Chapter 26
THEO
I was on my third? Fifth? Read-through of the same paragraph when a knock at my office door startled me so badly that the remaining mouthful of coffee in the mug by my elbow sloshed out of it.
I swore and jumped up for a tissue as it narrowly missed my keyboard but hit a stack of papers I hadn’t even begun to work through and had a sneaking suspicion were due by end-of-day. Assuming today was Wednesday. I wasn’t entirely sure.
“Come in,” I called, dabbing at the coffee spill.
The door squealed open and clicked closed before I remembered I ought to look up and see who it was.
My heart leapt into my throat as I saw.
“Audrey?” I asked.
It was definitely Audrey. I wasn’t sure why I was asking.
I hadn’t slept very well for a few days, and coffee could only do so much. Even in the quantities I was currently consuming it.
“Theo,” she said in response, hesitation in her voice.
That was fair. I’d caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror an hour or so ago.
I would have been hesitant to approach me right now, too, between the bloodshot eyes and the way my hair was sticking up at all angles from a combination of tugging on it and taking involuntary power naps at my desk.
At the desk, I couldn’t wake up and miss…
“I…” I began, then trailed off. “Uh,” I tried again. “Hello. What are you—did we have an appointment?”
Audrey tilted her head, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes at me. “No, I was just in the neighborhood and I thought I’d drop my portfolio off in person.”
She held up a plain black USB stick.
“Are you okay?” she continued.
I opened my mouth to lie, a yes teetering on the tip of my tongue.
What actually came out was a pathetic sob.
I slapped a hand over my mouth, mortified, and collapsed back into my desk chair as tears stung at my eyes.
Great. Wonderful. The absolute last thing I wanted to do was cry in front of anyone, let alone Audrey, who knew my sister and my mom and would be able to tell them.
Unfortunately, I didn’t seem to have a choice.
“Theo,” Audrey said in clear alarm, approaching the desk, stepping around it to hover beside me. “What’s wrong?”
I looked up at her wide eyes, my own burning as tears welled in them, and sobbed again. The reminder of everything that’d happened over the weekend was too much for me.
“Oh no,” she said, perching on the edge of the desk, reaching out to me. “It’s okay.”
It wasn’t okay. None of this was okay, not even a little.
All the same, when she put a hand on my shoulder and bent toward me, I let her pull me against her and buried my face in her shoulder, sobbing again.
She shushed me, rubbing circles over my shoulder blade and rocking side to side. Like I was an overtired toddler at the end of his tether.
That probably wasn’t so far from the truth. I was being a baby about this.
“Can I call someone for you?” Audrey asked when my sobbing slowed down again. “Simon, maybe?”
I sobbed again. God, I was pathetic.
So what if my heart felt like it’d cracked in two? I should have been able to handle it. I’d been heartbroken before.
Except it’d never been like this. It’d never felt like the end of the world.
Simon had always been there for me. Now he wasn’t.
“Okay, not Simon,” Audrey said, checking behind her before she sat herself more firmly on the edge of my desk. “Guess I’m up. Tell me about it.”
I stared at her, half-aware my mouth was hanging open but unable to make myself close it.
“This isn’t your problem.”
Audrey shrugged. “I walked in on it. And if it’s about Simon, well... I like him, actually. First impressions aside.”
“First impressions?” I asked, distracted from my own misery by the unfathomable idea that anyone wouldn’t adore Simon instantly.
Audrey’s red-lacquered lips quirked into a wry smile. “I hated him so much when we first met. You know, back when you two were in college.”
My brows drew together so hard they must’ve been touching in the middle. “What? Why? He’s the world’s number one sweetheart and you barely spoke a word to him.”
“And my best friend’s hot older brother looked at him like he’d hung the moon,” Audrey said.
I blinked at her. Individually, I knew what all those words meant. In context, aside from me looking at Simon like that—which I could admit I probably did—they didn’t make any sense.
“Is it so hard to believe that an impressionable young woman might just have a thing for a cute older college boy who was a little shy and always had his nose in a book and had a kind of attractively brooding air of mystery going on?”
“Cute?” I asked.
“You were cute!” Audrey insisted. “Still are, for what it’s worth. That was why your mom was trying to set us up. She overheard Delilah teasing me about you being at the wedding, if I was still interested.”
“But why would she care?” I asked. I still hadn’t figured out what Mom had been imagining she’d get out of all this.
Audrey shrugged. “She wants a grandkid. Neither Madelaine nor Delilah are in a hurry to have one. I’ve already got one.”
Huh.
That simple.
My mom was human, after all.
I sat back, misery temporarily forgotten in the light of this new information.
“You had a crush on me,” I said, circling back. My mouth formed the words, but even hearing myself say them, they were, actually, kind of hard to believe.
“And you had a crush on Simon,” Audrey continued. “So I hated him. Because he was between me and losing my virginity to an older man over the Fourth of July weekend so I could go back for senior year feeling all grown up.”
I scrunched my nose. Audrey gave me a withering look.
“Not you,” I said. “I wouldn’t have wanted to lose my virginity with me.”
