Chapter Twenty-Six
“Do you want to go to Petra’s wedding?” Charlie asks.
It’s bright in Charlie’s bedroom, the curtains wide open. “I RSVP’d ‘no’ already,” Simon says. “I thought I’d still be in
New York.”
“I meant, do you want to come with me?”
The truth is that Simon doesn’t want to go to Petra’s wedding, or any wedding, or possibly anywhere at all, basically ever.
But Charlie’s going, and maybe he doesn’t want to go alone? Simon doubts his company will improve anything, though.
“Do you want me to come?” Simon asks.
“That is literally why I’m asking you. But if you don’t want to, it’s okay.”
“Sure. Why not.”
“Alex is coming by in an hour if you want to say hi.”
Simon props himself up on an elbow so he can look down at Charlie. “Are you arranging playdates for me? Do I seem lonely?
What’s going on here?”
“Just giving you a heads-up,” Charlie says. “You can stick around, or you can split.”
Simon spends a few minutes trying to find any hidden meaning in all that and concludes that Charlie is saying exactly what
he means.
Charlie’s refrigerator is stocked with a bunch of the same salads and bottled water that Simon had been buying in New York. On the counter is a box of his favorite brand of granola bars. Simon feels mildly nuts about it all.
When Alex walks in, Simon doesn’t know what to expect. He’s braced. Well, he’s sitting on the sofa holding Edie, wearing his
indoor sunglasses, but same idea. Simon wants to murder Jamie’s boyfriends on first sight, and he wouldn’t blame Alex for
being suspicious of Simon’s ability to make Charlie happy—Simon’s suspicious of his ability to make Charlie happy.
“What does it take,” Alex says to Simon instead of hello, “to get you to respond to your texts?”
“You’re not going to like the answer to that,” Charlie says. “Okay fine, don’t hug me, see if I care,” he adds when Alex makes
a beeline to the sofa, plopping down next to Simon, stealing Edie, and supervising him while he reads the past week’s worth
of messages in the group chat.
It’s eighty percent small talk and inside jokes that Simon barely understands, along with Charlie telling everyone to shut
up whenever a picture surfaces of him wearing real clothes.
“Why are you even in this group chat?” Simon asks her. “You quit.”
“Tough shit, you’re stuck with me.”
“Fair.”
“Give me your phone. No, unlock it first.”
Not liking any of this, Simon hands her his phone, then watches as she makes herself a favorite contact. Which means she sees
that his current favorite contacts are Jamie, Nora, and Charlie.
“Why?” he asks, gesturing at his phone.
“Because I’m going to miss seeing you every day.”
That seems highly unlikely, and he tells her so.
“Fine. You’ll miss seeing me, then,” she says.
The worst part is that she’s right. Simon remembers Charlie insisting that Alex and Simon are friends. He supposes, looked
at from certain angles, it’s true. They’ve spent a lot of time together, and even though most of it’s been on set, Simon hasn’t
minded it. He’s looked forward to it, maybe. Or he’s gotten used to it. He isn’t sure there’s a difference.
“Tell me about the movie,” he says, because that seems like a normal thing to ask a person, and also because he’s curious.
She tells him, and then they talk about how brave Edie was on the airplane, and it’s all . . . nice. She doesn’t warn him
off Charlie. She doesn’t even say anything about him and Charlie.
“Do you like your agent?” Simon asks, the words out of his mouth before he’s made up his mind to say them. “I think I need
a new agent.”
“Hey,” Charlie says. “You didn’t ask whether I like my agent.”
“Probably because your agent is mean,” Alex says.
“She’s so mean,” Charlie says, a little dreamily. Simon grins up at Charlie—he can’t help it—then catches Alex’s eye and she’s
grinning too. His phone buzzes with contact info for Alex’s agent.
“Want me to ask her to get in touch with you?” Alex asks.
That sounds like the next best alternative to doing nothing at all and hoping the situation magically resolves itself, so
he says, yes, he’d love that, thank you.
Simon stays long enough to finish his coffee and eat a granola bar. He doesn’t have any interest in watching them play video games, but it’s nice seeing Charlie happy, nice hearing the two of them laugh. Simon keeps waiting to feel jealous, and it doesn’t come.
He keeps thinking about how Charlie said that Alex needs things to be fine, needs to keep things light. Now that he knows
Charlie better, he can see the work Charlie puts into it. But work doesn’t mean it’s fake. The fact that it isn’t perfect,
isn’t ideal, doesn’t mean it’s fake either. It just means that Charlie’s taking care of his friend the best way he can, and
that feels like a very Charlie thing to do.
When Simon leaves, Alex squeezes him on the shoulder, a humane alternative to a hug. But Simon’s trying here, he’s making
an effort, so he leans over and gives her an actual hug.
Then he grabs his phone and leaves before anyone can say anything.
“I could kiss you both,” Lian says when Charlie and Simon sit down. They’re at a French restaurant that’s always Lian’s first
choice for expense account lunches. “You can’t buy this kind of publicity.”
That TikTok is still doing the rounds, and so is the picture from the restaurant, a handful of pictures and a clip from upfronts,
and a few pictures someone took of them in the Chelsea Whole Foods arguing in the pet supply aisle about the ethics of spending
thirty-eight dollars on three pounds of dog food.
“Are you getting shit from the network?” Charlie asks.
“No,” Lian says, after a tiny hesitation that probably means she’s getting questions from the network, maybe concern, but no actual trouble.
Obviously, bigots exist, and so do tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists who think he and Charlie are engaged in a publicity stunt, so their social media is a disaster zone. Simon can’t even look at it, and it’s too homophobic in there to ask Jamie to help, so he finally hired an assistant.
