Chapter 3
SIMON
“So, what did you say?” Ellie—sweet, cheerful, beautiful Ellie, my work-wife, my work-soulmate, all four feet and ten inches of her—asked, peering up from the bottom of the ladder I definitely hadn’t climbed to the top of to avoid continuing this conversation.
She’d noticed something was up the second I’d walked in today and hadn’t let up since.
It’d only taken me fifteen minutes to break under interrogation techniques the CIA could’ve learned something from. It was all in the eyes, magnified by the half-rim glasses perched on her innocent-looking button nose.
“Look,” I began, adjusting the position of one of the books on the shelf in front of me an absolutely critical-to-conservation sixteenth of an inch. “You have to understand, Theo and I have an agreement.”
Ellie raised an eloquent brow. It said, you have a what?
It also, if you read between the lines, said, you’re never going to stop being stupid about Theo, are you?
That was a conversation we’d had enough times that I could’ve held both sides of it by myself.
She was right. I was never going to stop being stupid about Theo.
If I was ever going to stop that, it would have been for her. We’d have been married by now. Maybe thinking about kids. We’d definitely have a dog.
But I wasn’t, so we didn’t.
Because she was smarter than me, she’d moved on and was very happy with the equally smart and beautiful Miko—her girlfriend of just under a year now. They’d moved in together recently. They had houseplants. They were thinking about a cat.
I had not moved on.
Ellie made a go on gesture when I didn’t immediately respond to her eyebrow. I sighed.
“This dates back to when we were in college,” I said, deciding that I couldn’t justify adjusting the books up here anymore and climbing down from the ladder.
“We made an agreement that if either of us had an event to attend and we didn’t have someone to attend it with, the other would go as our plus-one. ”
Ellie gestured again. I was not getting away with this.
“There’s not a whole lot more to it than that.” I shrugged.
Ellie blinked at me. “Right,” she said. “Because that’s a normal thing everyone does.”
I rubbed the tingling back of my neck, looking anywhere but at Ellie’s face.
“Obviously it’s not… universal, or anything.
It just seemed like a good idea at the time.
And before you say anything about me being a pushover for Theo, I got a lot more use out of it than he did.
He normally had a date. So. I owe him this.
And you haven’t met his family,” I added, pausing to look around the archive for something else to do. “They’re… awful.”
When I risked a glance at Ellie again, her lips were predictably pursed.
She was right that I was a pushover for Theo. That was an objective truth.
I just didn’t want to be any other way. It wasn’t as though Theo abused my willingness to do things for him. I chose to make him a priority.
Ellie had always been sweet to him when we were dating, which had been a significant part of why I’d thought we could have a future. But then it became obvious that I’d always prioritize Theo, and that wasn’t fair.
She didn’t even resent him for that. She just cared about me, and worried that he was taking advantage of the aforementioned hopeless, painful love. I knew he wasn’t—he didn’t know how I felt. I was sure of that. He wasn’t taking advantage. Theo was my friend. He cared about me.
Whatever it might’ve looked like from the outside, I was sure of that.
“Does anyone ever tell you you’re too nice?” Ellie asked.
I smiled wryly. “Other than you, you mean? Theo tells me, too.”
A flash of last night hit me, Theo’s warm body curled around mine. The pit of my stomach twinged with a familiar pang of want, sharp and sudden.
No one else had ever made me feel like Theo did. I’d dated since I met him, obviously. I’d dated some people I really liked. Ellie, for example—but there’d been others as well. Great people. People anyone would have been lucky to be with.
None of them had been Theo. Whenever Theo was in a room, he was the only person in the room.
When he smiled at me, adorable dimples on full display, my ribcage filled with sunshine.
Whenever he was close enough to touch, I tingled from head to toe.
When we did touch, I felt like I was exactly where I was meant to be. Anchored. Home.
How was I meant to give up on that when I’d never felt it with anyone else? Even knowing with all my heart and soul that it was never going to happen.
Theo didn’t look at me like that. Theo liked glamour, people who were larger than life. People who stood out in a crowd, who sparkled. Who were beautiful and interesting and impressive.
I was a junior archivist who was not about to win any beauty contests and sourced all my sweaters from Goodwill. My life was quiet and unremarkable, and I liked it that way.
Ellie huffed. “Well, at least he knows,” she said. “So you said yes, then? You’re going to the wedding.”
I sighed again, leaning against the bookshelf. We weren’t supposed to, but I needed the support. Especially because…
“I said yes. Which, uh. Actually means I need to ask you a favor.”