Chapter 27
SIMON
When my phone rang in my hand just as I was about to toss it in my bag to leave, I almost dropped it.
The last couple of days hadn’t improved my mood—or my job performance—at all, and Abdul had all but threatened me with being marched out by security if I didn’t take the afternoon off and head to my parents’ place early.
Unknown number.
I hesitated. Normally I’d assume it was a scammer, but…
I hadn’t heard from Theo since Sunday. That was the longest time I’d gone without speaking to him since we’d met.
If he thought I was mad at him, then he might borrow someone else’s phone, maybe, thinking I wouldn’t pick up if it was his number.
I couldn’t risk not picking up if he was calling me. However else I felt—which I wasn’t sure of, to be honest, aside from miserable—Theo still meant the world to me. Would always mean the world to me.
“Hello?”
“Simon!” a familiar voice enthused on the other end of the line.
Corey?
“Corey?” I asked aloud. I could hear upbeat music in the background, and the murmur of a crowd. Corey and Delilah had gone to Spain for their honeymoon—it must have been mid-evening there by now.
“Long time no see,” he said. “You kissed and made up with Theo yet?”
What?
“What?”
Corey sighed the most put-upon, world-weary sigh I’d ever heard. “Can we not play games? I heard your fight. It’s been eating at me ever since.”
“Are you serious?” I asked, pinching the bridge of my nose. “How did you even get my number?”
“See, now,” Corey began. “That’s why I’m calling. Because Theo gave it to me.”
“What? Why?”
What possible use could Theo have imagined Corey would have for my number?
“You’re asking all the right questions today.
Theo always said you were smart,” Corey responded.
There was a rustling sound—clothes, maybe—and the background noises faded away.
“He gave me your number while we were dating. Because, and this is, as far as I remember, a direct quote, if anything happens to me, call Simon.”
My stomach bottomed. “What’s happened to him?” I asked, pulse already pounding in my ears as I grabbed my bag. What if it was bad? What if he was really hurt, or… worse? What if the last thing I’d ever said to him was—
“Nothing, nothing!” Corey said, cutting off the panic spiral I’d been about to slide down so fast it felt like I’d slammed into a wall.
“As far as I know, anyway. I’m sure he’s fine.
I’m sure someone would have called you if he wasn’t, because that’s the point I’m trying to make here.
Theo gave me, his boyfriend, the guy who, culturally, is usually meant to be the one who sits and worries by a hospital bed, your number.
In case anything happened to him. Because he didn’t want me, in his hypothetical hour of need.
He wanted you. He’s always, always wanted you. ”
“No, he—”
“Yeah,” Corey interrupted me. “So I’m getting from this conversation that you haven’t made up yet, which was what I was afraid of, because Theo, God love him, has many fine qualities, but his ability to talk about his feelings is not one of them. Except…”
“Except?” I prodded, pulling my desk chair out again. If this was going to be a long conversation, I needed to sit down. Corey had that effect on me.
“Except the night we broke up,” he said.
My hand tightened on my work bag, the waxed canvas creaking under my grip. “The night you broke his heart so badly I thought he’d never come back from it, you mean?”
I still hadn’t forgiven him for that. Wouldn’t. Ever.
Corey huffed a wry laugh, trailing off into a bitter chuckle. “He tell you that? That I broke his heart?”
“He didn’t have to. I could see it. You didn’t see him after.”
“Okay, well. At least he didn’t lie to you.” Corey let out a long breath. “I swore I’d never tell you this but I think it’s in Theo’s best interest if I do, and fortunately for him, I really did love him. Do, I think. Some part of me always will.”
My shoulders stiffened at that. People who loved other people didn’t leave them in the state Theo had been in post-breakup. He’d been shuffling around like a zombie for weeks after. I’d had to check in on him every day and sit with him to be sure he ate at least once a day.
