Chapter Twenty-Five #2
care what they think of him, that he doesn’t need them.
“I know this isn’t exactly true,” Simon says, “but sometimes I think you’re the reason I know what it’s like to feel loved.
Not to be loved, maybe, but to feel it. You’re the only point of reference I had for a while.”
Jamie whips his head around. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t mean it as a bad thing.” Simon’s been thinking a lot about this since Nora’s graduation.
“You never let me forget that I’m important to you.
I think—” This is too heavy, and all Simon’s instincts are screaming at him to stop, but he’s starting to figure out that with people he cares about, he has to take a good look at where his instincts are pointing him and throw himself in the opposite direction.
“When I need to figure out how to treat someone like they matter to me, I just imagine what you’d do. ”
“I have to do this video in five minutes and if you make me cry, Simon, I swear to God,” Jamie says, but he’s already hugging
Simon.
Simon goes to bed early, partly because his body has no idea what time it is, and partly because he feels like he’s been awake
for days. It’s seven o’clock.
While he’s brushing his teeth, he looks in the mirror and presses a finger to the lingering beard burn on the corner of his
mouth and the side of his neck. There’s more in places he can’t see. He wonders how long it will take them to fade, how long
it will take before Simon can feel comfortable in his body without thinking of all the places Charlie touched him, how long
it will be before they can see one another in the neighborhood without it being strange.
But Charlie said they’d talk tonight. He wanted a tour of Simon’s house because he’s coming back. Charlie isn’t acting like
it’s going to be over anytime soon, and Simon doesn’t want it to be, so he doesn’t know why every molecule in his body is
telling him that he’s just had a breakup, that something terrible has happened.
Maybe it’s because he feels, deep down, like he should have pulled back days ago. Weeks ago, even. He shouldn’t have let it
get to this point, shouldn’t have let himself care, shouldn’t have let Charlie see him.
His brain is trying to do what it always does, keep him safe, only it’s decided safety means keeping everyone away.
Nobody can hurt you if they don’t matter to you.
It’s . . . really fucking dysfunctional, actually, but that’s nothing new.
His phone is heavy in his hand. The idea of calling Charlie—something Charlie explicitly asked for, something Simon actively
wants—feels daring and impossible.
Simon spends a moment staring at his phone, trying to figure out which time zone he should use to determine whether it’s night
yet, then gives up and calls Charlie. Texting would be normal, but he can’t imagine what he would even write, and the one
single advantage of a phone call is that he doesn’t have to plan further than “hi.”
“Oh, hey,” Charlie says, answering the phone. He sounds like he’s home, not out doing whatever it is he does in his regular
life.
“Everything okay at your house?”
“Yeah, no surprises.”
Simon knows it’s not possible to run out of things to talk about after spending four hours apart, but he can’t think of one
single thing to say other than tell me how not to ruin this.
“Did you call because you miss me?” Charlie asks, sounding intolerably smug.
“No, shut up,” Simon says immediately. “God.”
Charlie just laughs. “Yeah, you missed me.” There’s a rustling that makes Simon think Charlie’s lying down on his bed or getting
himself settled on the couch.
“Are you in bed?”
“Is this going to be that kind of phone call?”
“I’m about to fall asleep, so that’s a pass.”
“So are you in bed, then?”
“No, I’m hanging upside down like a bat. Yes, I’m in bed, that’s how I sleep.”
“Gray duvet, white pillows, approximately seventeen blankets,” Charlie says, because he apparently memorized Simon’s bed linens
when he saw the house earlier. It’s a good reminder that Charlie is maybe as deranged as Simon.
“I’m only under four of the blankets right now.”
“Black T-shirt?”
“White. You haven’t seen this one.”
Charlie makes a dissatisfied sound. “Hate it. Switch to FaceTime.”
If Charlie needs to know exactly what Simon looks like at that moment, Simon can go along with that. “There.” He holds the
phone at arm’s length so Charlie can see his shirt and the entire blanket nest situation.
