Chapter Twenty-Four #2
except for a tiny pearl in each earlobe.
“Oh, darling,” Simon says, taking in the entire look. “It’ll be over soon.”
She doesn’t exactly launch herself at him, but she takes a smidgen of a step forward and Simon recognizes what an enormous
effort that is from a tiny goblin child. So he does the rest of the work and bends to hug her. She’s nearly a foot shorter
than him. He’s careful not to wrinkle her terrible little dress.
“You brought Uncle Charlie,” she says, absolutely loud enough for Charlie to hear.
“And you can behave yourself or I’ll donate this to a thrift store.” Simon lets go of her and gestures at the box Charlie’s
still holding. “Charlie, this is Nora. I’ve shown you enough pictures of her for you to know you can’t hold this look against
her.”
“We follow one another on TikTok,” Charlie says, because of course they do.
“Come on, open the present so I know whether I have to sell it,” Simon says.
Nora leads them inside through a kitchen filled with caterers and into an empty living room.
Simon’s seen the house before, in person and in the background of Nora’s pictures, but it isn’t familiar.
Neither are his parents’ houses, or his other brother’s house.
The houses where he grew up have long since been sold.
There’s nothing connecting him to this place—or to these people—except this one teenager and a whole bunch of neutral-enough feelings toward everyone else.
Nora tears open the present and takes the lid off the box. Simon watches her face for the three seconds it takes her to realize
what she’s looking at.
“Oh, shit,” she says, holding the jacket up.
“I measured it,” Simon says. “But if it’s the wrong size we’ll find something else.”
“What am I looking at?” Charlie asks.
“A motorcycle jacket,” Simon says, at the same time Nora says, “Vintage Vivienne Westwood.”
“If you don’t like it—” Simon starts.
“Oh, shut up,” Nora says. “Thank you.” She puts it on then gets out her phone to use as a mirror.
“I wouldn’t,” Simon says. “Not with that dress. You’ll just get depressed. I’m a little depressed.” She does a little twirl, holds the camera out as far as she can to get a better angle. “Seriously, if
you change your mind, it’s fine.”
She rolls her eyes.
She keeps the jacket on while Simon asks when the graduation ceremony is, who the bodyguards belong to, when she starts her
summer internship.
“Nora!” calls a voice. “People are wondering where you are.”
Nora scrambles out of the jacket. “Sorry, Gran.”
“I’ve been sent to collect you,” Simon’s mother says as she enters the living room. “Oh, Simon, there you are.” She says this in the same tone of voice she’d use if they’d seen one another earlier that day, rather than two Christmases ago.
The last few times he’s seen her, he’s been a little startled by how old she is. She’s seventy-five. It shouldn’t be a surprise.
Her hair, which used to be as dark as his, is steel gray. Her closet used to be full of dresses, but at some point she shifted
to flowy pants and tunics, everything soft and neutral. Today she’s wearing a scarf he got her for her last birthday, pale
blue silk with ivory embroidery. Like he always does when he sees her, he thinks he might have missed her, but maybe didn’t
notice until now.
“Hi, Mom,” he says.
“I’m going to hang this up and then I’ll go outside,” Nora says. “Thanks, Uncle Simon.” She usually leaves off the uncle, so Simon assumes this is part of whatever normie drag she’s performing today.
“Mom, this is Charlie. Charlie, this is Paulette Robins, my mother.”
Charlie shakes hands and beams. Simon and his mother jointly remember that they’re supposed to hug, so that’s what they do
for about two seconds, his mother’s shoulders fragile under Simon’s hands.
Edie is winding around Simon’s feet like she thinks she’s a cat, so Simon picks her up. As soon as he has her in his arms,
it’s like the edges of his mood get sanded off. He doesn’t even know what his mood is.
“We’ve heard so much about you,” his mom tells Charlie.
Simon winces. He calls his mother every other week. Usually they talk about clothes. Sometimes she monologues about azaleas
and her grandchildren and the woeful ineptitude of the board of directors she serves on. Simon monologues about Edie’s latest
exploits and whatever annoying things Charlie’s done.
Charlie has to know that anything Simon told his mom about him before this spring would be negative, but he keeps on beaming.
“Cucinelli?” Simon’s mother asks, taking in his outfit. It’s a shell-pink linen suit he bought on a deranged whim two years
ago, and which he wears whenever it’s even remotely plausible to wear a pink suit.
