“Just don’t worry, huh? How does that work out for you?” Charlie doesn’t say it meanly, but he isn’t joking either. There’s something strange and tense around his eyes and the set of his jaw. Charlie isn’t just worried, he’s frantic.
Simon looks around desperately, like maybe he’ll find a passerby who’s more qualified to deal with Charlie’s feelings than Simon is. But no, it’s just the two of them, alone in a darkening street.
“Sorry,” Simon says. “I’d be beside myself if anyone in my family went missing, even the ones I don’t like.” He has no excuse for adding that last detail except for how sheer proximity to Charlie’s sweat-soaked T-shirt has put him into an altered state.
“There’s another possibility, but it’s stupid, so don’t make fun of me.” Charlie says this seriously, like he’s afraid Simon’s going to roast him about his missing stepfather in the middle of the street.
“Okay?”
“You could come with me. It’d be a shitty couple of days, but we could make it look like a vacation or something. We take a bunch of pictures, post them to socials.”
Simon doesn’t know what to say to that. He has loads of objections, starting with how spending a few days together will make them both homicidal and ending with his profound lack of interest in going to Phoenix.
But then he remembers what’s waiting for him at home: a night of suppressing the urge to flick the light switches in multiples of three while wondering how long he’ll feel like his kitchen is contaminated. The growing impossibility of hiding all this from Jamie.
The fact is, he’d much rather be annoyed by Charlie than by Jamie.
Besides, Charlie’s right. A social media–documented trip is a good way to control the narrative about why he’s leavingOut There.He has ten more days in Los Angeles. That’s not a lot of time. This is probably their last chance.
“I told you it was stupid,” Charlie says when Simon’s been silent for too long.
“Let’s do it.”
“Really?”
“Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
“No,” Charlie says, looking very much like a man who’s changed his mind.
“Just tell me now, because if you’re pissy with me because I barged in on your family emergency, you’ll only have yourself to blame.”
Charlie throws his hands up so suddenly that Edie takes a step backward. “I didn’t change my mind! For fuck’s sake. I’m just surprised that you’d want to come.”
Wantis not the word Simon would use. “What flight are you taking tomorrow?” He already has his phone unlocked.
Charlie tells him. Simon checks the airline app, but there aren’t any seats left, not even in coach. “It’s sold out.”
They check a few other flights and they’re full too. What on earth are all these people going to Phoenix for?
“Oh well,” Simon says, certain that it isn’t disappointment that he’s feeling.
“We could drive,” Charlie says. “I usually drive anyway. It’s only six hours.”
If filling the dead air during a half-hour lunch was bad, twelve hours round trip in a car will be excruciating, and that’s not even counting whatever’s waiting for them in Phoenix.
“When do you want to leave tomorrow?” Simon asks.
“Would six be too early?”
Six is a disgusting time to be on the road, but obviously Charlie wants to get there as soon as possible, and Simon isn’t going to be so much of an asshole as to complain about that. “Unless you want to leave tonight,” Simon suggests, because he has to offer.
“That would get us into Phoenix in the middle of the night. Someone will call the cops on us for breaking into Dave’s house.”
It was silly of Simon, really, not to immediately assume that any plan of Charlie’s might involve breaking and entering. More fool him.
“Six o’clock, then.” Simon walks home, trying to figure out exactly what he’s gotten himself into.
Chapter Seven
