Chapter Nineteen
“I’m starving,” Charlie says. Simon isn’t quite sure how he got into bed, under the duvet, but he’s still floating, his entire
brain hidden away somewhere he doesn’t have to deal with it.
“Mmm,” Simon says.
“God, you’re useless after sex,” Charlie says, not sounding at all bothered. “I mean, even more useless than usual.”
“There’s a restaurant,” Simon says. He’s thinking of this place on Tenth Avenue that has dog-friendly sidewalk seating and
a menu Simon can work with. Instead of explaining this, he keeps his eyes shut and drifts some more.
Charlie prods him in the ribs. “Do you want to come with me or am I going by myself?”
“Rude to go without me,” Simon mumbles into the pillow.
“Okay, pal, time to get up. I’m walking out the door in fifteen minutes.”
Simon pries his eyes open. “The fact that you think a person can get ready for anything in fifteen minutes explains so much.”
“Fourteen minutes and fifteen seconds.” Charlie taps his wrist. “Clock’s ticking.”
Simon hauls himself out of bed and into the shower.
Twenty-five minutes later, they’re in the elevator, Charlie holding Edie’s leash because Simon can be generous like that.
While Simon was in the shower, Charlie put on jeans and an actual honest-to-God linen shirt, which he mostly ruins by wearing it over something that came out of a T-shirt cannon, but the look is overall more than acceptable.
“Stress shopping really works for you,” Simon observes.
“So close to a compliment. And yet,” Charlie says, but he looks pleased.
When they get to the restaurant, it’s eight o’clock, already dark. The tables on the sidewalk are lit with candles and strings
of lights, and the mood is more overtly romantic than it seemed in daylight. Simon’s embarrassed, but it’s not like he can
say, “Sorry, change of plans, I’m not sure the vibe of this restaurant exactly matches the vibe of our relationship, if it
even is a relationship, so let’s find someplace else.”
The hostess recognizes them and they get a table right away. Simon might feel bad about it, if he were a much better person,
and if Charlie weren’t twitching with hunger.
Simon watches in amazement as Charlie puts away the entire contents of the breadbasket. “I couldn’t eat on the plane,” Charlie
explains. “Your dog kept looking at me like I was doing war crimes by not giving her half my sandwich. And I didn’t know if
she was allowed to eat people food.”
Simon stares. “So you just didn’t eat?” Charlie needs to be fed every two hours, like a newborn baby or a bacteria sample
in a lab.
“I don’t want her to hate me.”
“All dogs do that. When you’re eating, they give you the saddest possible eyes. They put their chin on your leg, they cry like they’re being tortured. Every dog on the planet is working from the same playbook.”
“Excuse me for not being a fucking dog psychologist.”
Charlie’s said a couple of things that make Simon suspect he knows next to nothing about dogs. He probably just didn’t grow
up with pets. Plenty of families don’t have pets, but with Charlie, it feels like more evidence of a deprived childhood. Charlie
should have had two golden retrievers at all times and at least one cat. It’s appalling that the universe didn’t give him
that.
“If you give her some bread, she’ll love you forever,” Simon says.
Charlie does, and Edie situates herself so she’s basically sitting on Charlie’s foot. Charlie looks smug about this, so Simon
doesn’t tell him that Edie has identified him as a soft touch and will now extort him for food at every opportunity.
When Simon orders something mildly off menu—like, it’s practically on the menu—Charlie looks a touch apoplectic, but maybe fondly irate?
“I’m never stopping,” Simon says. “Get over it.”
“No,” Charlie says, but he’s kind of smiling. Simon might be smiling back.
“Upfronts are in three days,” Charlie says.
“I need something to wear.” Simon could make do with what he has, probably, but can’t think of a single reason why he ought
to.
“Oh, I forgot. Jamie sent a suitcase full of clothes. He also packed a weighted blanket. I had to pay thirty whole dollars
to check that suitcase, it was so heavy.”
The idea that Charlie’s bitching about a thirty-dollar fee when he must have spent upward of five hundred dollars on the empty seat for the dog is too much for Simon. He takes out his wallet and counts out a twenty and two fives, then deliberately slides the bills across the table.
Charlie looks like he isn’t sure whether to laugh or flip the table, but he takes out his own wallet and shoves the bills
in, then puts the wallet back in his pocket, never breaking eye contact.
“I already bought a weighted blanket,” Simon says, “as soon I could look at a screen long enough to order one.”
“You had a migraine when you got here?”
“Not the greatest day of my life.”
