“You did post that picture,” Simon points out. “The one with my hand in it.” He feels stupid as soon as he says it. The picture is cozy, even suggestive—Simon’s hand inches from Charlie’s bare chest—but it isn’t exactly an announcement. Charlie didn’t necessarily mean anything by it.
But Charlie just lights up. “You’re right.” Grinning broadly, a finger pointed at Simon, he says, “I told you I’m not closeted.”
“Go take a shower. Honestly. You stink,” Simon says, because maybe some insults will restore a bit of normalcy. “And I can’t believe you appeared in public wearing a crop top and basketball shorts.”
“It isn’t a crop top,” Charlie says, pulling at the hem of what is, tragically, a crop top. “And I didn’t mean to, but my agent called when I was on the treadmill. I came back here right away.”
“Not that you aren’t making it work,” Simon says, leering, because Charlie deserves a little compliment, “for a given value of work. But: bathe.” He waves Charlie toward the bathroom. “Like, twice.”
While Charlie’s in the shower, Simon checks his phone. It probably says a lot about his career trajectory and general outness that his agent hasn’t gotten in touch. Or maybe it just means Ken’s useless. And it says a lot about how obvious he’s been about Charlie that Jamie’s only message is “if you got Charlie Blake to wear real clothes that truly is the power of love.”
Simon opens the cast’s group chat, but he isn’t backscrolling to read a million messages, and he probably should leave it to Charlie anyway, so he closes it.
Knowing it’s a bad idea, he searches for his name on a few social media sites and sees that there’s a lot of commentary. Discourse. Whatever. Most of it’s intrusive and creepy, some of it’s hateful, and then there are the people tagging him in posts about how celebrities deserve private lives. He deletes several apps.
His phone buzzes with a message from Nora: “fair warning, I’m calling him Uncle Charlie at graduation.”
Simon can’t imagine where Nora got the idea that Charlie’s going to her graduation party, so he just responds with an eye roll emoji.
Simon would have liked to spend the rest of the day lounging around, but Charlie looks like he’s ready to climb the walls, so they put on Edie’s leash and head out with no real goal. This is like when Edie was a puppy and had to be taken to the dog park, although Simon isn’t going to say so out loud. Probably. Not yet, at least.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Is Edie coming?” Charlie asks while they’re getting ready to go uptown for network upfronts.
“She can stay here alone for a few hours. It’s fine. She has water and about fifteen hundred pillows.”
“No, I mean,” Charlie starts. “You’re happier when you have her with you.”
“I like my dog. Everyone likes their dog. But there isn’t anywhere to put a dog during these things. I can’t bring her out onstage.”
“You could have a PA hold her leash for five minutes. If someone brought a service dog, that’s what would happen.”
“But she isn’t a service dog.”
Charlie doesn’t say anything. Charlie does, however, put on the sweater they bought yesterday during their stress shopping expedition. Technically, Simon bought it while Charlie waited outside with Edie: a sea blue crew neck sweater in a cashmere and linen blend, lightweight enough to wear all year. His thinking is that it’s emotionally identical to a T-shirt.
It’s also almost indecently soft, so Simon spends most of the car ride petting it. He’s decided to deal with upfronts using the time-honored maladaptive coping mechanism of taking an edible anddissociating, so it isn’t his fault if the weave of Charlie’s sweater is just really important to him right now.
Simon is perfectly comfortable being onstage and reading lines. He doesn’t care whether the audience is filled with people who bought a ticket to see a play or advertisers trying to decide whetherOut Thereis worth spending money on. It’s just that in order to project an unholy level of excitement and charisma for five minutes, he doesn’t need to be his smartest, soberest possible self. He can space out fully, be a passenger for this whole experience.
When they get to the theater, he and Charlie get hustled through a mysterious back entrance and dragged off for makeup, because apparently they should have had that done at the hotel. This would ordinarily annoy Simon—they knew he wasn’t going to be at the hotel, so don’t make this his problem—but instead he sips his iced coffee and wonders why oat milk tastes different in New York than it does at home: a mystery.
He shakes hands and he smiles, and some man he’s probably met before acts like they’re friends. Simon just kind of stares at his teeth—they’re amazing, science can do such wonderful things—until someone with a clipboard and a headset tries to corral them toward a step-and-repeat backdrop so they can get photographed.
Simon feels a hand on the small of his back.
“First, we have to go to the other place,” Charlie says.
“The other place,” Simon says knowingly. “There.”
Charlie brings him to a mostly empty hallway. His sweater is the softest object on the planet. Simon knows this because he’s leaning against it.
“Oh, buddy,” Charlie says, holding Simon at arm’s length and peering at him. “How many did you take?”
“Just one. I’m not—fuck off. I’m nothigh. I take this exact dose when I have a migraine coming.” Or sometimes when he has an anxiety spike or the urge to repeatedly check his cabinets for rogue mug handles. “I’m just leaning into it.”
“Leaning into it,” Charlie says, amused. “Listen, I wanted to ask if it’s okay if I do this.” He puts his arm around Simon’s shoulders. “Or this.” He drops his hand to Simon’s waist.