“Naturally,” he says, inordinately pleased she recognizes it, the first real thing he’s felt in what seems like hours. Next
to him, Charlie sucks in a breath like he’s figured something out, and—it’s fine.
“Your father’s around here somewhere. Peter and Sarah too, and Bill and Lauren,” she says, listing Simon’s middle brother
and sister-in-law and both his stepparents. He assumes various stepsiblings and nieces and nephews are also around. “And,
well, everyone. If you want to say hello.”
She says this like Simon’s a visitor from an alien planet where saying hello might not be customary, and she’s trying hard
not cause a diplomatic incident. It’s kind. She’s kind. They’ve all always been kind. Something’s horribly wrong with Simon
that it doesn’t make him feel anything.
Simon doesn’t particularly want to say hello, but he doesn’t want not to say hello, so he follows his mother outside. “I’m so glad you brought someone,” she says, quiet, when Charlie’s dropped
a few paces behind.
There’s nothing he can say to that, so he doesn’t try. He’s sure she means it, and he guesses he’s pleased, but he doesn’t
know. His feelings are all situated behind a nice, thick fog.
Outside, Charlie takes Simon’s hand. That’s new. They don’t do that, except in bed, which is a little different, and also
not a direction Simon’s brain is capable of going right now.
His dad comes over, then his middle brother, then fifteen consecutive Devereaux and Devereaux-adjacent people. It turns out that when you’re holding a dog and your boyfriend’s hand, nobody can hug you.
Charlie million-dollar smiles his way through the entire ordeal. Simon’s seen the Charlie Blake charm offensive dozens of
times before, all loud good humor and booming laughter infused with what he now knows is genuine warmth. At one point, Charlie,
Simon’s stepfather, and one of Simon’s brothers are talking about some kind of sport. Hockey? Basketball, maybe? Simon feels
like he’s watching the entire thing on a tiny screen. It’s an episode of a show he’s not sure he wants to watch.
Charlie steers Simon toward one of the little tables scattered around the garden. Simon wonders what they would have done
if it rained. Not that there would be any trouble fitting a hundred-odd people inside the house, but at what cost to the aesthetics?
Charlie disappears, then comes back with a bowl of water for Edie and a plate of fruit and some bread for Simon.
“They’re all happy to see me,” Simon says, voicing the one thought that keeps scrolling through his head as he watches family
members assemble and reassemble in various configurations. Everyone’s either having a good time or doing a professional quality
job at faking it.
“I can tell.”
“You can go have fun if you want.” Charlie is like these people, gregarious and cheerful, full of the right things to say.
They’d like him. He’d fit right in.
“Look at me,” Charlie says. Simon does. “Don’t be a fucking idiot. I didn’t come here to hang out with your family.”
“You could, though.”
“You could fuck yourself.” Charlie slings his arm over the back of Simon’s chair, not touching him, but there for Simon to lean into.
Simon watches Nora talk to her mother, to Simon’s mother, to some cousins. Whatever dynamic his family has cultivated, the
dynamic that’s made Simon a spectator for thirty-four years, doesn’t exclude Nora. She’s a part of it. Maybe the family dynamic
has broadened, or maybe Nora’s better at this than Simon ever was.
Either way, he’s relieved. Maybe she put on that dress and took out the piercings in order to cooperate with her parents,
not because she got browbeaten into it. He’ll find out later.
He doesn’t know why being near his family feels like wearing clothing tailored for somebody else, pinching and pulling ever
so slightly, never a chance to forget that it isn’t his own. They love him. Even his brothers. Even his stepparents. Probably
even his sisters-in-law, both of whom have known him for going on twenty years.
Three children are hovering near Simon’s table. They’re younger than Nora, but old enough to be in high school, or close to
it. One of them looks enough like a Devereaux that he’s probably a nephew. The others might belong to his stepsiblings.
“Hey, you guys,” Charlie says. “What’s up?” Simon had planned on ignoring them, but Charlie’s a better person.
The tallest one takes a step closer. “How long have you been boyfriends?” she asks.
“Oh my God, Emma, no,” Nora says, swooping in.
“No, it’s okay,” Charlie says. “A month. A month?” he repeats, lower, for Simon.
“Yes. A month,” Simon agrees. It’s been about five weeks since that motel in Arizona and a week since Charlie arrived in New
York. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, but a month will do.
“Are your characters gay?” asks a kid who Simon has no trouble identifying as a theater kid of the presumptively queer variety.
Simon remembers the absolute wasteland of gay representation that was television during his own ghastly adolescence.
