Simon had come back from Dave’s and let it slip that he told Jamie he was leaving the show. “Lian offered me a shorter season and, well. I want to end this right.”
“Oh. So you changed your mind.”
“Yeah—wait, did you think I lied?”
“No! I just didn’t know.”
They’ve hardly said anything to one another. At least half the duration of this phone call has consisted of awkward pauses. But there’s a heavy subtext that’s making Simon feel like he’s in over his head. The fact of this conversation at all is an admission that whatever is going on between them is important enough that they need to be clutching their phones, sweaty and nervous, making things right.
“I think,” Simon says slowly, “that I was supposed to tell you right away, as soon as I realized I was considering staying. I think that since we were talking, I should have mentioned it.”Talkingis doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, standing in for everything that happened in Arizona, everything that’s happened since.
“You didn’t owe me—” Charlie starts, but Simon has to cut him off.
“I did. Or—maybe I didn’t, but I don’t want to be the kind of person who thinks like that.” He’s squeezing his eyes shut, like maybe that’ll stop Charlie from seeing what’s happening here, like maybe it’ll stop himself from seeing.
Charlie’s quiet for long enough that Simon wonders if he’s gotten things completely wrong.
“Okay,” Charlie says.
“Okay?”
“I wasn’t upset about that.” There’s the tiniest emphasis onthat.
“Did I do something else?” It wouldn’t be hard for Simon to believe. At any moment he’s prepared to accept that he’s done something unforgivable. That’s the easiest proposition in the world for Simon to accept.
“No, Simon,” Charlie says, sounding awfully gentle in a way that Simon doesn’t know what to do with. “I just don’t want to fuck things up on set.”
Oh. “But we’re getting along.” Simon feels very small. “I know I’m easier to take in small doses, but I think we can still be—” He wants to say civil, or maybe friendly, but those are wrong and he can’t make himself say them.
“I’m not saying this right,” Charlie says. Simon can hear him rub his palm over his beard. “When Alex ended things with me, it was so much work at first to stay friendly.”
Simon tries to remember when Charlie and Alex broke up. It must have been during the writers’ strike, so he wasn’t seeing them every day. They showed up at an event with different dates, but he’d have noticed if there was any tension. He remembers them arriving together at the picket line.
“I didn’t realize,” Simon says.
“That’s because I worked my ass off to make sure she and I stayed friends. It washard.”
Simon has never thought of Alex and Charlie’s friendship as anything but effortless and easy. They always look like they’re having fun. But—how had Charlie put it—when Alex ended things. In Arizona, when he’d said something about Alex needing things to be light and fun, he’d sounded... hurt, maybe. Simon can put that together and draw some conclusions.
“And you thought,” Simon starts, but can’t finish the sentence because he’s afraid to say it out loud. Charlie was worried that things would get ugly after he and Simon were done with—whatever this is. Charlie had been thinking of a future—something like a breakup, which implies that whatever they’re doing is real. It’s enough to make Simon need to hide in the bathroom, still holding the phone.
“Yeah,” Charlie says, answering the question Simon didn’t ask.
“Oh.”
The silence stretches out dangerously. Simon sits in the corner of the bathroom, the tile cold beneath him.
“When Jamie and I broke up,” Simon says, “the first month was excruciating. Awkward check-in texts. Hideous attempts to get coffee. He insisted on giving constructive criticism on my Grindr profile.”
Charlie lets out a bark of a laugh. “Please send me a screenshot immediately.”
Simon ignores this. “I can do that. I mean. If we—I can be friendly.” He’s writing checks he can’t cash. But he made it work with Jamie, and with nobody else he’s ever been involved with—actually, with nobody else ever, period—because the idea of Jamie not being in his life made his heart ache in a way that breaking up with him never did.
Simon remembers how he’d felt at the idea of Charlie not being in his life, of how impossible it had been to imagine.
Simon presses a palm against the smooth tile floor.
“Are you saying,” Charlie asks, “that when—if—Jesus Christ, Simon,” he breaks off, exasperated, like this is Simon’s fault, like Simon even knows what he’s talking about. “Are you saying that if—whatever—things end, you’ll benice?”
