Chapter Twenty-Five
Jamie picks them up at the airport. Simon hugs him hard enough that Jamie’s feet leave the floor.
“You messaged me literally half an hour ago,” Jamie says, but it’s not like he’s letting go either. “We FaceTimed every day.”
Then Jamie hugs Charlie, which might have been a surprise if Simon hadn’t seen Jamie’s name on Charlie’s phone from time to
time. It makes him feel warm. Maybe this is how people feel when they think about family. He doesn’t know.
They manage to get all their luggage into Jamie’s car. Charlie climbs into the back seat with Edie and Simon gets behind the
wheel.
“You’re making Simon drive?” Charlie asks Jamie. “Wow.”
“Oh, honey,” Jamie says after he finishes laughing. “Don’t you know—”
Simon gets a hand over Jamie’s mouth and Jamie stops talking, but in the rearview mirror he sees Charlie looking thoughtful.
On the ride home, Jamie fills him in on the minutiae of his life, as if they haven’t been talking the whole time Simon was
gone, but Simon doesn’t mind hearing it all again.
“That was the turn for Charlie’s house,” Jamie says after they’ve turned into their neighborhood.
Simon doesn’t know why he didn’t think of it. Charlie’s going home to his own house, and Simon’s going to his own house. They’ve spent the past week in a six-hundred-square-foot apartment. The idea of Charlie not being there is a little
strange, too abrupt.
“You probably don’t have any food in your house,” Simon says, even though it can’t be true. A week isn’t even long enough
for eggs to go bad. And whoever cleans his house could have brought groceries, for all Simon knows.
“You’re right,” Charlie says from the back seat, absolutely lying.
“You probably want coffee,” Simon goes on. “Jamie made cupcakes.” He’d gotten the pictures somewhere over Colorado.
“It’s true,” Jamie says, sounding like he’s trying not to laugh.
“I’d love coffee and cupcakes,” Charlie says.
“Okay, it’s settled,” Simon says, relieved.
Simon doesn’t know how much he’s missed his house until he walks through the door, but now that he’s home, it’s going to take
a court order to get him out again. He wants to pet every wall, every bookcase, every piece of furniture. He wants to jump
into his pool and stay there until tomorrow. Edie obviously feels the same way, rolling around on the sofa and sniffing everything.
Then he turns and sees Charlie standing in the doorway, and it hits Simon that Charlie’s never been here. They’ve lived a
few minutes away from one another for years, but Charlie’s never been here. Until last month, Simon had never seen Charlie’s
house either.
It would be so terrifyingly easy to just . . . stop. To go back to the way it used to be. Maybe the thing that exists between
them depends on being away from their normal lives.
Maybe they’ll forget how to be together or why they want to be.
Maybe Charlie will realize he doesn’t have patience for Simon’s nonsense, not when he has dozens of easier friends nearby.
Maybe Simon will forget how to be the person he is with Charlie—a little less guarded, a little more generous. He likes that version of himself.
Hoping he looks like someone who isn’t mid-crisis, Simon goes to the kitchen and puts on coffee. The kitchen is kind of amazingly
clean, but then again, Jamie always does clean up after he cooks, just not within the thirty-second time frame mandated by
Simon’s rogue synapses. He opens the cabinet to take out mugs, and the handles are all fucking over the map, so jarring it’s
almost a jump scare.
He feels Charlie come up next to him, one hand landing heavy on Simon’s shoulder.
“Do you want me to go?” Charlie glances at the cabinet and starts rotating the mugs. Simon takes his hand, pulling it away
from the mugs and keeping it in his own hand. Charlie’s trying to help, and Simon’s almost convinced himself that he can live
with people knowing he needs help. But fixing the coffee cups isn’t the solution.
“You’re freaking out,” Charlie says.
“It’s a day ending with Y.” He leans against Charlie for a minute. “I realized you’ve never been here.”
“You should give me the tour.” It’s not a huge house. You can see about eighty percent of it from the kitchen. “No, seriously,
show me around. I mean, I’m coming back, so I need to know where everything is, right?”
It’s not quite a rhetorical question. “Yes,” Simon says, firmly, and proceeds to show Charlie around.
Simon drives Charlie home.
“I’ll talk to you tonight?” Charlie asks. Simon leans in and kisses his cheek for some cursed reason, like that’s something
they even do.
Charlie gets out of the car before Simon can do anything even weirder, like follow him inside. Simon waits until the front door shuts before pulling out of the driveway.
Back home, he sits on the sofa next to Jamie. “I missed you.”
“Me too,” Jamie says, closing his laptop and tossing it onto the cushion on his other side. “But we don’t have to pretend
I wasn’t getting on your nerves before you left.”