Charlie looks acutely unhappy, like he’s found a whole new thing to worry about and now has to go back over the past few weeks
and factor it in. “Is that why you didn’t text me when you landed?”
“I should have just used voice controls.” Simon resists the urge to press his glass of ice water against his face. “I’m sorry.”
Charlie’s quiet for long enough that Simon’s sure he got this wrong. Was an apology too much? Not enough? Should he explain
that it wasn’t personal, that Simon also didn’t text Jamie, and he is in fact just like this, possibly permanently?
“Apology accepted,” Charlie says.
“I wonder what Jamie packed,” Simon says, desperately changing the topic.
“He seemed pretty sure it would be what you wanted.”
“He knows me well.”
“Why did you two break up?”
Simon already told Charlie the story of Jamie, post-breakup, sitting Simon down in a Panera and delivering a bracing speech about sexual incompatibility, so this isn’t a question Charlie should need to ask.
Simon produces the same version of the truth that he gives anybody who asks. “We work better as friends.”
This is where normal people let it drop, but Charlie is not normal people. “Right, but why?”
Charlie might just be making conversation, or he might be nosy, but Simon’s dealt with more than a few men who were suspicious
that he was about to run back to Jamie. Usually he lets them stay suspicious.
He gives Charlie a level stare and holds it. “Of the people at this table,” he says, gesturing between them, “only one of
us has hit on Jamie in the past five years.”
“I wasn’t hitting on him,” Charlie says, slouching, looking caught out.
“Sure you were. You have good taste. In men. And literally nothing else, just to be clear. Anyway, the main reason we didn’t
work out is that we have no chemistry. The sex was just—”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, partly because they’re in public, but mostly because it occurs to him a little belatedly that
Jamie might not love this conversation. “I mean, it was my fault,” Simon adds quickly, because he’s not such a bad friend
that he’s going to go around implying that Jamie’s bad at sex. “Because, you know.” He gestures at himself.
“I do?” Charlie asks, eyebrows all the way up.
Simon squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. He hears Charlie laugh, the sound closer than it was a minute ago. When
he opens his eyes, Charlie’s leaning forward, delighted. “I am begging you.”
The way the table’s set up, there’s a wooden railing separating them from the street, and Charlie has one arm resting on it, his fingers almost touching Simon’s shoulder.
“I—” Simon starts, but gets distracted by the brush of Charlie’s thumb against his sleeve.
“Are you being shy? About sex?” Charlie whispers, thrilled. “Oh God, you were like this in Arizona too. I want to go back
in time and tell 2019 me that Simon Devereaux is—”
“Shut up, shut up.” Simon’s laughing despite himself. He leans in even more, close enough that nobody at any nearby tables
will be able to hear. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m lazy,” he hisses, and Charlie bursts out laughing, head thrown back, the sound ricocheting off buildings and asphalt.
“Who told you that?” Charlie asks when, eventually, he gets himself under control.
“Uh, my brain? Reality?”
Charlie covers his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking. “Okay,” he says, wiping a literal tear from his eye. “Not even
two hours ago you let me—You realize that wasn’t exactly low effort, right? I know what you mean, but lazy isn’t the word I’d use.”
Simon’s not sure it’s the word he’d use either, but it’s the only one he can think of that isn’t passive, which is too loaded for Simon to consider. “Fine,” he says, throwing his hands up, “what word would you use?”
Charlie leans back now and looks at Simon. The idea that Charlie’s thinking about him, thinking about what they’ve done together,
makes Simon’s face heat.
“Well,” Charlie says, quiet and a little rough, “you don’t like to be the one doing things.”
Simon gives him an extremely unimpressed look, because if Charlie thinks he’s made a big discovery by noticing something anyone could have learned from his short-lived dating app profile, he has another think coming. “My God. You’ve cracked the code.”
Charlie laughs. “No, no, I don’t just mean that.”
The waiter brings their food, so Simon can’t ask exactly what else Charlie means. Instead they talk about the movie Alex is
doing this fall, and Charlie seems so genuinely happy for her that it’s like some of his happiness slips into the small space
between them and gets absorbed into Simon’s skin, because he starts to feel it too.
They’re talking so much and eating so slowly that Simon’s linguine gets cold. The tables around them start to empty out. Simon
gets his credit card to the waiter before Charlie even sees the check coming.
“But,” Charlie starts.
“My treat,” Simon murmurs, and Charlie doesn’t protest.
Edie, who’d fallen asleep at some point, her head on Charlie’s foot, wakes up and decides she’s had all her rights violated