“Oh no,” Adrien says in his ear. “I think you should take that seat.”
“Hmmm …” Sergio happily hums. “Don’t mind if I do.”
“Oh, I don’t know if I like the look of this?” Rose says, gesturing at Sergio as he takes his seat on the other side of Jeremy.
Sergio holds up his hands. “I promise to be on my best behavior.”
“And I thought we decided last night thatyourbest behavior wasn’t good enough.” She points at him with emphasis.
“Then I’ll be on Adrien’s best behavior,” Sergio says back to her, staring right into her eyes.
“You can trust him,” Adrien says from his other side as he sits. Sergio turns to look at him, and Adrien gives him a wink that speaks volumes in a language that only Sergio and Adrien can understand. A wink that says, ‘Hey, I’m rooting for you.’
Rose narrows her eyes at the two of them, then raises her eyebrow, bringing it to a sharp point. “I don’t know what you two are playing at. But I do know I don’t like it.”
Together, they hold up their hands in a show of innocence.
“Eh, you can trust them,” Holden says. “Look at their sweet faces.”
Sergio and Adrien simultaneously tilt their heads slightly down, bringing their chins towards their chests and letting their eyes go wide. They look up at Rose across the table from underneath their lashes and give her matching pouts.
“You two are worse than Henry.” She laughs, shaking her head as the server comes over to take their orders.
“How long are you in town?” Allison asks Adrien once their server walks away.
Interesting,Sergio thinks.I guess it doesn’t matter who she sits next to. Not that it matters to him at all. He doesn’t feel stung, as he would have been ages ago. His interest in her doesn’t go beyond wishing for her success in her figure skating career. The truth is, it never has. His interest has always lain in who’s sitting on his other side. Jeremy.
Finally, with this new configuration at the lunch table, Sergio figures he can let the conversations around the table unfold. Adrien can talk Allison’s ear off about Daphne and Paris andRose and Holden can join in and Sergio can hopefully have Jeremy all to himself under the cover of their boisterous conversation.
“So,” Sergio says, putting the next part of his plan into motion. He gives Henry in Jeremy’s lap a quick wink, and Henry hard blinks back at him before his eyes fully close and he begins to fall asleep. Sergio smiles at the sight of Henry, takes a breath, then focuses his attention on Jeremy. “I don’t want to make this awkward. But I wanted to let you know how sorry I am about what I said last night. It was insensitive, and I shouldn’t have said it.”
“It’s fine,” Jeremy says with a heavy sigh, avoiding Sergio’s eye contact.
“Even if it is fine,” Sergio says, knowing not to push Jeremy, but also knowing better than to take him at his word. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Honestly,” Jeremy says, positioning himself to look at Sergio more directly. “I wasn’t even that upset. Everyone else made such a big deal about it, I didn’t really know how to react.”
Sergio considers this. So much of what unfolded that night had little to do with Jeremy’s reaction to Sergio’s faux pas. It doesn’t excuse it. Giving Jeremy a sincere apology was the right thing to do, but there’s a new level of this whole situation that he’s beginning to understand. Something he’s familiar with himself that will help him in the future when it comes to dealing with Jeremy. He reaches over and lightly places his hand on Jeremy’s forearm.
“I think I know what you mean,” he says. “When our parents died, so much of mine and Adrien’s time was spent navigating other people’s feelings that they were having on our behalf. We never got to actually express our own emotions about it.”
“Right?” Jeremy says, sounding surprised. He flips his hands up and glows with relief. “It’s so weird. Ever since I gotdiagnosed, I’ve spent the bulk of my time making everyone else feel okay about it so I’ve never had time to figure out how I feel about it myself.”
“Yep. And because of that, all you ever really feel about it is angry and resentful.”
“Because you can never have an interaction with anyone ever again that isn’t tainted by it.”
“Exactly,” Sergio says. He places his elbow on the table, then rests his head on his hand and keeps his eyes on Jeremy, admiring his face. Relaxed and at ease, like he often is on the days when they’ve been alone and away from everyone else’s influence. “It’s always there, waiting in the shadows, haunting every interaction.” Sergio pauses and realizes something. “It does get better, though. Over time,” he says, thinking about how over these last however many months he’s been living this same day that he hasn’t thought about Jeremy in relation to his having MS. Most days he forgets about it and is only ever reminded by the way everyone else treats Jeremy in his presence. “I no longer think of you as Jeremy with MS. You’re just Jeremy.”
“That’s impressive. It only took you, what? Thirty minutes to come to that conclusion,” Jeremy says, laughing. But there is no malice behind it. Somehow Sergio has broken through.
“Oh, come on, I’ve spent at least a solid forty-five minutes on this.”
“I bet you have.” Jeremy shakes his head and laughs some more. “But really. Thank you. It’s honestly nice for that to not be the center of everyone’s conversation.”
“I promise” —Sergio crosses his heart— “to never make that the only thing there is about you to me.”
Their moment is broken by uproarious laughter around the table, with Adrien leading the charge. “And then,” he wheezes out. “He had to come and find me in my room wearing nothing but a hand towel.”
