Chapter 6 #2
I knew that’d be true. What was the point in pretending otherwise?
“But you’ve had better girlfriends?” Simon teased, breaking into an outright grin.
I huffed, swatting at his thigh. “Best romantic partner I’ve ever had,” I insisted.
He would be. No one would compare.
If I was really dating Simon, I knew he’d ruin me for anyone else. I’d been looking for another Simon ever since we met, and no one had even come close.
I was starting to worry that pretending to date him, even if it was only for a few days, was going to do it anyway. That I’d never recover from this.
“So… do you want me all over you, or…?”
My stomach swooped the same way it had when I’d kissed him. I looked back up at the ceiling—whatever I answered, I couldn’t look him in the eyes while I did it.
On the one hand, that was a terrible idea. I wasn’t much of an actor and I couldn’t see how I could pretend not to love it if Simon was all over me.
On the other hand…
“Would that be okay?”
“I don’t mind,” Simon said.
Of course he didn’t. He would’ve done anything for me.
I tried not to take advantage of that. I tried to be careful with Simon, because I knew he was too nice, I knew he couldn’t do enough for other people, and especially for me.
But I wasn’t perfect. I was selfish, and I’d missed Simon recently, and when was I ever going to get another chance at this?
“It’d sell the idea better,” Simon spoke up again. “Y’know. I mean, they don’t know me well enough to know whether I’d normally be like that, but it’d be easier to believe. If you don’t mind it?”
Fuck.
Well. If he was the one suggesting it, how wrong could it be?
“I’m okay with it.” I swallowed. “I mean, I’m the one who got us into this. I should be thanking you on my knees for playing along this far. This is too much to ask of you.”
Simon barked a laugh. “What else are friends for? I’m here to make this wedding suck less for you. Besides, the look on your mom’s face was priceless. If I can spend the next few days making her look like that regularly, I’ll thank you.”
He was too good for me.
“You’re too good for me,” I said aloud.
“I’m not. No one is,” Simon replied, voice soft.
His fingers brushed against mine—not holding, just touching.
“Your mother makes you feel like you’re not good enough.
It’s not true. You deserve the world, Theo,” he said.
“Would I still be hanging out with you if it wasn’t one of my favorite things to do? ”
No. No, he wouldn’t be. Simon was good with people. He made friends everywhere he went. He was vibrant and fun to be around and people liked him. He could have been spending his Thursday evening with just about anyone he wanted to.
I couldn’t have been more grateful that he was here with me.
“You want the first shower?” I offered, instead of actually answering that question.
“Are you saying I stink?” Simon teased again.
“You smell great, actually,” I said, turning my head to sniff him.
I’d caught a whiff of something new on him, something musky and spicy and sexy.
Not that Simon ever smelled bad—he just normally smelled of whatever body wash had been on sale when he’d last run out.
Simon wasn’t a signature scent kind of man.
He wasn’t a deliberate scent kind of man at all.
“Yeah? Ellie helped me pick this out,” he said. “All of it. So it’s her fault if I look and/or smell ridiculous.”
“You don’t.” Simon had never looked or smelled better. I owed Ellie a thank you.
I liked her. I’d wanted to hate her when she and Simon were dating, but I couldn’t. She was a sweetheart, like Simon. She’d always been kind to me. She’d even baked me a birthday cake once—Simon’s pancakes were amazing, but that was as close to baking with any success as he’d ever gotten.
So. I liked her.
I liked her a lot more now that they weren’t dating, and that she was safely in a committed relationship with someone else, though.
“You didn’t have to dress up,” I added. “I wouldn’t have cared.”
“Good thing I did,” Simon said. “No one would’ve believed you’d date me if I was wearing baggy jeans and an old t-shirt. I look like I’m punching far enough above my weight as it is.”
I wasn’t sure that was true. Simon was the kindest, sweetest man I’d ever met, and the smartest. He spoke Latin and Greek and he could read hieroglyphs. He did sudoku puzzles. For fun.
I didn’t even know how to do those. He’d tried to show me once, but the numbers had all just blurred together.
Simon was amazing.
“I will take that shower, though,” he went on before I could say so, sitting up with a groan. “Back in five.”
I shouldn’t have let Simon take the first shower. The last thing I needed, on top of everything else, was to watch him walk out of the en suite with a towel slung low around his hips and nothing else on.
It’d been a while since I’d seen him without a shirt on—a handful of years, since I’d moved out of the apartment we’d shared.
Not to repeat a phrase that’d been going around a lot today, but he was all grown up. We’d both been skinny in college, starving students living on coffee and instant noodles until Simon had broken down and learned how to cook in senior year, when we’d gotten our own place.
