Chapter Twenty-One #2
crush on you.”
“You what?”
“Don’t worry, it was only physical.”
“I mean, obviously.”
“I didn’t like you or anything.”
“Who would?” Simon says reasonably.
“Anyway! My point is that I don’t give a fuck about anyone knowing I’m queer. It’s just—it was private,” Charlie repeats,
seemingly to himself. Simon finally understands what Charlie’s getting at: what happened between them the other night was
private. When they got to the restaurant, Simon hadn’t been sure whether it was too romantic a setting. By the time they left
he’d thought it was just right. Something had settled during the course of that dinner and Charlie’s bothered because it was
reduced to a photograph for people on the internet to speculate about.
The anxiety drains away, a little. “It was,” Simon agrees.
“How the fuck are you so calm about this? Not being calm is, like, your whole thing.”
That startles a laugh out of Simon, which makes Charlie’s mouth twitch in a way that’s vaguely in the direction of a smile. “I’m not,” Simon admits, and watches as Charlie’s gaze narrows, taking in the whole of Simon.
“Shit,” Charlie says.
“I’m okay. It was just a bad”—he glances at the clock—“four minutes.”
Charlie takes Simon’s half empty glass and fills it with water from the refrigerator, then puts it in Simon’s hand. It looks
like glasses of water are doing a lot of symbolic work this afternoon.
“I genuinely don’t care about the photograph, though,” Simon says. “It’s a good picture.”
Charlie sputters.
“I’m serious,” Simon says. “We both look great. I’d be livid if I had food in my mouth.” He takes a deep breath. “Is the problem
that we look like we’re together?”
“No. Obviously not.” Charlie still sounds pissed, but Simon’s starting to see that he isn’t pissed at Simon, or even about
Simon. “We still should have been able to choose. I mean, I haven’t even told Alex.”
“You haven’t?”
“Well, you know, because she has eyes and a brain she knows what—” Charlie lets out a breath and gives Simon an exasperated
look. “She knows how I feel. And I told her about the sex. I mean, I told her we had sex, not about the sex. I’ve also told her everything you’ve ever done or said so we could analyze your motives.”
Simon scoffs. “I think my motives have been embarrassingly obvious.”
“That’s what Alex says. She actually used the word embarrassing,” Charlie says, sounding pleased, both about Simon being embarrassing and about Alex being right.
“Anyway, I haven’t told her that we’re .
. . dating?” He gestures at his phone, presumably meaning the frankly romantic picture. “If we even are?”
“We are,” Simon says, very firmly, and refuses to add, unless you don’t want to, because every single thing about Charlie’s body language—and, like, language language—is saying that he wants to. “Together,” he adds, for clarity.
“Okay, good,” Charlie says. And he still sounds pissed. He looks like he’d probably punch whoever took that photograph, or at least dump coffee on them and drive a
truck into their car, but like he’d do it while being, apparently, in some kind of relationship with Simon.
“You did post that picture,” Simon points out. “The one with my hand in it.” He feels stupid as soon as he says it. The picture
is cozy, even suggestive—Simon’s hand inches from Charlie’s bare chest—but it isn’t exactly an announcement. Charlie didn’t
necessarily mean anything by it.
But Charlie just lights up. “You’re right.” Grinning broadly, a finger pointed at Simon, he says, “I told you I’m not closeted.”
“Go take a shower. Honestly. You stink,” Simon says, because maybe some insults will restore a bit of normalcy. “And I can’t
believe you appeared in public wearing a crop top and basketball shorts.”
“It isn’t a crop top,” Charlie says, pulling at the hem of what is, tragically, a crop top. “And I didn’t mean to, but my
agent called when I was on the treadmill. I came back here right away.”
“Not that you aren’t making it work,” Simon says, leering, because Charlie deserves a little compliment, “for a given value
of work. But: bathe.” He waves Charlie toward the bathroom. “Like, twice.”
While Charlie’s in the shower, Simon checks his phone.
It probably says a lot about his career trajectory and general outness that his agent hasn’t gotten in touch.
Or maybe it just means Ken’s useless. And it says a lot about how obvious he’s been about Charlie that Jamie’s only message is “if you got Charlie Blake to wear real clothes that truly is the power of love.”
Simon opens the cast’s group chat, but he isn’t backscrolling to read a million messages, and he probably should leave it
to Charlie anyway, so he closes it.
Knowing it’s a bad idea, he searches for his name on a few social media sites and sees that there’s a lot of commentary. Discourse.
Whatever. Most of it’s intrusive and creepy, some of it’s hateful, and then there are the people tagging him in posts about
how celebrities deserve private lives. He deletes several apps.
His phone buzzes with a message from Nora: “fair warning, I’m calling him Uncle Charlie at graduation.”
Simon can’t imagine where Nora got the idea that Charlie’s going to her graduation party, so he just responds with an eye
roll emoji.
Simon would have liked to spend the rest of the day lounging around, but Charlie looks like he’s ready to climb the walls,
so they put on Edie’s leash and head out with no real goal. This is like when Edie was a puppy and had to be taken to the
dog park, although Simon isn’t going to say so out loud. Probably. Not yet, at least.