They haven’t had any kind of conversation about exclusivity—for all Simon knows they’re just having sex and hanging out while confessing embarrassing feelings to one another—and Simon isn’t sure how to navigate any of this with a pissed off Charlie. The safe thing would be to say nothing, to assume nothing, to act indifferent to the idea of Charlie being with other people.
But he’s never been indifferent to Charlie, and faking it now—letting Charlie think he cares less than he does—feels cruel. He takes a deep breath and forces himself to look Charlie in the eye.
“I would consider that, like, work,” Simon says, and it isn’t a heartfelt declaration but he thinks he got his point across.
“Fuck no. Thirty seconds are up. That’s gross. And just... wrong.” Charlie makes a frustrated sound. “I know you think I’m a complete fucking idiot, but I’ve thought this through. I know that homophobes exist, Simon, and I know I’ll have to deal with some bullshit, but this”—he holds up his phone—“is not about me beingoutedor whatever’s going through your head right now. It’s never been a secret. I knew it would happen if I lived my life and that’s achoice I made a while ago. I just didn’t expect it to feel gross. The TikTok didn’t feel gross.”
“I don’t think you’re an idiot. But youwerekeeping it a secret. You flipped out at Jamie when you thought he told me.”
“It was only a secret from you, Simon.” Charlie scrubs his hand across his beard and squeezes his eyes shut.
Simon winces. “Did you think I was going to be shitty about it?”
“Simon, for fuck’s sake, I thought that if you knew I was into men, you’d figure out right away that I had this massive embarrassing crush on you.”
“Youwhat?”
“Don’t worry, it was only physical.”
“I mean, obviously.”
“I didn’t like you or anything.”
“Who would?” Simon says reasonably.
“Anyway! My point is that I don’t give a fuck about anyone knowing I’m queer. It’s just—it was private,” Charlie repeats, seemingly to himself. Simon finally understands what Charlie’s getting at: what happened between them the other night was private. When they got to the restaurant, Simon hadn’t been sure whether it was too romantic a setting. By the time they left he’d thought it was just right. Something had settled during the course of that dinner and Charlie’s bothered because it was reduced to a photograph for people on the internet to speculate about.
The anxiety drains away, a little. “It was,” Simon agrees.
“How the fuck are you so calm about this? Not being calm is, like, your whole thing.”
That startles a laugh out of Simon, which makes Charlie’s mouth twitch in a way that’s vaguely in the direction of a smile. “I’m not,”Simon admits, and watches as Charlie’s gaze narrows, taking in the whole of Simon.
“Shit,” Charlie says.
“I’m okay. It was just a bad”—he glances at the clock—“four minutes.”
Charlie takes Simon’s half empty glass and fills it with water from the refrigerator, then puts it in Simon’s hand. It looks like glasses of water are doing a lot of symbolic work this afternoon.
“I genuinely don’t care about the photograph, though,” Simon says. “It’s a good picture.”
Charlie sputters.
“I’m serious,” Simon says. “We both look great. I’d be livid if I had food in my mouth.” He takes a deep breath. “Is the problem that we look like we’re together?”
“No. Obviously not.” Charlie still sounds pissed, but Simon’s starting to see that he isn’t pissed at Simon, or even about Simon. “We still should have been able to choose. I mean, I haven’t even told Alex.”
“You haven’t?”
“Well, you know, because she has eyes and a brain she knows what—” Charlie lets out a breath and gives Simon an exasperated look. “She knows how I feel. And I told her about the sex. I mean, I told her we had sex, notaboutthe sex. I’ve also told her everything you’ve ever done or said so we could analyze your motives.”
Simon scoffs. “I think my motives have been embarrassingly obvious.”
“That’s what Alex says. She actually used the word embarrassing,” Charlie says, sounding pleased, both about Simon being embarrassing and about Alex being right. “Anyway, I haven’t told herthat we’re... dating?” He gestures at his phone, presumably meaning the frankly romantic picture. “If we even are?”
“We are,” Simon says, very firmly, and refuses to add,unless you don’t want to, because every single thing about Charlie’s body language—and, like,languagelanguage—is saying that he wants to. “Together,” he adds, for clarity.
“Okay, good,” Charlie says. And hestillsounds pissed. He looks like he’d probably punch whoever took that photograph, or at least dump coffee on them and drive a truck into their car, but like he’d do it while being, apparently, in some kind of relationship with Simon.
