Chapter Twenty-Seven
When Simon wakes up, the room is pitch black, no light seeping in around the edges of the blackout curtains. He reaches for
his phone. It’s ten in the morning. He’s been asleep for over twelve hours.
He and Charlie had been on their way out to dinner when his vision went swimmy. The culprit: the setting sun coming through
the window at an odd angle, flickering through gaps in the palm trees. Charlie turned the car around. By the time they got
back to Simon’s house, a ball of pain had gathered behind his left eye. He took his migraine meds, drank a glass of water,
and went to bed.
This was his first migraine in more than six weeks, and it wasn’t brought on by stress or missed meals or fatigue or sharp
smells or sudden movements or any of the other things he can control—just the same sunlight he sees practically every day.
He feels hungover, and like he’s probably going to take a nap later today, but all that’s left of his headache is the feeling
that his brain’s been lightly scoured. He’s a little nauseous, and his body feels like it’s been ransacked for parts and left
on the side of the road, but the medicine did its job. He’s counting it as a win, or at least not a loss.
He heads out to the kitchen, hoping there’s some coffee left in the pot. The entire house is dark—not pitch black like his bedroom, but like someone went around and shut all the blinds halfway. Jamie and Charlie are in the living room, talking quietly enough not to have woken Simon.
“Hey, you,” Jamie says, seeing him first. “Feeling better?”
“Yeah. Wrung out, but okay.” Simon gives up trying to make it to the kitchen and plops down next to Charlie. He’s wobbly.
When he tips onto Charlie’s shoulder, he can’t think of any good reason to sit back up. Charlie puts an arm around him and
Simon shuts his eyes.
“Coffee or that ginger tea?” Jamie asks.
“You don’t have to,” Simon mumbles into Charlie’s T-shirt.
“I’m making myself something. So, what do you want?”
“Can I have both?” The tea is supposed to help with nausea. Simon wouldn’t know, because boiling water is too much work when
he’s in this state. “Like, not in the same cup, please.”
Jamie snorts. “Got it.”
“Thank you.”
Last night, Jamie had taken out Simon’s sleeping clothes and put all Simon’s pills directly into his hand. And Charlie fixed
his blackout curtains. Simon usually wakes up to daylight spearing through his eye sockets.
It’s a little embarrassing, knowing they fussed over him. No—it’s embarrassing that he apparently needs all that fuss.
He’s awful at dealing with his migraines on his own. Sometimes he forgets to take all his pills. He never remembers the blackout
curtains. Usually he passes out in his clothes, then wakes up miserable, Edie pawing at his shoulder to be let outside.
“You didn’t have to stay,” he tells Charlie.
“I didn’t. Not the whole time. After you fell asleep, I went home, ate, got changed, brushed my teeth, and came back. Jamie
let me in.”
“You know,” Simon says, trying to sound like he just had an amazing idea, “you should keep some stuff here.”
Charlie gives his shoulder the gentlest of pinches. Two days ago, he shouldered his way into Simon’s closet, opening and shutting
drawers, declaring “you never wear any of this,” and shoving a bunch of Simon’s less favorite bathing suits in with his second
tier T-shirts, then dumping the contents of a duffel bag into the empty drawer.
Simon stood in the doorway to his closet, fully aware that this was a dare, Charlie escalating the situation and waiting for
a reaction. Simon grabbed Charlie’s empty duffel bag, threw two changes of clothes and some travel-size toiletries into it,
and shoved it back at Charlie.
“And I could keep some things at your place,” Simon goes on. “That could be something we do after talking about it like normal
adults.”
“I don’t see any normal adults in this relationship,” Charlie says, and he has a point.
“Fucking sunlight,” Simon mumbles into the worn cotton of Charlie’s shorts.
“How does that work? In the car, you didn’t have a headache yet, but you knew it was about to happen.”
“That’s the aura. My vision gets weird fifteen or so minutes before the headache starts. But sometimes I feel off for a couple
hours even before that. That’s the prodrome.”
“Huh. It’s kind of cool that your brain lets you know ahead of time.”
Simon needs a minute to process that. The aura and other assorted bullshit aren’t actually his brain’s early warning system, they’re just part of the trash can of neurological symptoms that make up a migraine.
And yet—the image of his brain, a poor dumb lump of cells, trying to warn him the only way it can?
That does something to Simon. He’s picturing his brain like a wounded animal, trying its best. He shuts his eyes and sniffles as discreetly as possible.
