Chapter 12
THEO
“Have you seen Simon?” I asked at Madelaine’s elbow.
In the low light of the bar Mom had booked out for a wedding party cocktail evening—to be followed by dinner—I could barely see my own hands.
I knew Simon had arrived after me, along with Corey.
I’d seen him come through the door, even, in the same navy suit and white shirt he’d worn last night, this time with just the collar unbuttoned and a navy-patterned silk scarf with a rust-colored border tucked into it.
It was pitch-perfect for the event, which meant it had to be Corey’s doing.
I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. What I mostly felt right now was that, having been too much of a coward to go straight to him and apologize when he’d arrived, I desperately wanted to correct that.
The hurt look on his face before he’d walked away had gnawed at the pit of my stomach from the moment the door clicked shut behind him and hadn’t let up since. There was a drink in my hand, but I hadn’t so much as sipped it. Didn’t know what it was. Didn’t remember who’d handed it to me.
Madelaine looked around the room, brows drawn. “You had him surgically removed from your hip?”
Under other circumstances, that might’ve almost been funny. Under the current ones, it just made my guts hurt.
At least she hadn’t heard the fight. I wasn’t sure who had, but although the house was big, some quality of the architecture meant that sound carried through it most clearly when you didn’t want it to. My working theory was that it was cursed.
I should never, ever have brought Simon back here. I’d made a stupid mistake that could have meant losing him the first time we’d come, and now I was at risk of losing him again.
“We…”
I stopped myself from telling her we’d fought. I hated it, and I didn’t want to volunteer the information. She’d just give me a look, like it was inevitable, like of course I’d finally been too much for Simon, of course he was finally sick of my shit. No one’s patience was infinite. Not even his.
“I just need to find him. You haven’t seen him?”
Madelaine shook her head, then broke into a smile. For a second I thought maybe she’d spotted him, but then Cameron stepped up beside us, offering her a bright green drink in a martini glass.
“Where’s Simon?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me.
“Theo was just wondering the same thing,” Madelaine said before I could answer.
“Oh, huh.” Cameron sipped his identical bright green drink. “Last I saw him he was headed for the men’s room. That was at least five minutes ago, though. More, maybe.”
I scanned the room, deciding I couldn’t see him anywhere in it. That made the men’s room the best lead I had.
I walked off without saying goodbye, setting my untouched drink down on the way. I hesitated with my hand on the door handle, unsure what I was going to do if I did find Simon in there.
Would he want to see me?
If he’d been in there five minutes or more, was he okay?
With a steadying breath, I forced myself to push the door open.
Simon was in there. At the far end of the row of sinks. Both of his hands were curled around the edge of the counter, his eyes screwed shut, head hanging. A strand of his hair curled in front of his face in defiance of the amount of product he’d had keeping it back this morning.
“Sy?” I asked, feet carrying me to him without conscious input from my brain.
He turned to me, looking at me with one eye open and the other closed.
The closed one was red and obviously swollen, as if he’d been…
crying one-eyed? He sighed and turned back to the mirror, opening the closed eye with what looked like painful effort.
It was so bloodshot it made my eyes hurt in sympathy.
“I hate contacts,” he said before I could figure out what to ask.
“Can I help?”
Simon huffed. It was more defeated than dismissive, so I stayed where I was, hovering by his side.
“Dropped it. Put it back in wrong. Hurts,” he said, blinking furiously.
“Can you get it out again?” I asked, glancing at the case sitting beside the sink.
“Working up to it.” Simon sniffed, then swallowed.
“Take your time,” I said softly, looking at his face in the mirror. I hated seeing him in pain, although this kind of physical pain was a lot easier to handle than the hurt I’d seen earlier today.
I needed to start working on fixing that. If it could be fixed at all.
I watched in silence as Simon plucked the contact out of his swollen, sore eye, wincing when he did. It fell off the tip of his finger the moment he got it out, dropping into the sink.
“Fuck,” he muttered, pawing at the counter. “Dammit, where did it—”
He stopped as I touched his hand. Our eyes met in the mirror, and I forced myself to hold his gaze. The fact that it was a little unfocused made that a whole lot easier.
“I’ll get it. I can see it.”
