Chapter Five #2
from the sheer wattage of it. Simon’s seen his fair share of that smile over the years, but off set and in broad daylight,
it hits him like a mild concussion.
“Is that book any good?” Simon asks once they’re seated, mainly because the sight of Charlie with a book is so incongruous
that he has to say something. It’s by a different author than the series Jamie was reading.
“Not as good as the other one, but not bad.”
It turns out that “is that book any good” is the only conversational gambit Simon has to offer. Now that he’s used it up,
a hideous silence descends on the table. Simon reads his menu like it holds the secrets to the universe, instead of exactly
the same sandwich and salad options it had the last dozen times he’s been here. When the waiter comes to take their orders—a
grain bowl for Simon, a hamburger for Charlie—Simon has to be reminded to let go of his menu.
“They didn’t have anything on that entire menu you wanted to eat?” Charlie asks.
“I ordered—”
“If you have five substitutions, you’re ordering off menu. Come on. That’s asshole behavior. Even you know that.”
Simon does not need to defend his food choices to Charlie or anybody else, but all his substitutions were mentioned at other
places in the menu, so it isn’t like he’s asking for anything special. He’s ordered the same thing a few times at this restaurant.
The fact is he just doesn’t have the emotional space for new food today, and since that sounds legitimately unhinged even
in his head, he won’t be sharing that fact with Charlie. “I’ll leave a big tip,” he says.
They descend into another long silence.
“So.” Simon drags the syllable out just for the sake of filling dead air.
“So,” Charlie agrees, and proceeds to say absolutely nothing else.
And, seriously, this is all Charlie’s fault because nobody who’s ever met Simon would expect him to navigate his way through an awkward situation.
Meanwhile, Simon has spent hundreds of hours watching Charlie smile and laugh and talk like it’s easy.
So, if you want to be technical about it, and Simon one hundred percent does, Charlie ought to be saying something instead
of sitting there toying with the frayed edge of his T-shirt sleeve in a way that’s very distracting but does nothing to improve
the situation.
When Charlie’s phone buzzes, he grabs at it, probably relieved to have something to do other than marinate in awkwardness.
But when Charlie looks at the screen, his face falls.
“Expecting something?” Simon asks, not because he cares, but because he feels like he owes it to this little project to say
something vaguely in the shape of a conversation.
“I was hoping it was my stepfather. It’s been a few days, and he isn’t picking up the phone or answering my texts.”
Other than regularly scheduled phone calls with his mother, Simon doesn’t call his parents or stepparents, but if he did,
and they failed to answer in under three rings, he’d assume they were unconscious on the bathroom floor. He would literally
call the police. He has enough sense not to say this out loud. “I’m not sure I’ve ever called my stepfather. My mother is
the intermediary.”
“He isn’t with my mom anymore,” Charlie says, which, yes, Simon could have guessed. Charlie would probably not be worried
if he could simply have asked his mother whether her husband was alive and well. “And they were never married, so he isn’t
really my stepfather, but I don’t know what else to call him.”
In an interview Charlie gave a few years ago, and which Simon read in an incognito window on his browser, Charlie said he
was raised by a single mother, and they moved around a lot. That’s all he’s ever said publicly about his family.
“If you think of him as your stepfather, he’s your stepfather,” Simon says, as if Charlie needs Simon’s own personal blessing to call people whatever the hell he wants.
Charlie says nothing. Neither does Simon. Simon wonders if social anxiety can actually kill a person.
The waiter appears with their lunch and temporarily puts them out of their misery.
“This is good” and “Have you tried” get them through the next few minutes. When they wear out that line of conversation, Simon
feels increasingly desperate. The problem, obviously, is that they’re trying to be polite. When they’re sniping at one another,
conversation flows freely, but the entire point of this is to act like civilized adults in public.
“Want to see pictures of Edie?” Simon finally asks, opening an album on his phone.
Charlie drags his chair to Simon’s side of the table. There’s Edie in an array of sweaters, Edie pointedly ignoring every
toy Simon ever bought her, Edie curled up on a pillow on Simon’s bed.
Simon loves his dog with all his heart, but pictures of her living her ordinary, if highly photogenic, life are not interesting
to anybody but himself. Charlie says all the right things, though, and Simon realizes he’s seen Charlie do this before. Charlie
bent over someone else’s phone, admiring babies or pets or intricately decorated baking projects is not an unusual sight on
set.
“Do you have pictures of her as a puppy?” Charlie asks. Does Simon ever. He opens that folder, and Charlie says things like
“Look at her” and “I can’t take it,” and either he’s a much better actor than Simon ever gave him credit for or he’s just
wildly wholesome. It has never once occurred to Simon that Charlie might be either wholesome or especially good at acting,
so this is a very confusing moment.
Adding to the confusion is Charlie’s forearm, resting on the table, and how he’s leaning in the way people only do when they have no boundaries. Not that they’re touching—whenever one of them moves, the other adjusts, preserving a firm inch of space between their shoulders, their arms, their hands.