“Hey, hey,” Charlie says, “I didn’t mean—obviously there’s nothing good about your headaches—”
“No, I like it,” Simon says. “I like it.” He shuts his eyes, threads his fingers through Charlie’s, and lets himself drift
for a minute. “You like taking care of me,” he says, as quiet as he can. And what he means is something like, I’m trusting
you with all the parts of myself I don’t even like.
“What if,” Simon says, “hypothetically, someone were to throw you a birthday party?” Charlie’s birthday is just over a month
away.
“Hypothetically, who’s asking? You?” They’re walking Edie, who’s dedicated to her project of memorizing the unique smell of
every blade of grass between Simon’s and Charlie’s houses.
“Yes?” Alex had texted Simon, “so are you doing C’s birthday this year or what.” Simon promptly had a crisis about it.
“I like birthday parties,” Charlie says. “I like all parties.” Simon already knew this. Charlie is being the opposite of helpful.
They run into one of Simon’s neighbors. When they got back from New York, every neighbor he ran into stopped and said hi.
Well, they said hi to Edie. For years, he’s been exchanging low-effort small talk with them—mostly about dogs, but that’s still talking.
Simon is, somehow, a person who knows his neighbors.
He keeps coming back to Charlie’s notion that Edie is similar to an emotional support animal.
It’s like a wheelchair, Charlie and Jamie keep saying. Wheelchairs are good.
After the neighbor drags her dog away from Edie, Simon says, “So do you want me to throw you a party?”
“Do you want to throw me a party?”
Simon doesn’t want to throw anyone any kind of party. The idea of it—who to invite, where to find a caterer, how do parties
even work—is enough to make his heart race. But he wants to do right by Charlie, and if that means a birthday party, then
he’s going to throw a fucking birthday party.
“I don’t want anyone else to throw you a birthday party,” Simon says.
“I usually do it myself. Because I like to. If you really wanted to take over, I’d say sure, but you don’t—no, shut up, Simon, you should see your face—so I’ll keep doing it.”
“Okay,” Simon says, unconvinced. He’d sort of thought that he’d go out of his way to make sure Charlie had the birthday he
wanted, and then Charlie would know Simon—well, he’d know that Simon means it, that Simon’s disgustingly invested in this.
It seems like the sort of grand gesture that would appeal to Charlie.
“What I want,” Charlie says, and Simon’s ready to agree to anything, “is just for you to come.”
“Obviously I’m coming,” Simon says, a little offended.
“I know, but you never did before.”
Simon’s stupid face goes hot with shame.
“No, I mean, shit. I’m getting this wrong.
” Charlie gets a thumb under Simon’s chin, which shouldn’t even work, since they’re the same height, but somehow Simon’s looking up at him now.
“I just always kind of thought it would be cool if you showed up and it meant—I don’t know—that we could stop fighting and just be normal.
But also I kind of wanted to keep fighting with you because it’s fun. ”
“Fun,” Simon repeats. He wouldn’t say that quarreling with Charlie was fun, but it was easy in a way talking to people rarely
was. He never had to plan, never had to pretend.
“Anyway, now you’ll be there, and you fight with me all the time, so there’s nothing left for me to want. You can just get
me a present. Expensive clothing, since that’s your love language.”
“Love languages are fake,” Simon says, because he heard that on a podcast, and also because if Charlie wants fighting, Simon
can do that.
“That doesn’t change the fact that buying people expensive clothing is your love language,” Charlie says, and he’s right,
but whatever.
“I’ll get you more sweaters.” Simon means it to sound like and then you’ll be sorry but instead it comes out a little breathless, maybe because Simon’s looking forward to both buying the sweaters and seeing
Charlie in them. Maybe because Charlie’s hand has moved so he’s cupping Simon’s cheek.
“Yeah, you will,” Charlie says, low and about an inch from Simon’s mouth. He pushes Simon’s hair off his face.
“Let’s see how you like it if I put my finger under your chin and tell you things.” Simon maneuvers Charlie’s chin in the
least romantic way possible, then gets distracted by the need to paw at Charlie’s beard a little. “I just want you to have
a good birthday,” he says, right before Charlie kisses him. Just a little kiss, because they’re in the street. “And a good,
you know, everything.”
When they continue walking, somehow Simon’s holding Charlie’s hand.
“What about this one?” Simon traces a finger over the lizard on Charlie’s forearm. They’re in Simon’s pool, Charlie on a float,
Simon attempting to do laps but mostly cataloging Charlie’s tattoos.
“It’s supposed to be a dragon, but I was sixteen and a little high.”
Simon needs not to think about Charlie, sixteen and high, tattooing himself, or he’s going to start hyperventilating. There’s