Charlie posted a video explaining that if anyone thought he was straight, “that sounds like a you problem,” and another video apologizing, and then a third saying that anyone who doesn’t like it can die mad, all within
twenty-four hours. Neither of them are getting through the rest of June without agreeing to some terribly earnest pride month
social media content.
“What’re you planning to do about it?” Simon asks. Charlie’s hand comes to rest on the back of Simon’s chair.
Lian takes a sip of ice water and looks like she’s counting to ten. “Actors become involved all the time without it changing
the trajectory of the show.”
“Lian,” Charlie says. “Come on. It’s not about us being involved. It’s about us being out. There’s an element of, like, responsibility here.”
This is mighty rich, since Charlie’s spent the past few weeks telling Simon that he’s never not been out, but Simon can respect
the pivot. He butters a piece of bread just for the sake of doing something. He agrees with Charlie’s point. But he also feels
like he should have had this conversation with Lian years ago. He’s a bit ashamed that he didn’t.
“Wait a minute,” Lian says, sitting up even straighter. “Do you think you need to persuade me that we need to do a romance storyline? After I’ve spent the past seven years being cyberbullied by gay teenagers who want
to see your characters together?”
“Um,” Charlie says.
“Keeping the network happy and making the show I—we—want to make is a tightrope walk. I wasn’t going to commit to a queer romantic storyline between two of the show’s main characters unless I had your full support.
This time last year, would I have had your full support?
” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “I was afraid one of you would quit. Or burn the set down. Or commit actual murder. Nobody on this show is paid enough to deal with what would have happened if I told you to kiss.”
“We’re both professionals,” Simon says, mildly affronted. “Romantic leads have hated one another since acting got invented.”
Lian looks like she might be praying. “I was trying,” she says after a moment, “not to be an asshole. Do you remember when
I told you Out There wasn’t going to be like Tree of the Gods? This is what I meant. No toxic power dynamics. No nasty comments about weight or shooting outside for twelve-hour days during
heat waves or firing the intimacy coordinator in the middle of shooting. Just, in general, treating the cast and crew like
people instead of like bodies that I hired to move around like little dolls.”
“Ah,” Simon says. “Thank you?”
“Besides, we didn’t want a romance between the central characters. That kills the tension. If we got Luke and Jonathan together,
then we’d have to break them up, and this is not a prime-time soap,” Lian says, despite having very much written the episode
in which Amadi’s character turns out to have a secret space baby with a sexy alien amnesiac.
“I think that what Charlie and I are trying to say is that you have our support, one way or the other.”
Simon doesn’t say much for the rest of the meal.
Charlie and Lian are more than capable of keeping a conversation going.
Simon’s had dozens of similar meals where he mostly keeps quiet, but this feels different—the press of Charlie’s thigh against his, the knowledge that at least one of the people at the table wants to be there with him.
Both of them, if he’s being his most truthful self.
After he finishes eating, Charlie peers over Lian’s shoulder. “I see someone. I’ll be right back.”
Simon watches distractedly as Charlie hugs two people he dimly remembers having seen on set. One of them, he thinks, was a
space pirate in season three.
“I was all set to tell you not to fuck up my show,” Lian says, following the direction of Simon’s gaze. “I was going to tell
you that you’d better be good to him.”
“Yes, thank you, it’s about time someone threatened me.” He kind of means it.
“I was going to say that, but I don’t think I need to.”
“I want him to get hurt even less than you do,” Simon assures her. “I’ve got that covered.”
Lian gives him a complicated look, and Simon has a horrible certainty that she’s going to say something kind or meaningful,
so he blurts out, “Vintage J.Crew. Your cardigan.” He’s being very charitable in calling it vintage instead of just old. He
remembers buying the same exact sweater for his sister-in-law his freshman year of college.
She looks down at what she’s wearing. “Did you rummage through my closet and memorize all the labels?”
“You left it on the back of your chair once and I checked the label,” he admits. This probably isn’t much more normal than
snooping in her closet, but at least they aren’t talking about feelings anymore. “You know Alex’s agent, right?”
“Claire? Sure, why?”
Claire got in touch with Simon that morning and they’re meeting for lunch tomorrow. Simon feels a little sick about it.
“I’ve had a kind of shitty year.” It feels bizarre to say it out loud.
It feels dangerous admitting that he’s full of flaws and weaknesses, that the face he tries to show the world is a flimsy screen.
But Lian doesn’t look surprised. “It would have been less shitty if I had an agent I felt comfortable being honest with.”
“I think you’ll like her. Her wife was in my prenatal yoga class. They have a pair of those dogs that herd you when you walk
into the house.” Lian pauses for a moment. “She has multiple sclerosis.”
“I know.”
“A tick in the plus column,” Lian says, and it isn’t a question.
“Yeah.” He thinks, maybe, that it’s a good idea for him to work with people who already understand that sometimes you need
to play the hand you’ve been dealt.
“Good.”
“Would you tell me if you thought she’d be a bad fit for me?” Simon doesn’t know why he’s looking to Lian for reassurance,
except that he’s known her for longer than anyone else he trusts, and she knows both him and the industry.
Lian raises her eyebrows. “Yes. Simon. I want things to work out for you.”
She says it so deliberately, he can’t help but hear the implied of course I care about you, Simon, you idiot that maybe she’d say out loud if she didn’t know it would send Simon running to hide in the bathroom. A year ago, he wouldn’t
have heard her meaning, let alone believed it. The fact that he believes it now feels like something good and solid that he
can hold in his hand.
“Me too,” he says, and hopes she understands.