not everyone will be coming back. But this time it feels intense enough that Simon starts to wonder
if other people know he’s planning to leave, if all this hugging and earnest, teary-eyed, shoulder-grabbing I-love-you stuff
is because they recognize it’s the end of something. It’s probably just the open bar making everyone act that way, but it
makes Simon even more uncomfortable than hugging ordinarily does.
“Every party my parents went to,” Jamie says, “my dad would find the kitchen and start doing dishes. He never had to make conversation with anybody.”
“Oh?” It’s rare enough for Jamie to talk about his family that Simon’s concerned they’re about to have a heart-to-heart in
public.
“I’m just saying you could do with a kitchen. Look, you don’t need to do anything. You can’t go to a party incorrectly. Just
stand there and look pretty. Anyone who gets a chance to talk to you won’t be paying attention to what you say.”
Most people might not be reassured to hear that they’re about to be objectified, but that’s truly the kindest thing Jamie
could have said. Simon squeezes Jamie’s upper arm.
Something in the room alters, like the center of gravity shifted, and Simon doesn’t even need to look to know that Charlie’s
arrived. Simon looks anyway. Charlie’s wearing what he probably thinks of as nice jeans and a shirt with buttons. For Charlie
Blake, this is basically a tuxedo.
Simon has on a dark suit, no tie, everything noticeably expensive and immaculately tailored—boring, except for the suit’s
deep plum color, dark enough to pass as black in pictures. Black but with a secret. And his shirt is lilac silk, unbuttoned
just enough to be slightly louche. He’s wearing barely tinted aviators to shield his eyes from the worst of the overhead lighting.
“You look like an old timey drug dealer,” Jamie had said when they were leaving the house. “But in a sexy, upmarket, financially
solvent kind of way.”
“Thank you,” Simon had said, touched.
“Wow,” Jamie murmurs now. “I always forget what he looks like when he isn’t wearing space clothes.” Jamie means the vaguely
military-inspired outfits Charlie wears on Out There.
Tonight, Charlie looks freshly scrubbed, like someone who could jump-start your car or chop firewood. If only he wore sweaters, he’d look like a plausibly rugged L.L.Bean model.
It’s for the best—at least for Simon’s peace of mind—that he doesn’t wear sweaters.
“Don’t worry,” Jamie says, “you’re still the prettiest princess.”
As Simon watches, Charlie hugs someone, then someone else, holding them close while he speaks into their ear. He makes it
look so easy, like he wants to be here, like he’s genuinely happy to see all these people. Simon should look away—he should
walk away—but he doesn’t, and when Charlie catches his eye, his smile falters just a bit before it’s back in place.
Simon winds up in a mind-numbing conversation with one of the producers. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jamie starting
to fidget. Another five minutes of hearing about the producer’s son’s lacrosse team and Jamie will pull the nearest fire alarm.
This is why Jamie can’t find steady work: he can’t, or maybe won’t, fake it. That, and he has a YouTube channel dedicated
to making fun of movies. If you were trying to figure out the most efficient way to guarantee that nobody in this industry
would ever hire you again, it would be fifty hours of footage of you mocking their friends’ work.
This is also, probably, why he’s Simon’s ideal friend. Simon never has any doubt that Jamie sincerely enjoys being around
him.
“Why don’t you go and get us some more drinks,” Simon suggests when the producer pauses to breathe.
Jamie’s gone before Simon even finishes the sentence, and Simon resigns himself to hearing more about the trials of having a child in a private school that costs sixty thousand dollars a year.
It’s not so different from the school Simon went to, so he really shouldn’t judge. He’s judging anyway.
Every minute or so, Charlie’s booming laughter cuts across the buzz of chatter. Over the producer’s shoulder, Simon sees Charlie
talking to Jamie. This is fine. He’s already decided it’s fine. They know one another from when Jamie was on the show, and
from dozens of events just like this one. But the other day, Simon told Jamie what he saw in Lian’s backyard, reasoning that
if Charlie’s exes adore him, then he can’t be a bad target for Jamie’s rebound. If Simon feels weird about it, that’s just
because Simon feels weird about everything.