“I don’t think it’s optional to be there when you lose your own virginity,” Audrey said, eyes glinting with laughter.
I waved my hand, sniffing as I tried breathing through my nose again for the first time since I’d stopped crying. “You know what I mean.”
“I do, and I don’t think you should talk about yourself like that. Especially since it sounded like you’re great in bed.”
My cheeks flushed instantly. I’d almost forgotten about that. Or not forgotten, exactly, but...
I’d convinced myself of what Simon had said, of what Madelaine had said. That none of what happened over the weekend was really real, that it wouldn’t have consequences when I went back to real life.
Except it did. It had.
“We were faking it,” I blurted out, as though that made things better. “The first time.”
Audrey nodded slowly. “The first time,” she said, pronouncing each word like she wasn’t sure how.
I wet my lips, unsure how to explain myself. I shouldn’t have been saying any of this, but I needed someone to talk to.
And the person I’d normally talk to about my romantic disasters was, for reasons of my most recent romantic disaster involving him, not currently speaking to me.
Well. That wasn’t fair. It was more that I was too afraid to speak to him. That I knew he would speak to me, but I was scared it wouldn’t be the same.
“We, umm. In hindsight I do know how insane this is going to sound, for the record,” I began, searching for the right words.
“It… I kissed him. I mean, you know that, you saw, but… for real, except… he said something I took the wrong way. The way I wanted to take it, because you’re right.
I was hopelessly in love with him then, and that never changed, and I thought I had the opportunity to have what I wanted for just a little while.
Not fake, but not quite… real, either. He said we’d forget about the whole weekend once we were home and I let myself believe that was true no matter what happened because I… suck as a best friend, frankly.”
Audrey nodded again. “I think I understood some of that.”
So I told her the whole story, from the beginning, in what felt like a single breath. There were tears in my eyes again by the time I was done, harsh stinging that made me wipe angrily at them, and a stone sitting in the pit of my stomach.
“Okay.” Audrey took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Wow.”
“Lucky for you,” I said, trying to force myself to smile to lighten the mood. I managed a sad little twitch of my lips before they pulled down again. “Dodged a bullet.”
“I don’t think that,” Audrey said softly. “I think anyone you loved would be lucky to have you. I think you just told me that, whether you know it or not. You love Simon. Everyone who meets you knows that.”
I swiped at my nose, sniffing back another round of tears. “How come he doesn’t know it?”
“Because he’s not seeing you when he’s not looking, which is when you make it obvious.”
I sighed. She was right. I’d done everything I could to hide how I felt about Simon. I’d been too afraid for him to know.
Because if he knew, and he couldn’t give me what I wanted...
He would have tried. I knew Simon, I knew he’d do anything for me. I knew he would have tried to feel the same way, and I couldn’t handle the thought of that.
Except...
“He said he loved me,” I murmured, more to myself than Audrey. Simon hadn’t been mad that I wanted him at all. He’d been mad that he thought I didn’t.
“Then this seems like a non-problem?” Audrey suggested. “You’re into him, he’s into you...”
“We fought,” I said.
“I know, I talked to Simon after.”
“No, not…” I waved my hand. “We fought before we left. He left me at the house after the wedding. I hurt him.”
I looked up at Audrey in time to see her shrug. “You didn’t mean to.”
“No.” No, I’d never meant to hurt Simon in my entire life. I’d never meant to hurt anyone, but I would have cut out my own tongue instead of hurting Simon if I’d known I’d been about to do it. I hadn’t known.
“So apologize,” Audrey said.
“What if he doesn’t believe it?” I asked. No one ever wanted to hear that I was sorry. That I wasn’t being difficult on purpose. Simon had just always known. That was part of what made him so important to me.
“He believed it after the first fight,” Audrey pointed out.
He had.
We’d fought, and then... it’d been okay.
I’d completely misunderstood what he’d said after, but the apology itself had been okay. He hadn’t told me I should have known better. I hadn’t groveled. Simon had even apologized to me, though I still didn’t think he’d needed to. I’d been in the wrong.
He did that because...
“Simon loves me,” I said, staring past Audrey to my office door. The one with the world, which had Simon in it—Simon, who loved me—on the other side.
I’d heard him say it. It just hadn’t landed until now.
Audrey broke into a warm, broad smile.
I hoped Corey’s dad knew how lucky he was to have her. If he had her. I’d ask later. Right now...
“I have to...” I gestured at the door, hoping she’d understand run and apologize to my best friend in the whole world who loves me and might even let me kiss him if I’m smart about this, which I really, really want.
Audrey stood, straightening her blouse and setting the USB stick she’d brought down on my desk with a click.
“I’ll get out of your hair,” she said. “Let me know how it goes, yeah? My contact details are on there.” She nodded to the USB.
“I will. Thank you,” I said as she headed for the door. “Uh, it is Wednesday, right?”
Simon took late lunches on Wednesdays. A glance at my phone told me it was almost three. If I was quick, I might catch him on a break.
Not that I was about to let something like museum security stop me.
“Theo, it’s Friday,” Audrey said.
I looked at my phone again.
Fri. 4. 7.
Shit.