“So, Theo and I broke up because I proposed to him and he turned me down,” Corey said. “Because he was in love with you. I knew, that, obviously, I’m not stupid—”
Corey kept talking, but I couldn’t hear him over the sudden ringing in my ears, so loud it made me feel like my skull might explode.
He’d proposed? Theo said no.
Theo said no, because…
“What?”
“What which part?” Corey asked. “The turning me down, in love with you, crying on my shoulder for hours while I tried to tell him to tell you, the two bottles of Prosecco…?”
I’d missed more than I thought I had, obviously.
“The… in love… with me,” I said, voice tiny even to my own ears.
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Had that been too quiet for him to hear?
“Yeah,” Corey said just as I took a breath to repeat myself. “Since forever. Again: I knew this. I knew it the moment I saw the two of you in the same place. Sorry for resenting you for it.”
“Apology accepted,” I responded automatically, before the rest of what he was saying could catch up to me.
When it did, I fell silent. So did Corey, and my world narrowed down to the sound of his breathing, the distant music, and the crowd in the background.
“Since forever?” I asked after what could have been hours.
“Yep,” Corey said, popping the P. “What was the line? Something about your souls being the same?”
“Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same,” I quoted. “It’s from—”
“Wuthering Heights, yeah. Isn’t that the one where she’s screwing her brother?”
“It’s a little more complicated than that, but yeah, close enough. You didn’t read it? It’s one of Theo’s favorites.”
“I read… some of his recommendations,” Corey said. “But I guess you read them all.”
I had. Anytime Theo mentioned a book, if I hadn’t read it—and I usually hadn’t—I made a point of doing so.
He read all my recommendations, too. Any book I mentioned. At this point, the only time we hadn’t both read a book that mattered at all to us was because Theo had read it for work.
Because he loved me.
“Why didn’t he ever tell me?”
“You have met him,” Corey said, his shrug audible in his voice.
The sigh that escaped me was wholly involuntary. Yeah. Yeah, I had met Theo.
I’d met Theo, and I knew how he communicated. Words were, ironically, not really his thing.
But he’d shown me a hundred thousand times that he loved me. That was why I would’ve done anything for him. Only I’d never thought he could possibly mean it the way I wanted him to.
He’d shown me now that he did. But...
“He made it pretty clear he thought... we... were going to be temporary.”
Corey sighed again. “Look, do with this information what you will. I’ve led the horse to water.”
My lips twitched. I still hadn’t sat down, too busy swinging my swivel chair back and forth as a kind of self-soothing motion. In my defense, this had been an intense conversation. “You picking your metaphors to suit your new wife?”
Corey huffed. “Laugh it up, Loverboy,” he said. “You know what she said to me right before she fell asleep on the plane with her head on my shoulder?”
“You flew in seats where she could do that?” I asked.
“This was the hop from London to Madrid,” Corey said. “She said you know I love you, right? Like it was the most obvious thing in the world.”
Huh.
“Huh,” I said aloud.
“Yeah. And as soon as she said it, I knew. I knew I’d seen a million signs. Must—”
“Run in the family,” I finished for him. “I’m so glad their mom hates you.”
“Play your cards right and she could have two sons-in-law she hates. We could be brothers.”
“Much as that as I can’t imagine anything I’d love more than to spend every Thanksgiving with you for the rest of my life,” I said. “I still haven’t heard it. And I need to. Or I’ll never believe it’s real.”
“Well,” Corey drawled. “I honestly hope you do. If only so I don’t have to spend every Thanksgiving for the rest of my life with a moping Theo.”
“Go back to your wife,” I said as my phone buzzed with a message.
Theo?
I glanced at it.
Not Theo. Dad.
How many pints of ice cream do you think you’re gonna need?
Clearly, someone had been speaking to him. Ellie was the logical choice, but smart money was on Abdul. He and Dad had really hit it off when they met around this time last year. They had a weekly chess match on their phones I got updates on from both sides.
“Tell her you love her,” I finished, hanging up.
at least three