“I feel like I should take your phone,” Jamie says. “I think you’d take my phone in this situation, but on the other hand I really want to see what happens. God, I hate hard choices.”
“I’m only going to message him,” Simon says. “Nothing public.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about. I think you’re so obsessed with that man, you’re basically under the influence. Double the legal limit. You have no judgment where Charlie Blake is concerned.”
“Charlie Blake robs everyone of their judgment,” Simon says. “He’s like a walking injury to the prefrontal cortex.”
“Welllll,” Jamie starts, but Simon’s already typing.
Simon: That was Jamie’s book. I haven’t read it.
Dots appear almost immediately.
Charlie: ok so can you ask him if the girl is in love with the dragon? comments are divided
Charlie: also you should read it, 100% bugfuck nuts, why aren’t all books like this
Simon squeezes his eyes shut, as if when he opens them he won’t see a screen that’s asking him to make bad choices.
Simon: From what I understand, Jamie thinks everyone’s in love with the dragons, but he isn’t sure whether the characters or the author are aware of this.
Charlie: ???
Simon:Same
He immediately regrets it. It looks like he’s trying to have a conversation with Charlie, something he affirmatively does not want, because he values his sanity.
Charlie: tell him I liked the book. i read it in like five hours
Charlie: first book i finished since high school
Charlie: maybe middle school
“Jamie.” Simon shuts his eyes again because he’s pretty sure he’ll start laughing if Jamie catches his eye. “Charlie wants you to know that he loved this book. It’s the first book he’s finished in years. He seems excited to have discovered books, as a concept, and is giving you a lot of the credit.”
When Simon opens his eyes, Jamie looks deliriously happy with the mess of it all. “What does he talk about with the people he dates?”
“What do you mean?”
“Charlie was with Alex for a while. She’s super smart. Didn’t he also date Bethany in costumes? She has an MFA.”
Simon opens his mouth to point out that intelligent women are perfectly capable of dating people for their looks, but something stops him. Charlie isn’t book smart. Simon isn’t sure he finished high school. Sometimes it seems like he might not even have finished kindergarten; Simon was eyewitness to the moment Charlie—delighted—learned that the rhinoceros is not a creature from the Mesozoic Era but something you could see at the zoo.
But Charlie learns his lines faster than anyone Simon’s worked with and he’s quick on his feet. “I think he’s smart in some other way. Like, some mysterious way you and I can’t recognize.”
Jamie blinks at him. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said about Charlie Blake.”
Simon lobs a throw pillow in Jamie’s direction.
It’sOut Theretradition to have dinner at Lian’s house the night after shooting wraps—just the main cast, no partners. It’s a social obligation Simon doesn’t actively dread. He sees these people nearly every day. They already know he’s standoffish. Expectations are appropriately low. Simon could probably take out his phone and do a crossword puzzle and nobody would even think it was strange. He could put on noise-canceling headphones and dark sunglasses and simply astral project to some calmer, better place, the way he does sometimes on set. They’d all just say, that’s Simon, he’s an asshole, what can you do.
He sits next to Roshni, who’s played a bounty hunter onOut Therefor four seasons. She’s part of what Simon thinks of as the Calm Faction of the cast and crew along with Simon and Lian, as opposed to the Feral Faction, which includes Charlie and Alex. Somewhere in the middle are Petra, who plays a telepathic diplomat, and Amadi, who plays an alien prince.
The food is—well, Simon picks at it and spreads it around his plate, because he’s had two migraines in the past month, which is a lot better than this time last year but it’s still more than zero.
He’s operating on the theory that if he avoids every migraine trigger in existence, he might get marginally fewer headaches. Not that he’s noticed any kind of correlation between what he eats and whether he gets a migraine. It’s more like he’s hoping the universe will deduct a headache or two for his extra effort. This is—he iswell aware—not rational, but neither is repeatedly counting the hoops in Alex’s left ear, and he’s already done that six times tonight.
Lian comes up behind his chair and leans down. “It’s vegan,” she whispers.