“There you are!” Lian says, coming up next to Simon and laying a proprietary hand on his elbow. “I’m so sorry, Will, but I
need to steal him away.” When they’re out of earshot, she drops his arm and leans in close. She smells like champagne and
is a little wobbly in her heels. “You’re welcome.”
He doesn’t bother explaining that he’s fine with boring conversations, because all he has to do is occasionally interject
a syllable or two. She’s clearly pleased with her rescue mission.
“Okay, what am I wearing?” Lian asks, holding her arms out.
What she’s wearing is a black silk dress cut like a smock but with a lot of drape and a chic little tie at the neck. “Margaret
Howell,” he says.
She shakes her head, not because he’s wrong but because she thought she’d stumped him.
“I’ve been trying to find a present for my niece,” he explains.
“And I happened to see it.” It’s partly true—he does need a graduation present for Nora, but he checks the women’s collections of his favorite designers out of habit.
Half the texts he sends his mother are links to clothes she might like.
“Lucky niece,” Lian says, her smile broader than he’s used to.
“You’re wine drunk,” Simon says, surprised by a wave of something like affection.
“I had an idea,” she says into his ear. “It’s about next season.”
“I’m not—”
“I know, I know. That’s what I have the idea about. I think you’ll like it.”
“We shouldn’t talk about this now.” Simon gestures at the sea of people around them.
“Call me tomorrow, okay?”
Someone comes up to them, and Simon doesn’t have to turn his head to know it’s Charlie. Maybe it’s just that he’s big enough
to block the light, or maybe after seven years Simon’s gotten used to the cologne Charlie wears whenever he considers it a
fancy enough occasion to warrant shoes that aren’t flip-flops, but either way, there Charlie is.
“I was looking for you,” Charlie says. “Can we get a picture?”
Simon doesn’t say anything because he assumes Charlie’s talking to Lian.
“Simon?” Charlie asks. “Picture?” He holds up his phone, like the problem is that Simon doesn’t know how pictures get taken.
“Why?” Simon asks automatically. Lian snorts.
Charlie frowns. “Why not?”
Simon can’t come up with a good enough reason, so he puts on his work smile and lets Charlie take a selfie, but all the while he’s suspicious.
They haven’t talked since Charlie lectured him in the car.
But now Charlie’s arm is around Simon’s shoulders for reasons that have nothing to do with stage directions.
It’s strange to be this close when they aren’t on set.
“He’s up to something,” Simon tells Jamie as they’re getting ready to leave.
“I don’t think Charlie Blake has ever been up to anything in his life.”
“First that Instagram thing. Then he personally invited me to his party. And now this picture.”
“Diabolical.”
“Come on, he’s never done any of that before.”
“Maybe he’s exhausted by all the psychosexual warfare and just wants to be normal.”
Normal is out of the question for him and Charlie, and he needs to make Jamie understand this. “Just the other day, when he
was driving me home—”
Jamie starts to laugh, loud and bright, and Simon throws his hands up in surrender. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go to Charlie’s
party and get it over with.”
Simon’s not sure what he was expecting Charlie’s house to look like, but if he had to guess he’d have imagined one of those
huge leather sofas that look vaguely inflated. Plenty of forest green. Probably a lot of the kind of art you only acquire
when an interior decorator decides your walls are too empty. An over-reliance on ceiling lights. The design equivalent of
cargo shorts.
There is a big leather sofa, but it isn’t completely hideous. And there’s plenty of art that somehow encompasses both dorm room prints and expensively framed generic-looking abstracts. For the most part, it looks like Charlie walked into a Pottery Barn and bought one of everything.
There are twenty people in the living room, and, from the sound of it, at least as many outside. People are relaxed, their
feet up on the sofa, a pile of shoes near the door. This group is at home here, in Charlie’s house, on his comfortable-looking
furniture. Simon gets a few double takes when he walks in.
He shouldn’t have agreed to come. He told himself he was doing it for Jamie, but Jamie is glued to his side like he’s Simon’s
emotional support dog. The thought makes him wish he had Edie. Everyone would pet her and ask how old she is and compliment