He wakes up to Charlie sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Someone took a picture of us the other night at that restaurant,” Charlie says, and it’s the edge to his voice more than the words he’s saying that wakes Simon all the way up. “They put it on their Instagram and now it’s every-fucking-where.”
“Show me.”
In the picture, they’re sitting outside at the restaurant the night Charlie arrived. The photo quality is better than Simon would have thought, given that the only lighting is string lights and candles.
Simon can tell right away when the picture was taken. They’re leaning toward one another, both grinning. Simon has recently declared that he’s lazy in bed and Charlie just finished laughing at him. The way the picture is angled, Charlie’s arm, resting on the rail, looks like it’s touching Simon’s shoulder.
It looks like a picture of a date. It looks like a picture of a very good date.
It wasn’tnota date. It was date adjacent. One might even call what they’re doing dating. Maybe.
In terms of, like, the sheer homosexuality of things, it’s not much more than the taqueria video. But Charlie hadn’t cared about thatvideo. He’d even been kind of annoyed with Simon for suggesting that he might be bothered by it. Right now, the irritation—maybe even anger—is rolling off him.
The main difference, as far as Simon can tell, is that in this picture they look like they’re together. In the video, they just looked flirty.
Simon sits all the way up. “I can see why this would bother you.”
“Are younotbothered?”
“It doesn’t matter as much for me.” Simon thought they’d covered this ground already. Photos can surface of Simon on ten thousand gay dates and it won’t change his life in any meaningful way.
“What are you even talking about?” Charlie sounds mean and impatient and it’s an unpleasant reminder of the way they used to be. It sets Simon’s teeth on edge. It makes him want to back off, to settle into their old pattern of nastiness. It would be easy, like what they’re doing is so fragile that all Simon has to do is look away for a second and it’ll crash to the ground, splintering into pieces.
Simon isn’t going to do that. He wants to fight everyone who’s ever hurt Charlie and he doesn’t have the energy to be mad at himself. “I’m going to get a glass of water. You want anything?”
Charlie shakes his head but follows Simon into the kitchen. He takes the glass of water Simon hands him and eats the granola bar Simon unwraps and slides across the counter.
They stay like that for a moment, in the silence of Simon’s sublet, the only sound the hum of the refrigerator and city noises from twenty stories down.
“What’s the worst part of it?” Simon asks.
“Sleazeball motherfuckers,” Charlie says immediately, his mouthstill full of granola bar. “How did they find us? Who the fuck was even looking for us?”
“Chances are, some random person saw us, realized who we are, and snapped a picture.” Simon’s not totally sure about that, but doubts paparazzi were staking out a medium-nice Italian restaurant. “Okay, what’s the next worse thing?”
“It’s an invasion of my fucking privacy,” Charlie spits out, like he’s annoyed to have to explain it to Simon.
“Our privacy,” Simon says, knee-jerk, irritated.
“Okay, yes, sorry, whatever. This wasprivate.” Charlie taps the screen of his phone.
Simon isn’t going to point out that they were in public. He doesn’t want to argue about the ethics of photographing celebrities—however minor—in public. He doesn’t want to argue about anything. “It sucks.”
Charlie rolls his eyes, likeduh.
Simon was wrong before, because it turns out he does have the energy to be mad at himself. He thinks Charlie is just upset, not upset with Simon, but there’s a pool of anxiety gathering in Simon’s stomach and it’s telling him that this is all his own fault.
The thing with anxiety is that every attack is a clone of the last one. It’s always the same—the conviction that he messed up, the sense of impending doom, the overwhelming loneliness. His hands are sweaty, his lungs useless, his heartbeat too fast. It isn’t a panic attack, but it’s definitely something he could take his meds for.
He looks at the clock on the oven. Two forty-five. At two fifty he’ll take his pills if he still needs them.
His poor dumb brain tries to activate the usual defenses—be quiet, act calm, because then at least nobody will know he’s amess inside. He could lock himself in the bathroom, turn the faucet on for some white noise, achieve mental anesthesia via crossword puzzles.
He can do all that five minutes from now. First, there’s one possible solution to this problem and he needs to make sure Charlie’s aware of it.
“I’m going to talk for thirty seconds,” Simon says, feeling like he’s balanced on the edge of a ravine. Everything in him is telling him to turn back. “And you’re going to try not to get pissed at me until I’m done. If you want to go get photographed kissing women or whatever people usually do in these situations, I get that.”