“No—”
“Don’t lie.”
“It isn’t you. It’s my brain.”
“Your brain is, in fact, attached to you.”
“It’s a real shame.”
Jamie sighs. “I’ve been looking at apartments, so I’ll be out of your hair soon.”
“It isn’t you that’s bothering me.”
“Okay,” Jamie says, sounding dubious. “Then what is?”
Simon buries his face in a throw pillow and explains about the sink and the dishes, the rituals and routines, the way his
nerves sometimes feel fried, like one additional stimulus is going to tip him into oblivion. “Until you came to stay, I didn’t
even realize how bad it’d gotten. You being here set off trip wires I hadn’t even known about.”
“When did it get bad? When you went off the meds?”
“The whole last year was . . . really not good. But it got worse as the season was winding down.” He’d known that he was facing
a big change, and it didn’t matter that it was something he wanted—his brain doesn’t know good stress from bad stress.
“So, I’ll clean as I go when I’m cooking, not leave anything in the sink, et cetera. Earbuds on low. And you’ll tell me if there’s anything else.”
“I’m not asking you to cater to my whims.”
“You mean, take an extra two minutes to help my friend with an actual health issue?”
“I’m not supposed to make it your problem. Margie’s orders.”
Jamie’s quiet for a minute, his fingers tapping a rhythm on his thigh. “Why didn’t you tell me all this months ago?”
“Mostly because I didn’t want to think about it. And I didn’t want you to know what a wreck I am. Sorry.”
“You aren’t a wreck.”
“I think, sometimes, maybe I am? Or at least it feels that way? And I’ve tried not to let you know.”
“Then you’re a generous, funny, loyal wreck and I love you,” Jamie says, no hesitation. Simon kind of slithers a little closer,
so his head is in petting range of Jamie’s hand. Jamie takes the hint and strokes his hair. “I thought you wanted me to go
away.”
Simon winces. “I’m sorry.” He should have guessed that Jamie might take it that way. It’s what anyone would think if a friend
started acting irritated and refused to talk about it. And Simon’s spent so much effort driving people away that it’s no surprise
Jamie thought Simon was up to his old tricks.
It’s kind of a stark wakeup call.
Simon takes a deep breath. “Remember when I asked if I was treating you like my assistant, and you said it was okay because
we’re helping one another? You help me out and I give you a place to stay?”
“That’s not exactly how I remember that conversation,” Jamie says. “I have some names for you, by the way, if you do want to hire someone.”
Simon manages not to point out that assembling a list of potential hires is something an assistant would do. “What I mean
is that I’m not giving you a place to stay. You live here. I think you’ve spent more time living here than you have anywhere
else in the past few years.”
Jamie looks stricken. “I’m sorry.”
Simon is somehow still getting this wrong. “I love having you here. If you want to leave, I won’t be weird and sad about it—well,
I won’t act weird and sad, at least—but it’s your home, permanently, unless you don’t want it to be.”
“You mean that?”
“I’ve meant it for a while.” Simon just hadn’t known that it was something he could say, something he could ask for.
“And when things between you and Charlie get more serious? You’ll want the place to yourselves.”
Simon’s less sure about that. There is nothing about that man that says I need privacy. “Charlie has a house.”
“Most people would not be okay with their partner’s ex living with them.”
“Charlie isn’t most people. And I don’t even mean that as a compliment. He’s a total weirdo.”
“I’ve never seen you like that. You were almost clingy with Charlie.”
Simon’s mortified, but it’s not like he can deny it.
Without a few helpful layers of armor, Simon’s .
. . affectionate? He’s a little affectionate with Jamie now, but Simon didn’t let his guard down until he realized that Jamie wasn’t going anywhere.
It took years for him to redraw his boundaries with Jamie in a slightly less constricting shape than he’s used to.
This thing he’s doing with Charlie depends on Simon keeping his guard down, on Simon letting Charlie in past his defenses.
It’s possible that human relationships, in general, depend on not being covered in ten layers of spikes, but that’s a mystery
for future Simon.
“It was nice,” Jamie says. “Seeing you like that. I’m happy for you.”
“It’s only been a little while.”
Jamie raises his eyebrows. “What, are you planning on ending it?”
Simon shakes his head.
“Do you think Charlie is?” Jamie asks. “He seemed pretty happy to have you hanging off his sweater.”
Simon’s face heats. “I don’t want to ruin it.”
“Then don’t ruin it.”
“I’m not great at relationships. You know this.”
“Have you ever really tried?”
The truth is that he’s done the exact opposite of trying: he’s done everything in his power to make sure people know he doesn’t