Simon sniffed again as I picked the contact up and dropped it back in the case. I was nearly certain he shouldn’t put it back in his eye after it’d been in a public bathroom sink, but this was my first experience with contacts at all.
It was Simon’s, too, as far as I knew. He’d always worn glasses.
He was wearing contacts this weekend for my benefit. Because he didn’t want to embarrass me.
Never in a million years would I deserve this man. No matter what he said about it.
“You got your glasses on you?” I asked, clicking the contact case closed. If he didn’t, I was calling an Uber and we were going back to the house to get them—or back to the city, if that was where they were. It was the least I could do for him.
Simon reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He swore as something slipped out of his fingers, clattering on the floor and sliding away under the sinks.
“I got it,” I said again, crouching before he could stop me.
When I saw what he’d dropped, my heart did something complicated. It was the frog-print glasses case I’d given him… at least five years ago.
It hadn’t been any kind of grand gift—I’d picked it up at a flea market I’d been dragged to on a date for pocket change and given it to him casually the next time I’d seen him.
Simon didn’t necessarily love frogs, but I remembered he’d complained about the hinge breaking on his glasses case a week or so before, and I knew he wouldn’t replace it for himself.
Clearly, he hadn’t replaced this one, either. The print was faded now, worn off at the edges. The corners were scuffed, and the exposed hinge was starting to rust.
But he’d kept it.
I stood up, turning the case over in my hands. If I was going to do what I’d come in here to, I needed to do it now, before I lost my nerve.
“I owe you an apology,” I started. “On top of coffee and dinner for life and my undying gratitude.”
“Forget it.” Simon shrugged.
“No,” I said before he could say anything else. Not this time. Simon forgave me for everything, without question. Without waiting for an apology.
He deserved better than that from me.
“No,” I repeated. “I’m not forgetting it. I was wrong. I was…”
I paused to swallow, turning the case over in my hands as I forced myself to keep looking him in the eyes. Simon, thankfully, didn’t interrupt me again. His eyes glinted as he searched my face, the corner of his lower lip caught between his teeth.
If we’d really been dating, I would’ve smoothed this over with a blowjob. I didn’t do apologies. I never knew how, because if I started, where did I stop? The look on Simon’s face earlier had made me sorry I’d ever been born. I knew he wouldn’t accept an apology for that, though.
“You know I’m not great with words,” I said. He did know. It was my literal job to be good with words, but that was in books. This was real life, and I’d never been good at real life. Not when it really mattered. It mattered right now, and I was terrified I was going to screw this up.
Simon knew, usually, what I meant. Or at least, I took for granted that he did, and he always seemed to understand me.
But he needed words here. I had to try to find the right ones, or risk losing him forever. Like I almost had the last time we’d been here. The last time I hadn’t had the right words for him, when it really mattered.
“You are the single sweetest, kindest man on the face of the planet,” I began, picking each word as though I was trying to navigate a minefield with a metal detector. “And that’s…”
That’s why I love you so much it hurts to think about.
“… that’s why you put up with me, for a start.”
Simon took a breath, but I held up the glasses case to stop him.
“It’s also what makes you you. I wouldn’t want you any different. You’re right. I don’t own you, and you’re allowed to be nice to my sister and my ex because that’s just the kind of person you are. I…”
Love you for that, more than anything else about you.
“I wasn’t doing it to hurt you,” Simon murmured, ducking his head to catch my gaze again. I’d looked away without meaning to.
“I know.”
Simon had never in his life done anything intending to hurt me. I wasn’t sure I could be convinced he’d ever done anything with the intention of hurting anyone, even if he said so himself. That just wasn’t him.
“That doesn’t make you not hurt,” he said.
I swallowed again. That… I hadn’t really thought about it.
“You reacted like you did because you were hurt,” Simon insisted.
I frowned down at the case in my hands, noticing for the first time that some of the frogs had hearts in their eyes.
He must have been right. That only made sense.
It was just that as soon as I’d realized I hurt him, I hadn’t been thinking about myself anymore. I knew I hurt people. I knew I was too much, too needy, too clingy. I’d heard it often enough.
All I’d ever wanted was for someone to let me climb into their ribcage and stay there, and tell me every twenty minutes or so that they loved me and wanted me to stay exactly where I was forever.
This was, I’d discovered over the past decade or so, too much to ask.