Chapter Seven #2
“Has it somehow escaped your attention that I’m an extremely petty man?”
“No. I mean—you aren’t . . .”
Charlie is apparently trying to be nice again, and Simon decides that it’s time for some positive reinforcement. “I very much
am. It’s a feature.” He takes a deep breath. “It shouldn’t have gotten to that point. I knew he was toxic—”
“Abusive.”
Simon swallows, because Charlie’s right. He tries not to think about what role his silence played in the entire mess. “It’s
just that it wasn’t as bad as things on Tree of the Gods.”
“What the fuck, Simon? It’s not, like, an abuse contest.”
“No, fuck you, I mean that I think I was maybe a little desensitized to, uh, hostile workplaces. I was so glad Out There wasn’t a total shitshow, and I didn’t see how bad things were that week. Or I didn’t want to.” The truth is that Simon knew
he couldn’t handle another situation like Tree of the Gods. He would have quit, left town, and let his middle brother set him up with some non-job at his investment bank.
“Alex said that was probably what happened.”
It makes Simon a little queasy, both at the idea that Charlie and Alex have talked about this, and the implication that Alex
had to make excuses for Simon. There’s also, in the tightness of Charlie’s jaw and the dryness of his voice, the suggestion
that Charlie didn’t agree with Alex—that Charlie thought Simon didn’t object to anything that director said.
“I thought you were the problem,” Simon says, because honestly. He isn’t going to pretend that Charlie was a saint. “When I agreed to do the show, Lian said it wouldn’t be like Tree of the Gods, and all I could see was that she let you—you know.”
“Show up blitzed? Nearly fuck everything up for all of us?”
Really, it was the trailer-punching that set Simon’s alarms off. The coffee incident and rumors of bar fights didn’t help.
But that isn’t the point.
This is where a better person would apologize—for misjudging Charlie or for being so in his head that he couldn’t see what
was happening around him.
“It was a long time ago,” Simon says, which is obvious and meaningless and dumb. But Charlie just hums in a way that doesn’t
sound overtly hostile so maybe he understands what Simon’s trying to say.
The landscape shifts to reds and browns, set into relief by scrubby bushes on the side of the road and the bright blue of the sky.
There are no more billboards for casinos and furniture outlets, no more palm trees.
The highway dwindles to two lanes, stretching out across a terrain that Simon only knows from that week they needed to shoot a space desert on location and the time he picked Jamie up at Coachella.
Except for the cellphone towers, it looks like a faded old postcard.
Greetings from the wrong side of Joshua Tree.
“It’s like this for the next three hours,” Charlie says.
“How often do you do this drive?”
Charlie’s quiet for a moment, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. A muscle in his jaw ticks. “Not as often as I’d
like.”
Simon’s phone buzzes, which means Jamie’s up. He’s sent a picture of Edie refusing to look at her breakfast, her head pointed
away from the bowl, her nose in the air.
“Edie is on a hunger strike,” Simon says, mostly because three hours of silence is not okay and dogs are a safe topic.
“Will she be all right?” Charlie asks. Simon has the impression that he’ll turn the car around if Simon says so.
“She gets like this whenever I travel. She’ll eat, but first she needs to make sure Jamie knows he isn’t her real dad.”
“Is that normal? Alex’s dog doesn’t do that.”
Simon tells himself that Charlie isn’t accusing him of animal abuse or implying that Edie is a psychopath.
“Alex’s dog is a hundred-pound lab mix who was raised by a normal, well-adjusted person.
Edie is an overbred dachshund who was raised by me.
They are not the same.” Also, Alex’s dog has, at most, one functioning brain cell, but Simon doesn’t mention this in case Charlie won’t recognize it as a compliment.
“Edie is perfect just the way she is,” Charlie says.
“Nobody said she wasn’t.”
“I swear to God, Simon, if you start a fight over us both agreeing that your dog is perfect—”
“I’m not fighting!” Simon throws his hands up. “You know, I think our whole problem is that you take my bitchiness personally.
I’m like this with everyone. You aren’t special.”
“Jesus Christ,” Charlie mutters.
Simon takes his book out of his bag and attempts to read, but he keeps reading the same sentence over and over. This book
requires thinking, something he’s never been great at when Charlie’s around.
“It isn’t true, you know,” Charlie says.
Simon gives up, closing the book. “What isn’t?”
“You aren’t mean. You’re mean to me, but not in general. Usually you’re quiet. Like, really quiet. You can’t be bitchy if you don’t talk.”
“Not with that attitude.”
“Alex thinks you’re nice.”
“Slander. And we both know Alex would never describe someone she liked as nice.”
“Simon. You fucking idiot. Alex is your friend. She’s been your friend for seven years.”
Working together isn’t the same thing as friendship, but Simon isn’t going to be the one to explain this to Charlie if he doesn’t already grasp the difference.
Still, he remembers how he felt at Lian’s, that sense of almost belonging.
If they all actively hated him, they’d have figured out a way to avoid spending extra time with him. Maybe.
It occurs to him that if Charlie hated him, he’d have figured out a way not to spend six hours trapped in a car together.
It also occurs to him that if he hated Charlie, he maybe wouldn’t be here either.
But, no. Simon is capable of nuance. It’s never been about hate. He doesn’t hate Charlie. He resents Charlie. Charlie annoys
him. A lot of people annoy him. The whole reason he agreed to this trip is because Jamie, his favorite person, is on his last
nerve.
“You aren’t special,” he says again, because it feels crucial that Charlie absorb this information. It might be crucial for
Simon to absorb this information too, but that’s a thought for later.
He makes another effort with his book. It’s the one Roshni recommended. It contains zero dragons and zero implied dragonfucking,
thank you very much. He is a man of sophisticated tastes.
He manages to finish the paragraph, but his eyes keep drifting to the left. Even though the road is straight, Charlie keeps
adjusting his hands on the wheel. He’s even more fidgety than usual.
Simon, having spent seven years learning the most efficient ways to press Charlie’s buttons, knowns that all this fidgeting
and jaw clenching is a sure sign he’s getting pissed off. Based on how frequently he glances at the blank screen of his phone
where it rests in the console, Simon can guess why. It turns out there’s no satisfaction in watching Charlie get annoyed if
Simon isn’t the one making it happen.
Whenever Charlie shifts his hands, the muscles in his upper arm move, and the tattoo on his biceps becomes this mesmerizing presence in the corner of Simon’s eye.
Charlie got that tattoo between second and third season.
At first glance it looks like a vine, or maybe barbed wire, but when you pay attention, you see that it’s clusters of stars and planets.
“You haven’t turned a page in forty miles,” Charlie says.
“Well, that’s about fifteen minutes the way you’re driving.” Simon doesn’t actually have any complaints about Charlie’s driving;
he’s just being difficult because that was Charlie’s shit-stirring voice and Simon knows how to give an audience what they
want.
“Because I’m doing a hundred and sixty miles an hour? In my Audi SUV?”
“Maybe I’m a slow reader. Maybe you hurt my feelings.”
“Maybe you just hate that book.”
“I kind of do.” Simon sighs and closes the book again. “It’s the book’s fault for being so boring.”
“I’m telling you, read A Scorched Land. Download it. It’s like $4.99.”
“I hate ebooks.”
“Of course you do.”
“The backlighting gives me headaches.”
“Then get the audiobook.” Charlie waves a hand at the car radio. “Or don’t, actually, because I already have it.” He unlocks
his phone and hands it over. Simon scrolls through four chaotically disorganized pages before finding the audiobook app.
“I didn’t agree to any of this,” Simon says as he opens the book and starts it from the beginning.