“You look cozy,” Charlie says, and only then does Simon pay attention to his phone screen. Charlie doesn’t have a shirt on,
and if there’s anything in the world that should be less surprising, Simon doesn’t know what it could possibly be, but he
still hears himself make a noise. Charlie raises his eyebrows.
“Shut up,” Simon says. “Switch to FaceTime. You knew what you were doing. Okay, your turn. Show me your bedroom.”
“Come see it yourself.”
“I’m already in bed.”
“Come over tomorrow.” Charlie winces. “No, sorry, forget it.”
Simon’s stomach twists. “What, did you have plans?”
“No. I mean, I’ll probably go over to Alex’s at some point but that’s not what I meant.”
Simon stares at the image of Charlie on his screen, trying to figure out whether Charlie just told him he doesn’t want to see him tomorrow.
“I’m trying to give you space,” Charlie says. “Trying to follow your lead.”
“My lead is terrible. It’s a path straight to hell.”
Charlie’s quiet for a moment. “Simon, I’ve been following your lead from the beginning.”
“Explain.”
“You seem like you don’t actively hate me, I spend more time with you. You flirt with me, I flirt back. You harass my stepfather,
I assume you might care about me. You stand around biting your lip and ogling me, I kiss you. You text me, I text you back.
You say shit like you promise to be nice if we break up—no, shut up, you said if—and I start to get some ideas about what it is we’re doing.”
That’s a bracingly accurate summation of their relationship, even if Simon might fight about the lip biting thing, just on
principle.
But what’s Charlie counting as the beginning? The way Charlie says it, it’s like he was looking for an opportunity to spend
more time with Simon. Charlie’d said he had a crush, but Simon believed him when he said it was only physical. This all sounds
a lot more involved than that.
“If I need space, I’ll tell you,” Simon says, instead of asking Charlie for a detailed written timeline of every feeling he’s
ever had.
“Will you, though?” Charlie asks, skeptical. “Will you really?”
“Like, fifty-percent odds.”
“Okay, we can work with that.” There’s something about the way Charlie says it, so casual about dealing with Simon’s bullshit,
that makes Simon feel panicky at the idea of losing it.
“Also I actively hate space most of the time,” Simon says.
He shuts his eyes and tries to astrally project to somewhere he isn’t doing this.
“I mean, yes, sometimes I need half an hour to think about redundancies in my skin care regimen, but in an ideal world I’d have one of those shock collars like Alex’s dog has and I’d get zapped whenever I get too far from—well—basically you or Jamie. ”
He opens one eye. Charlie’s staring at the camera, his mouth a little open.
“I realize that’s not healthy,” Simon says. “I’m not going to microchip you. Or myself. My point is that I don’t think you
need to worry about me needing space.”
“You are . . .” Charlie shakes his head, but his expression is all goofy and fond. “You are a mess. A disaster. And that fact
is so special to me.”
“Oh my God, just die please,” Simon says, but he knows Charlie means it. “I don’t want to ruin this,” he says in a rush. “Don’t
let me ruin it.”
“Okay,” Charlie says.
“Okay?”
“I won’t let you ruin it.”
“What’s your plan? Give me, like, a flowchart.”
“If you’re being a dickhead, I’ll say, ‘Hey, Simon, you’re being a dickhead and it’s making me sad,’ and then you’ll fall
all over yourself trying to make me feel better. Off the top of my head. Just brainstorming.”
Maybe Simon did something like that once or twice.
Charlie didn’t have to point it out, though.
God. Also in none of those instances was Simon being a dickhead.
He’ll take being called a dickhead over accuracy, though, because accuracy probably involves uttering phrases like “meeting one another’s emotional needs” and Simon might never recover.
Still, he switches back to a regular audio call because actions have consequences, Charlie.
“Or, plan B, I just fuck you, because that’s a battle-tested strategy to get you in a better mood,” Charlie goes on happily.
“Oh my God,” Simon says, a little faintly. “You’re a monster.”
He thinks of how he is after sex, warm and dumb and not quite there. He thinks of Charlie asking are you always like this.
“You started it,” Charlie says. “But I’m not wrong.”
“No,” Simon agrees. “You aren’t.”