He’d filled out a lot in the intervening time, broad across the chest and shoulders. A development I hadn’t noticed under all the baggy clothes he normally wore.
I was still all pointy knees and elbows. Not that I minded—I didn’t hate the way I looked at all.
I just wasn’t insanely turned on by the way I looked. Simon, though?
The mistake in letting him take the first shower was that he was just in the next room getting dressed and I couldn’t jerk off about it because he’d hear me. No matter how much I wanted to.
I wasn’t a stranger to jerking off thinking about Simon.
Whenever someone broke up with me and he was sweet and sympathetic and let me curl up beside him on the couch with my head tucked into the crook of his neck, he took first place as my favorite guilty fantasy for a couple of weeks.
I liked to imagine turning to kiss him while we were watching a comfort movie, the light of his practically vintage TV flickering over the two of us.
He’d respond, and I’d crawl into his lap and kiss him until we were both breathless.
He’d tell me he wanted me, he’d always wanted me, that I could be his from now on and no one would ever dump me again.
Then I’d slide to my knees and suck his dick until he came down my throat.
Right now, I couldn’t help thinking about him coming back in here.
Dropping his towel. Stepping into the shower, crowding me against the tiles.
Murmuring that we ought to get in some practice before we went downstairs.
Kissing me like he meant it, like it was all real, like I could finally have everything I wanted.
I wanted to come in his hand, teeth digging into his shoulder as I muffled my own cries. I wanted to go downstairs with an unmistakable post-orgasm glow and a hickey on my neck, proof that someone did want me. That the best person I’d ever known wanted me.
Instead, I shut the hot water off and hissed as the cold spray cascaded over me, standing under it for as long as I could handle before stepping out and drying myself off like I was trying to scrub the imagined touch of Simon’s hands off my skin.
It might even have helped, if I hadn’t stepped out of the bathroom to find Simon dressed in a sharp, fitted suit. Deep navy, with a crisp white shirt under the jacket, the top two buttons still open and showing off a tempting slice of his throat as he held up two ties.
I’d never seen him in a suit before. All his other shirts were some kind of fun pattern, since the dress code at the museum only specified that they had to have a collar. Secretly, I loved that he wasn’t afraid to wear things like that, but this was something else.
My knees threatened to give way as I stepped into the bedroom.
He was gorgeous. I knew that. I also knew he didn’t think so, which meant he never did anything to make it obvious.
It was sure as hell obvious now, though.
“Wow,” I said, before I could stop myself. “I mean… wow.”
I hadn’t meant to say that once, let alone twice. Simon broke into a smile, which probably meant he hadn’t heard the undisguised lust in my voice.
I was going to have to be better about hiding that if I wanted to get through this wedding without losing my best friend in the whole world forever.
“Yeah?” he asked. “Which one?”
He held the two ties out toward me.
Despite everything, the sight of them made me smile. They were both so Simon it hurt—one in a pink baby pink paisley, and the other a bold diagonal white and navy stripe.
It was a relief that he hadn’t completely given up his personality in the pursuit of fitting in.
“Neither,” I said.
His smile faltered.
“Not that they’re not both fine,” I hurried to clarify. “Tie’s just too much for informal drinks. I like the paisley.”
“You don’t,” Simon said, smiling wryly. “But thank you.”
“I do,” I corrected, reaching out to touch it.
That put my hand perilously close to his—close enough that I felt the tingle of proximity running from the tips of my fingers all the way up the back of my neck, making the hairs there stand on end.
“I wouldn’t wear it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like it. I like that it makes me think of you.”
Simon laughed softly. “You don’t have to butter me up or anything,” he said. “I’m committed.”
“You don’t think I hang out with you because I like you?” I asked, turning his own argument from earlier back on him.
“Even if my taste is questionable?” he asked, brow raised but a smile tugging at his lips.
He was so ridiculously attractive when he smiled.
Everyone was going to notice tonight. They couldn’t possibly miss it.
“If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t hang out with me,” I said. “So as far as I’m concerned, the questionability of your taste is one of your best features.”
“Hey.” Simon ducked his head to catch my eyes. “No one’s allowed to talk about my best friend like that.”
My heart did some kind of complicated aerial maneuver under my ribs. It was so easy for him to say things like that to me.
“I genuinely like the tie,” I said. “Wear it to the wedding. It’ll annoy Mom.”
Simon chuckled. “You know I’d do anything to annoy your mother.”
I couldn’t help smiling at that. “Another one of your best features,” I said. “We’d better head down.”