“It would have been shitty if you found out from anyone but me.”
“I’m not upset with you.” Jamie sighs. “I understand why you didn’t tell me. You didn’t want me to have career feelings.”
“Yes,” Simon says, grateful, as always, that Jamie’s able to do most of the emotional heavy lifting.
“Whatever I feel about my own life,” Jamie says, “I will never not be happy about good things happening to you. Never. You know that, right?”
“Yeah.” Now Simon’s almost crying, because he doesn’t deserve this, but he has it anyway.
“Is it time to call Margie?” Margie is Simon’s therapist.
“When I get home.”
“Can we talk about how you probably would have quit a few years ago—definitely after the space lobster season, youhatedthat—if you weren’t afraid of your agent yelling at you?”
“No,” Simon says, unprepared to engage with that on any level.
“So,” Jamie says, in a we’re-changing-the-topic tone, “you’ve been tagged in a bunch of pictures from a car festival. I’m sharing some on your Instagram because you look great.”
“It’s the sunglasses.”
“No, it’s that you’re smiling with actual teeth.”
“Gross.”
“Charlie looks happy too.”
“Charlie always looks happy,” Simon says, even though by now he knows it isn’t true.
“My point is, you and Charlie look like you’re having a great time admiring old cars, which is not a sentence I ever thought I’d say, but here we are.Areyou having a good time?”
Simon would not characterize the past few hours of his life as a good time, and he doubts the next hour or two is going to be any kind of picnic. But this morning, at the car festival? And yesterday at the taqueria? “Yeah,” he says. “I kind of am.”
“You look really, really happy in those pictures. Just something to think about.”
After they hang up, Simon texts Lian to tell her that he knows he owes her a phone call. Then he texts Roshni to tell her that he can’t get into that book she recommended because he’s in his sexy dragon era. He texts Nora that he’ll be at her graduation party. He opens one of the group chats he’s been ignoring. This one’s the main cast, and the first thing he sees is:
Petra:Charlie, darling, did you kidnap Simon and make him look at cars?
Alex:it was a mutual, consensual kidnapping, from what I understand
Petra:That really shouldn’t make sense. And yet.
Roshni:??
Amadi:who had this week in the betting pool
Amadi:Charlie, if you steal Simon’s sunglasses, I’ll give you five hundred bucks
This is more than Simon can take.
Simon:I will PRESS CHARGES, Amadi.
Roshni:Simon!
Alex:simon!!!
Petra:Simon♥
