41
Simon
Foam clung to the curve of Simon’s coffee cup, tiny clusters of bubbles set against a dark backing. Simon lifted his sugar spoon lethargically and poked at the bubbles. They didn’t burst—instead, they fanned out, chased away by the metal. After the heartfelt confessions he’d had with Harlow last night, this wasn’t the kind of morning he’d been expecting, but here it was, and there was no escaping it.
Harlow was leaving.
He should have known to expect it. Jayne had been right—the Biernacki familywascursed. Nothing good ever stayed. There was no kindness in the world. The best Simon could expect from life was tedium, and the worst…
Well, he was pretty sure he was experiencing the worst right now.
Simon pushed the foam around his mug with the tip of his spoon, aware that he should probably eat and drink, but unsure what he could stomach. Food didn’t sound appealing. Even the coffee in front of him, prepared by Harlow in an attempt to soften the impact his news would have, would be too bitter, too tasteless, too much.
It was okay to mourn, Harlow had told him once. It was okay to not be okay. But right now, Simon didn’t think those rules applied. It was ridiculous to be torn up over a man he’d only just met—only, Simon hadn’tonly justmet him. With a defeated sigh, he slumped onto the kitchen table and wondered if, provided he try hard enough, he could fall back to sleep and simply not wake up for the next decade or so—long enough for Shep to be out of the house and for Jayne to have recovered financially. Long enough to forget that Harlow had ever been a part of his life.
“Hey,” Harlow said from the kitchen doorway, ruining Simon’s chance at eternal slumber. Simon lifted his head, feeling even more miserable than before. Simply hearing Harlow’s voice made him feel better. Why couldn’t it have made him angry? What he wouldn’t give to be really, trulyangry.“I finished calling everyone I needed to call. The rest is out of my hands.”
“What did they say?” Simon asked.
Harlow chuckled. He crossed the room and sat across from Simon. The sunshine in his smile was gone, and his kind eyes were overcast—it looked like Simon wasn’t the only one who wanted to curl up and sleep away the next decade. Maybe, just maybe, if Harlow felt the same way, he’d find a way to stay. Another bodyguard could do his job just as easily, right? He didn’t need to go. “I can’t really give you a straightforward answer. People are, understandably, pissed. However, there are whispers that the producers are clamoring to get Evie back. That’ll probably work in our favor. If she wasn’t the main character, I’m pretty sure we’d be having a different kind of conversation right now, but as it stands, they need her. We’ll see what happens with the script—I feel like there’s a chance they’ll wrap the show up this season, based on what happened, but at the same time, the ratings are at an all-time high. It’s a crapshoot.”
“But… no matter what happens, you’ll be going back to Los Angeles?”
“Yeah.” Harlow’s face fell. “Evie and I are going home.”
Simon dropped his spoon into his coffee. It clicked loudly, dividing the foam in half. Tepid liquid splashed Simon’s fingers, and he sucked the worst of it into his mouth to clean it off his skin. He was glad his lips were occupied—if he’d been forced to speak, he wasn’t sure what he’d say.
“It… it doesn’t mean that I feel differently about you,” Harlow said. He reached across the table and laid a hand on Simon’s arm reassuringly. “What I said last night is true—Iloveyou, Simon. We can work this out.”
The coffee lapped from his skin, Simon removed his finger from his mouth with apop.“How?”
“Come with me. Come to Los Angeles.”
“I can’t.” Simon couldn’t bring himself to look at Harlow. When he did, it reminded him of everything he was set to lose—a dream, a lover, a life… “I need to stay here to help Jayne with Shep. I need to be here to look after Parker.”
“Why?” Harlow pressed. “I know that you love your brothers, and I know that you’ll do anything for them, but there has to be another way. Jayne can find a nanny, and Shep’s sixteen—he’s more than able to take care of himself.”
“You don’t understand.” Simon tucked his chin against his chest. Of course Harlow didn’t understand—how could he? The bits and pieces he knew of Simon’s past were incomplete. He didn’t understand what had happened, or how hard they’d fought to keep their family together.
“Thenmake meunderstand,” Harlow pleaded. He squeezed Simon’s arm. “If you tell me, we can work together to figure something out. I don’t want to lose you, Simon, but I need to be there for my daughter as well. Don’t give up on me now—let’s find a way around this. Let’s figure out how to make this work.”
It wouldn’t work. Simon already knew it. Just like Harlow had to be there for Evie, Simon needed to be there for Shep, and Parker, and Jayne. Maybe, if he told Harlow the details of what had happened, he’d understand why Simon had to stay.
“Three years ago this past February, my parents died.” Simon traced Harlow’s knuckles, passing bump to bump as he considered his words. “It was sudden—a car accident. It was late, and the roads were icy. They lost control of the vehicle and shot over the median, colliding with a truck. I was at home with Shep at the time, and Jayne was away at school. I was nineteen, Shep was thirteen, and Jayne was twenty-seven. I was staying at home while I attended college to save money, while Jayne was in the middle of his residency—he’d graduated not that long before that from the University of Aurora’s Perkins School of Medicine. Jayne… Jayne got the call, and I remember him showing up at the house. It was snowing, and the wind was whipping. There was mascara running down his cheeks. He hadn’t even said anything, but… but Ifeltthat something was wrong, and it just hit me in the gut.”
The details weren’t necessary, but they felt important. Simon’s tongue ran on autopilot, this time not because he was flustered, but because he was sure if he stopped talking, he would succumb to the raw feelings his recollections had stirred and not be able to continue.
“He stood there with the door open while the cold seeped in around my ankles, and he told me what had happened. He… he told me that it was just us now, and that we were going to have to be strong to get through this. And all I could do was stare at him and nod, like an idiot, and… and accept that, yes, this was our life now, and it was up to me to make sure that we got through it.”
A knot rose in Simon’s throat. He swallowed it back down. Harlow stayed silent, watching, listening. Simon wasn’t brave enough to look at his face, but he felt his gaze and the soft, kind aura that Harlow so often embodied.
“So… so I did what I had to do, you know? I dropped out of school and I stepped up to take care of the household. Shep was still a minor at that point, so Jayne and I did what was necessary to gain custody over him, which wasn’t easy. Jayne and I were adults, but I didn’t have a job, and Jayne was still in residency, and while we still had our mom’s house, no will could be found, so we found ourselves in… in this legal mess. There was no time to grieve. Everything was just one disaster after another, from fighting for custody so we could stay together, to trying to claim our inheritance, to arranging funeral services for parents taken from us too soon, to trying to find a job that would pay me the money I needed while allowing me the time necessary to deal with… with the aftermath of death.”
Simon laughed nervously. The aftermath of death. How was it that one sentence could trivialize something as self-destructive as the loss of a parent? It belittled the emotional exhaustion he’d suffered, the depression, the sense of helplessness, and wrote it off as another task, a chore—another humdrum necessity.
It wasn’t.
There was nothing more frightening, more dire, or more depleting, but Simon couldn’t think of a way to put it. He could only hope that Harlow, who’d suffered loss of his own, would understand the nuances lost by the imperfection of language.