“Your birthday’s coming up, isn’t it?” Charlie asks, apropos of absolutely nothing.
“It’s next week,” Simon says, startled into giving an answer instead of demanding how Charlie knows this. “I’ll be thirty-four.”
Maybe if he keeps saying it out loud, it’ll start sounding like a reasonable age for a person to be.
“Are you doing anything?” They’re close enough that Charlie’s voice is low, just for Simon, and Simon’s trying not to have
any thoughts about this whatsoever.
“I wasn’t planning to. But since Jamie’s there, we’ll have dinner, I guess.”
Charlie reaches across the table for one of the fries left on his plate. “You live together?”
The fact is, they practically do live together, except whenever Jamie moves out for a few months to live with some wretched
boyfriend. “Sometimes,” he says.
“Are you sure you aren’t together? Or something like that? Because you said you weren’t, and he said you weren’t, but if you
actually are then I’m going to feel like a dick for having hit on him.”
Simon is annoyed that now both Jamie and Charlie have made this Simon’s problem. What business is it of Simon’s who either
of them mess around with?
“There’s nothing going on. Jamie’s staying in the guest room.
The two of you are adults and what you do is up to you.
But,” he adds, irritation giving way to something angrier, “he’s just come off a bad breakup, and he deserves a hell of a lot better than he’s gotten from anyone he’s ever dated.
If you do get involved with him, the bar is pitifully low but please try to clear it. ”
By the end he’s whispering so nobody at any nearby tables will be able to make any inferences about Charlie’s personal life.
He doesn’t realize exactly how far he’s leaned in until Charlie turns his head and Simon has to practically lunge backward.
He’s still close enough to see the tiny crinkles starting to form at the edges of Charlie’s eyes. It’s unreal that nobody
has ever told this man to wear sunblock.
“I wasn’t going to date your friend,” Charlie says, looking Simon dead in the eye, “or fuck him or do anything other than
briefly flirt with him and occasionally ask him for book recommendations.”
Hearing fuck from Charlie’s mouth, low and at close range, isn’t healthy for Simon’s peace of mind.
“He has terrible taste in books, so good luck with that.” Simon doesn’t mean it as a joke, but Charlie laughs anyway. “What
about that waiter at Lian’s? You two aren’t . . .”
“I wasn’t just, like, making out with the waiter.”
“You were definitely making out with the waiter.”
“No, I mean we met on, you know . . .” Charlie taps his phone.
“The apps.”
“Right. So when I saw him at Lian’s and he seemed to want to go for it, I didn’t want to act like I was too good for him.
Like, there I am, semi-famous with my semi-famous friends, and there he is, washing Lian’s dishes. I didn’t want to be rude.”
“You realize that fucking someone once doesn’t mean they have a permanent subscription.”
“I know!”
“It isn’t like tenure.”
“Oh my God, Simon, shut up.”
“Would you have gone home with him, just to be polite?”
Charlie hesitates in a way that makes Simon pretty sure he would have done exactly that. “I mean, I wouldn’t have been complaining.”
Simon’s face heats for no reason whatsoever. He takes a sip of his water.
When the check comes, Simon reaches for it, because paying for Charlie’s lunch is easier than whatever math will be involved
in sorting out who got what. He waves away Charlie’s credit card.
“That’s nice of you,” Charlie says, sounding exactly as dubious as anybody should while calling Simon nice.
On the way out, they get stopped by two people. One of them is wearing an Out There T-shirt. Well—not technically Out There, but the symbol the space anarchists on the show use to identify one another. They don’t even need to ask for a selfie before
Charlie’s offering one.
Simon rarely gets approached by fans. This is Los Angeles: people are used to minor celebrities. But Charlie’s handling it
with a practiced ease that suggests it does happen to him, and fairly often. It isn’t like Simon’s jealous—most of the time
he doesn’t want to be approached even by people he knows—but he kind of can’t stand to watch Charlie handle it so smoothly,
so happily, and in a way that will leave these fans feeling good about it. Simon’s never managed that, not once, and Charlie’s
ability to do it effortlessly is just another annoying thing about him.
“I can’t believe we saw both of you together,” one of the strangers says, her hands clasped in front of her, like this has been a transcendent experience. And Simon’s been a fan of things. He understands.
Simon smiles and leans in for a picture, trying not to think about Charlie’s hand on his shoulder. Charlie signs some random
piece of paper using a sharpie that he produces out of thin air, then hands it to Simon so he can sign too. Then Charlie compliments
the girl’s tattoos, follows her on Instagram, and follows her tattoo artist on Instagram, while Simon tries to remember where
he’s supposed to put his hands, what a normal facial expression feels like, how to cosplay as a functional person.
“You couldn’t have said something?” Charlie asks when they’re alone. “They’ll think I’m holding you hostage.”
“That is literally the best I can do,” Simon says, and maybe he snaps a little, because when Charlie looks at him his eyes
are narrowed. But something must be showing on Simon’s face, because Charlie lets it drop.