“He knows me well.”
“Why did you two break up?”
Simon already told Charlie the story of Jamie, post-breakup, sitting Simon down in a Panera and delivering a bracing speech about sexual incompatibility, so this isn’t a question Charlie should needto ask. Simon produces the same version of the truth that he gives anybody who asks. “We work better as friends.”
This is where normal people let it drop, but Charlie is not normal people. “Right, but why?”
Charlie might just be making conversation, or he might be nosy, but Simon’s dealt with more than a few men who were suspicious that he was about to run back to Jamie. Usually he lets them stay suspicious.
He gives Charlie a level stare and holds it. “Of the people at this table,” he says, gesturing between them, “only one of us has hit on Jamie in the past five years.”
“I wasn’t hitting on him,” Charlie says, slouching, looking caught out.
“Sure you were. You have good taste. In men. And literally nothing else, just to be clear. Anyway, the main reason we didn’t work out is that we have no chemistry. The sex was just—”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, partly because they’re in public, but mostly because it occurs to him a little belatedly that Jamie might not love this conversation. “I mean, it was my fault,” Simon adds quickly, because he’s not such a bad friend that he’s going to go around implying that Jamie’s bad at sex. “Because, you know.” He gestures at himself.
“I do?” Charlie asks, eyebrows all the way up.
Simon squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. He hears Charlie laugh, the sound closer than it was a minute ago. When he opens his eyes, Charlie’s leaning forward, delighted. “I am begging you.”
The way the table’s set up, there’s a wooden railing separatingthem from the street, and Charlie has one arm resting on it, his fingers almost touching Simon’s shoulder.
“I—” Simon starts, but gets distracted by the brush of Charlie’s thumb against his sleeve.
“Are you being shy? About sex?” Charlie whispers, thrilled. “Oh God, you were like this in Arizona too. I want to go back in time and tell 2019 me that Simon Devereaux is—”
“Shut up, shut up.” Simon’s laughing despite himself. He leans in even more, close enough that nobody at any nearby tables will be able to hear. “What I’m trying to say is that I’mlazy,” he hisses, and Charlie bursts out laughing, head thrown back, the sound ricocheting off buildings and asphalt.
“Who told you that?” Charlie asks when, eventually, he gets himself under control.
“Uh, mybrain? Reality?”
Charlie covers his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking. “Okay,” he says, wiping a literal tear from his eye. “Not even two hours ago you let me—You realize that wasn’t exactly low effort, right? I know what you mean, butlazyisn’t the word I’d use.”
Simon’s not sure it’s the wordhe’duse either, but it’s the only one he can think of that isn’tpassive, which is too loaded for Simon to consider. “Fine,” he says, throwing his hands up, “what word would you use?”
Charlie leans back now and looks at Simon. The idea that Charlie’s thinking about him, thinking about what they’ve done together, makes Simon’s face heat.
“Well,” Charlie says, quiet and a little rough, “you don’t like to be the one doing things.”
Simon gives him an extremely unimpressed look, because ifCharlie thinks he’s made a big discovery by noticing something anyone could have learned from his short-lived dating app profile, he has another think coming. “My God. You’ve cracked the code.”
Charlie laughs. “No, no, I don’t just mean that.”
The waiter brings their food, so Simon can’t ask exactly what else Charlie means. Instead they talk about the movie Alex is doing this fall, and Charlie seems so genuinely happy for her that it’s like some of his happiness slips into the small space between them and gets absorbed into Simon’s skin, because he starts to feel it too.
They’re talking so much and eating so slowly that Simon’s linguine gets cold. The tables around them start to empty out. Simon gets his credit card to the waiter before Charlie even sees the check coming.
“But,” Charlie starts.
“My treat,” Simon murmurs, and Charlie doesn’t protest.
Edie, who’d fallen asleep at some point, her head on Charlie’s foot, wakes up and decides she’s had all her rights violated by being forced to sleep on cement, so Simon picks her up. She sits, aggrieved and alert, on his lap.
“She’s tired,” Simon says. “She’s being so heroic. I should get her home.”
Charlie, who’d been tracing a pattern in the condensation on his water glass, goes perfectly still. Once you know that Charlie’s always moving, always fidgeting, never fully at rest, you notice those pauses. Then he starts rolling his napkin into a tube.
