Simon:Absolutely not
Charlie:I know! I thought about it for maybe three seconds, then remembered that this is you
Simon:What’s that supposed to mean?
Charlie:It means I will personally fight anyone who tries to surprise you
Simon has to put his phone down and pace around the apartment a bit. He’d been expecting some roasting—he knows he’s not spontaneous and he’s starting to get to a place where he doesn’t mind Charlie making fun of him, just like he doesn’t mind Jamie making fun of him because he knows it’s done with—affection, or whatever.
But Charlie is upping the ante and Simon isn’t ready for it. Simon doesn’t have a lot of people in his life who would offer to have fictional fights for him. He doesn’t have a lot of people who know what he’d want them to fictionally fight about. For Charlie it was probably a throwaway comment but for Simon it feels like something more.
Simon arrived in New York with a suitcase and a shoulder bag. It took him about sixty seconds to unpack. Even with the blankets and extra clothes he’s bought, the apartment is essentially empty.
Still, he manages to spend the two hours before Charlie’s due to arrive tidying up. For the two hours before that, he went to the grocery store and bought things that Charlie might like but Simon likes too, so he can maintain plausible deniability about what he’s doing.
He doesn’t know where Charlie’s staying. The network will put him up at a hotel, but obviously he needs to come to Simon first to bring Edie. Will he want to stay with Simon? Will Simon want him to stay? Simon has no answers.
Halfway through wiping down the inside of the refrigerator with cleaning spray that smells like juniper and costs as much as a bottle of midrange wine, he realizes Charlie might not have meant to come here at all.
Simon:Do you want me to meet you at the airport to get Edie?
Charlie:I’m landing in an hour. You’ll never get to the airport in time.
Simon:Sorry, I should have thought of that.
Charlie:I can drop her off and go, no worries
Simon:ok
Charlie:or I can stay
Simon:ok
Simon reads Charlie’s messages six times, trying to figure out what Charlie wants, before realizing that Charlie’s probably trying to figure out what Simon wants. Good fucking luck to him; Simon has no clue.
Simon:I have donuts
Simon:and coffee
Charlie:I like coffee and donuts
Simon:I know
Charlie texts when he’s ten minutes away and again when he’s downstairs. Simon waits in the hallway for the elevator to arrive. He notices Charlie for as long as it takes to see him drop Edie’s leash.
Edie is so happy to see him that Simon instantly feels guilty—what kind of monster abandons his dog for no reason at all? He scoops her up and lets her lick his face while he tells her how good she is at being a dog.
They eventually make it into the apartment, Charlie rolling two suitcases behind him. Edie squirms to be put down, and proceeds to zoom around the apartment, circling back every five seconds to make sure Simon’s still there. Simon puts out a bowl of water for her, shows her where she can sleep (a stack of folded blankets with a pillow on top, which Simon rearranged six times that morning), then watches as she lies down on a totally unrelated part of the floor and passes out.
“She didn’t sleep much on the plane,” Charlie says.
Only then does Simon really look at him. It’s been less than a month. Nobody looks different in three weeks, unless they’ve cut their hair off or something, and Charlie’s no exception, but somehow he looks better than he does in Simon’s memory. He’s wearing actual jeans and a hoodie that, on anyone else, Simon would suspect was made of cashmere.
“You’re wearing clothing that looks like it came from a store,” Simon says. “I bet none of it was free.”
“I went stress shopping while you were, you know, missing in action. I never did that before.”
“It shows,” Simon says with feeling, instead of trying to address the rest of the sentence.
