Chapter Seven
“You know, not what I’d wear to drive through two hundred miles of desert, but okay,” Charlie says when Simon steps out of
his house. Charlie’s leaning against his car, a bucket-size travel mug in his hand.
“Layers,” Simon says with emphasis, because Charlie still hasn’t grasped that this is the trick to looking civilized. He’s
wearing a tan leather jacket and a scarf and sunglasses, very twenties aviator, and he’s pleased to have achieved this look
on effectively four hours’ sleep.
“Here.” Charlie shoves the mug at him.
“Sure, Charlie, I’ll hold your coffee.”
“It’s your coffee, dipshit. Just say thank you.”
Then Charlie opens the trunk and loads in Simon’s suitcase before Simon can point out that he could have done that himself.
In the car, Simon sniffs the contents of the travel mug.
“It isn’t poisoned,” Charlie says.
“Exactly what someone would say if they poisoned my coffee.”
“For fuck’s—it’s your normal order, oat milk latte with no syrup.”
Simon takes a sip. Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised that Charlie knows his order. Charlie takes his own coffee black with four
packets of plain white sugar.
“Thank you.” Simon’s mouth is strange around the words. Basic civility doesn’t come naturally around Charlie.
“Don’t hurt yourself there.”
They’re heading east, the rising sun blazing into their faces, so Simon puts on his darkest sunglasses, the ones he can barely
see out of. He shuts his eyes, because it’s six fifteen and all the coffee in the world isn’t going to keep him awake.
When he opens his eyes, they’re already outside the city. In fact, they’re nearly in Palm Springs. The dashboard clock tells
him he’s been asleep for well over an hour. He peels his face off the window and sits up straight, trying to look like someone
who wasn’t just drooling all over his collar.
“Dolly Parton?” Simon asks, noticing the music coming from the car speakers. He can’t remember Charlie ever putting on music
before. They usually just sit in fraught silence, punctuated by occasional insults, until Charlie pulls into Simon’s driveway.
“You have a problem with Dolly Parton, you can hitchhike back to—”
“I don’t have a problem with Dolly Parton. Jesus. Calm down. I was just surprised because—”
“I deliberately put on a playlist that I didn’t think would piss you off, and—”
“You’re the only person in this vehicle who’s pissed off,” Simon says, aware that he sounds distinctly pissed off. “You’re
driving. You can listen to whatever you want. I have noise-canceling headphones if I get desperate.”
“Fine.”
“Also I like this song. I was just surprised because nobody ever plays it.” Simon’s not sure whether he’s defending his taste in music or making sure Charlie knows he isn’t bothered, or something in the middle.
“I think we’re coming up on the last Starbucks for a hundred miles,” Simon says a while later, checking the map on his phone.
“So if we want non-gas-station coffee, this is probably our last chance, unless there’s some other place you know about.”
Charlie grunts in a way that Simon chooses to interpret as agreement.
“What do you want?” Simon asks. “I’ll just order it now. Coffee with a bathtub full of sugar? Hot or iced? Some kind of muffin?”
“Iced. Largest possible size. And a slice of that lemon cake, if they have it.”
Simon puts in the order. When he gets out of the car in the Starbucks parking lot a few minutes later, it’s hot enough to
take off his scarf and jacket. Charlie’s watching him.
“Layers,” Simon reminds him.
Charlie’s wearing sunglasses, but he pushes them up into his hair just so Simon can see him roll his eyes.
Simon picks up their order and brings it out to where Charlie’s leaning against the car.
“Thanks. I usually forget,” Charlie says. “I wind up drinking cold, burned, gas station coffee in the middle of the desert.”
Simon’s about to tell Charlie exactly how disgusting that is, when a child materializes beside them.
“Hey there,” Charlie says, immediately turning on his smile.
“Are you Luke West?” the boy asks. He looks older than Roshni’s kids but not by much. Kindergarten, maybe?
“I’m Charlie, but it’s my job to be Luke West on television,” Charlie says, kneeling down. “And this is Simon, who plays Dr. Hale. Do you watch Out There?”
“With my dad,” the kid says. There’s something about the way he says it—proud, maybe, about getting to stay up a little late
to watch a grown-up show—that makes Simon remember creeping into the living room in his footed pajamas to watch Star Trek: Voyager. It’s a memory from the other side of the country, from before Simon was Simon, before he’d figured out how to keep himself
safe, and it has no place in a sun-soaked California parking lot.
The kid’s dad is inching closer, like he’s waiting for an invitation, and Simon doesn’t have a doubt in his mind that this
guy sent his kid in first so Charlie and Simon wouldn’t blow him off. Which, to be fair, would work on Simon, but he doubts
that Charlie blows anyone off.
