GalactoseIntolerance:Wait. Got a cat, as in got a cat TOGETHER?
SupervillainApologist:??
DeathStarJacuzzi:pics or it didn’t happen
SupervillainApologist:cat tax, payable now
SpacePope:
[photograph of cat]
SimonDevereauxsCheekbones:I think I manifested this. You’re welcome you crazy kids
Chapter Twenty-Seven
When Simon wakes up, the room is pitch black, no light seeping in around the edges of the blackout curtains. He reaches for his phone. It’s ten in the morning. He’s been asleep for over twelve hours.
He and Charlie had been on their way out to dinner when his vision went swimmy. The culprit: the setting sun coming through the window at an odd angle, flickering through gaps in the palm trees. Charlie turned the car around. By the time they got back to Simon’s house, a ball of pain had gathered behind his left eye. He took his migraine meds, drank a glass of water, and went to bed.
This was his first migraine in more than six weeks, and it wasn’t brought on by stress or missed meals or fatigue or sharp smells or sudden movements or any of the other things he can control—just the same sunlight he sees practically every day.
He feels hungover, and like he’s probably going to take a nap later today, but all that’s left of his headache is the feeling that his brain’s been lightly scoured. He’s a little nauseous, and his body feels like it’s been ransacked for parts and left on the side of the road, but the medicine did its job. He’s counting it as a win, or at least not a loss.
He heads out to the kitchen, hoping there’s some coffee left in the pot. The entire house is dark—not pitch black like his bedroom,but like someone went around and shut all the blinds halfway. Jamie and Charlie are in the living room, talking quietly enough not to have woken Simon.
“Hey, you,” Jamie says, seeing him first. “Feeling better?”
“Yeah. Wrung out, but okay.” Simon gives up trying to make it to the kitchen and plops down next to Charlie. He’s wobbly. When he tips onto Charlie’s shoulder, he can’t think of any good reason to sit back up. Charlie puts an arm around him and Simon shuts his eyes.
“Coffee or that ginger tea?” Jamie asks.
“You don’t have to,” Simon mumbles into Charlie’s T-shirt.
“I’m making myself something. So, what do you want?”
“Can I have both?” The tea is supposed to help with nausea. Simon wouldn’t know, because boiling water is too much work when he’s in this state. “Like, not in the same cup, please.”
Jamie snorts. “Got it.”
“Thank you.”
Last night, Jamie had taken out Simon’s sleeping clothes and put all Simon’s pills directly into his hand. And Charlie fixed his blackout curtains. Simon usually wakes up to daylight spearing through his eye sockets.
It’s a little embarrassing, knowing they fussed over him. No—it’s embarrassing that he apparently needs all that fuss.
He’s awful at dealing with his migraines on his own. Sometimes he forgets to take all his pills. He never remembers the blackout curtains. Usually he passes out in his clothes, then wakes up miserable, Edie pawing at his shoulder to be let outside.
“You didn’t have to stay,” he tells Charlie.
“I didn’t. Not the whole time. After you fell asleep, I went home, ate, got changed, brushed my teeth, and came back. Jamie let me in.”
“You know,” Simon says, trying to sound like he just had an amazing idea, “you should keep some stuff here.”
Charlie gives his shoulder the gentlest of pinches. Two days ago, he shouldered his way into Simon’s closet, opening and shutting drawers, declaring “you never wear any of this,” and shoving a bunch of Simon’s less favorite bathing suits in with his second tier T-shirts, then dumping the contents of a duffel bag into the empty drawer.
Simon stood in the doorway to his closet, fully aware that this was a dare, Charlie escalating the situation and waiting for a reaction. Simon grabbed Charlie’s empty duffel bag, threw two changes of clothes and some travel-size toiletries into it, and shoved it back at Charlie.
“And I could keep some things at your place,” Simon goes on. “That could be something we do after talking about it like normal adults.”