It’s better now, but not perfect, and he imagines kids still watch shows like they’re reading tea leaves, looking for any sign a character might be like them.
“Well, bi,” Charlie says.
Simon whips his head around, but Charlie looks perfectly placid.
“The writers might disagree,” Simon says.
Charlie shrugs. “I said what I said.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Simon sees two adults approaching the fringes of the little group clustered around their table.
He thinks—hopes—it’s some parents come to collect their nosy offspring, but it’s just Simon’s father and George.
“Do you remember when Simon used to sneak into the living room to watch—what was it?” his dad asks. “We should have known
this is what he’d do with his life.”
“Deep Space Nine,” George answers.
“Voyager,” Simon says, under his breath.
“In his little pajamas,” Simon’s dad says. “When he should have been in bed.”
“We always caught him,” George says.
Simon feels like some part of his psyche has been cracked open in front of Charlie and a couple of teenagers he may or may
not be related to. For a moment, he’s in his dinosaur pajamas, thinking that if only he’s quiet enough, he might be able to
have a place on the couch with everyone else.
The hand that Charlie had on the back of Simon’s chair now lands on Simon’s neck, warm and dry.
“Every foster home I was in,” Charlie says, loud enough for everyone nearby to hear, oozing enough charisma that nobody can help but give him their attention, “there was someone who needed to watch their spaceship show.” He pauses, holding the crowd, all the focus on him and far away from five-year-old Simon.
“I think that’s why I’ve stayed on Out There so long. One of the reasons, at least.”
“That’s what I think about when I have to cry on camera,” Simon says after Charlie’s made some excuse to pull Simon into the
house, around a corner, into what turns out to be a laundry room. “Not being allowed to watch television with my brothers
and my dad. I feel like if you needed proof that I had a good life, the fact that this is the worst thing I can drag up is
it.”
“I don’t think that means what you think it means,” Charlie says.
Simon doesn’t know how many times he’s seen Charlie hug people—friends, coworkers, literal strangers—but somehow this is the
first time he’s ever hugged Simon. He’s known, just from watching, that Charlie’s good at it, and he was right. It’s because
Charlie likes hugging people, that has to be the reason, because it feels right—safe and solid and normal—even though Simon
isn’t sure where to put his hands. Charlie’s arms are tight around him, tight enough to crush, a three-dimensional weighted
blanket. Simon feels surrounded—he isn’t in a laundry room, he isn’t in Connecticut, the only location that matters is Charlie’s
arms.
“Why isn’t it enough?” Simon asks when they’re in the car heading back to the city, Edie passed out on the back seat between
them.
“What isn’t enough?”
“They love me. And I love them?” He doesn’t mean for it to be a question. “I mean, I do. But not, like, actively. Except Nora.” He tries to fill his lungs. “And my mom?”
Charlie doesn’t ask what it means to love someone but not actively love them, which is good because Simon doesn’t have any
answers. All he knows is that he’s unsatisfied down to his bones, greedy for something he can’t identify.
He’s not sure he’s ever felt this exposed. In a few days, they’ll be back home and it won’t be like this, but Charlie will
still know all Simon’s secrets.
“Is it always like that?” Charlie asks, quiet enough that the driver can’t hear. “Like you aren’t—I don’t know—part of the
main cast?”
Simon is speechless for a minute, because he’s never told Charlie that. Sometimes he wonders if he dreamed it all up, and
his family is normal and the problem is, as usual, Simon.
But if Charlie saw it—
“Sorry, shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know what I’m talking about,” Charlie says easily.
“It’s always been like that. I must have had bad vibes even as a little kid.”
“You’ve never had bad vibes, what the fuck.”
Maybe that’s the moment Simon knows that Charlie loves him, and is a little stupid with it, because Charlie is America’s greatest
living expert on Simon’s bad vibes. “Okay,” he says. “If you say so.” They’re both petting Edie, and Simon lets their fingers
tangle.
Maybe Simon’s operating on a different definition of love than most people. Maybe he needs the kind of love that won’t let him forget it, not for a minute. Maybe he needs the kind of love that flies your dog across the country after a seven-year-long fight.
“I never had a bad foster placement, but the worst ones, for me, were when the parents had kids of their own. There was this
whole family and there I was. Not their fault, not my fault, just a shitty situation.” Charlie rubs his thumb over Simon’s
wrist. “In your case, though, it’s definitely your family’s fault. I’m gonna fight them. Don’t care if they’re old.”
“I think you can take them,” Simon says, a little overwhelmed.