When the man asks for a picture, Charlie puts his coffee on the roof of his car and reaches for the man’s phone. He subtly
angles it so the car isn’t in the shot. Simon leans in and smiles, then watches as Charlie discreetly reviews the pictures
before handing the phone back.
“It’s okay if you post them,” Charlie says, zillion-watt smile still in place. That is, after all, the entire point of this
trip, and pictures on other people’s social media are only going to help.
Then Charlie gets into the car, effectively ending the interaction.
It’s all very smooth, very polite, even friendly, but Charlie did the whole thing on his own terms and in under two minutes.
It annoyed Simon the other day at the restaurant, watching Charlie do this thing that Simon still can’t get a handle on, but he tries to summon up something a little less petty.
Charlie thanked him for the coffee, and Simon isn’t going to let Charlie be better than him at whatever this is.
“I usually just flail,” Simon says when they’re in the car. “You’re good at that.”
“Nobody expects you to be friendly,” Charlie says, his mouth full of poundcake.
“Oh, fuck you, Charlie. I was trying to be nice.”
“So was I! What I mean,” Charlie says, audibly wrestling his voice into something less frustrated, “is that friendly isn’t
your thing. You’re—” He gestures in Simon’s direction. “You’re you. And that’s not an insult. Or, like, not more than usual.”
“I’m touched.”
“What I’m trying to say is that people don’t expect you to be a ray of sunshine. They want to be in your presence while you
glower and chain-smoke.”
“I don’t smoke,” Simon says, scandalized.
“Metaphorically.”
“Do you know what a metaphor is, Charlie? Do you really?”
“You know, you’re fucking impossible sometimes. All the time, actually. Literally every minute.”
They aren’t going to survive another four hours in this car if they’re at one another’s throats. Simon takes a sip of his
coffee and a bite of his granola bar so he can’t say anything. Charlie shoves the rest of his cake into his mouth, probably
having the same idea. Or terrible manners. A flip of the coin, really.
“We should post a picture before we get back on the road,” Simon says when he can trust himself to sound normal. “Or a video,
or whatever.”
Charlie takes out his phone. “Okay, come here. Closer. Lean over the console, Simon. It’s not going to work if you aren’t in the picture.” He wraps an arm around Simon’s shoulder and hauls him in. “Smile, for fuck’s sake. You look like I kidnapped you.”
Simon rolls his eyes, but obviously he knows how to look like he’s having fun on command, at least for three seconds. He pretends
Charlie said something funny, glances at him, and laughs. He ignores the five spots on his upper arm where Charlie’s fingers
are holding him in place, pushes away the thought that in the past seven years, he’s probably touched Charlie more than he’s
touched anybody else.
Charlie lets go, then holds out his phone to show Simon the pictures. Neither of them look like idiots. That’s all that matters.
“Fine,” he says, then waits while Charlie types out a caption and posts it.
Charlie backs out of the parking spot, looking over his shoulder, his hand on the back of Simon’s seat. He has to be the only
person under sixty-five who does that. Simon’s used to it, used to the way Charlie’s hand sometimes brushes Simon’s shoulder,
used to the way Charlie swears under his breath at pedestrians who walk behind the car, used to a lot of things that he probably
doesn’t need to have any feelings about.
“I can drive,” Simon offers once they’re on the highway and there’s no chance of Charlie taking him up on the offer.
“You don’t need—”
“If you don’t want me to drive your car, that’s fine, but I’ve never been in an accident and—”
“Driving keeps my mind off shit. Also no offense but I’d like to get to Phoenix today and we both know you’ll go fifty-five
miles an hour the whole trip.”
“Have it your way,” Simon says, magnanimous, and settles back in the seat, his eyes closed. He can probably get in another nap or two before they reach Phoenix. It could be worse.
“I haven’t had an accident either,” Charlie says after a minute. “Not since I was seventeen, at least. And I know you’re gonna
bring up that thing where I backed into the director’s car, but that was on purpose, so it doesn’t count.”
This was the same director Charlie dumped the coffee on. Charlie rammed his old truck into the guy’s Tesla. The cops had shown
up on set. So had Lian, who’d missed a week’s worth of drama because one of her kids had gotten her appendix out.
“He called Alex feisty and told Samara to stop being so aggressive,” Simon says. “And he helpfully reminded me at least ten
times that Jonathan Hale is not A Gay and so I should butch it up. I didn’t shed any tears over his stupid car.”
“Really?” Charlie drums his fingers on the steering wheel.