But instead, Charlie starts reading aloud from the menus of the least-bad-sounding restaurants in the area. They wind up having adequate sandwiches while mutually bitching about the worst directors they’ve worked with over the past few years.
That lunch back home, when they’d stared at their plates and mumbled at one another and ultimately resorted to looking at dog pictures, now feels implausible. Of course they can make conversation. They have the same exact job. They know the same people. They both have personalities built on the shaky foundation of attachment issues. It would be bizarre if they couldn’t find things to talk about. Part of it’s just Charlie needing to be friendly with whoever’s nearby, but friendliness doesn’t come easily to Simon, and it’s happening anyway.
“Why do you keep paying for my food? And the hotels?” Charlie asks after Simon’s repeatedly smacked Charlie’s hand away from the check.
“I don’t want to owe you,” Simon says automatically, because it’s true, or at least not a lie. He doesn’t think he could handle adding gratitude to the list of things he’s feeling about Charlie Blake.
Charlie squints at him. “So now I have to owe you?”
“No, because I don’t actually think you owe me.”
“But I’m an asshole who’s going to hold a couple hamburgers and a cheap motel over you? What the fuck.”
“No, I mean—the money doesn’t matter to me.”
“We make literally the same amount of money.”
“But I grew up with it. Like, a lot of it.” Simon huffs impatiently because Charlie must already know this. “There is no universe in which the cost of a Caesar salad and a BLT could possibly matter to me or has ever mattered to me. So I make sure I’m the one who picks up the tab.”
Charlie looks at him for a moment. “I can’t decide if that’s nice or some weird power play.”
It’s mostly Simon minimizing his own discomfort. “Let me know if you find out. I’d love to know.”
Simon’s sure bedtime will result in some other disaster, like maybe Charlie will try to sleep in his bed (absolutely not) or want to have more sex (undecided). But what happens is that Charlie takes the ruined bedspread off the bed they’d been in earlier, throws it on the floor, gets under the sheet, and says, “What time do you want to wake up?”
It’s all suspiciously normal.
“Charlie,” Simon says after turning the lamp off, the heavy curtains blocking the light from the parking lot.
“Yeah?” It sounds like Charlie’s rolled over to face him, even though it’s too dark to see one another.
“What are we doing tomorrow?” Charlie’s going to try to see Dave again, but that won’t take all day. “Are we going home?” He hopes Charlie hears that Simon isn’t demanding to go back to Los Angeles. He isn’t even asking to. He just wants to know.
“I want to stick around here for another day or two. If you need to leave, there’s a tiny airport in Flagstaff. I can drive you. I’m not—I mean, it’s up to you.”
Simon thinks that’s Charlie’s way of making it clear that he isn’t asking Simon to leave. He’s also not asking Simon to stay—which is good, because Simon wouldn’t know what to do with that.
They’ve already shared a bunch of pictures from the past two days, and Charlie put a few videos on his TikTok, including one Simon took of Charlie and the orange convertible, where you can hear Simon saying, very quiet, “Hand to God, Charlie just called this carbaby.” There’s no need for Simon to stay.
Simon isn’t sure why he wants to stay. They’ll probably have more sex, which is in the pro column. But he feels like he’s not going to be able to process what happened if Charlie’s right there, because Charlie has a way of taking up ninety percent of Simon’s thoughts when he’s nearby.
“I’ll stay,” Simon says.
Charlie’s quiet for a few seconds. “Good.”
Chapter Thirteen
Hearing Charlie talk about cars doesn’t get old, and today the car chatter is interspersed with finger guns and high fives and back slaps, all reminders that yesterday Charlie was subdued. Today, not worried about Dave, he’s reverted to form. When Simon stops to pet a dog or text Jamie, and Charlie bounds off, Simon can track him down by following his voice. He’s too loud. His crackling energy almost takes up physical space.
It’s always driven Simon nuts, the way Charlie dials it up when he has an audience. He basks in attention. It’s so—needy, maybe. People should see through it, should know it’s an act. They shouldn’t encourage him.
But, of course, Charlie likes attention. People don’t usually go into acting if they hate attention. Simon spent high school and college with theater kids, and there’s nobody who loves an audience as much as a teenager who just realized they’regood, who just realized peoplewantto watch them.
Simon started acting because pretending to be someone else—speaking someone else’s words, moving his body like it belongs to someone else—made the more irritating parts of his brain shut off. But it hadn’t taken long before he started craving that adrenaline rush of doing well, being seen, being enjoyed.
Charlie should have been a theater kid too. He should have spent his teenage years doing schlocky school productions ofFiddler on the RoofandGodspell, not living through whatever gritty reality he endured.
Instead of meeting for coffee like reasonable people while discussing their problems (or whatever, Simon doesn’t know, he’s never claimed to be reasonable), Charlie and Dave stand side by side, looking at the same car, complimenting it, then moving on to the next car. Simon rolls his eyes and leaves to buy two coffees. He doesn’t get one for Dave. Instead, Dave gets some of Simon’s best glares and some side eye.
