“Oh my God, Emma, no,” Nora says, swooping in.
“No, it’s okay,” Charlie says. “A month. A month?” he repeats, lower, for Simon.
“Yes. A month,” Simon agrees. It’s been about five weeks since that motel in Arizona and a week since Charlie arrived in New York. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, but a month will do.
“Are your characters gay?” asks a kid who Simon has no trouble identifying as a theater kid of the presumptively queer variety. Simon remembers the absolute wasteland of gay representation that was television during his own ghastly adolescence. It’s better now, but not perfect, and he imagines kids still watch shows like they’re reading tea leaves, looking for any sign a character might be like them.
“Well, bi,” Charlie says.
Simon whips his head around, but Charlie looks perfectly placid.
“The writers might disagree,” Simon says.
Charlie shrugs. “I said what I said.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Simon sees two adults approaching the fringes of the little group clustered around their table. He thinks—hopes—it’s some parents come to collect their nosy offspring, but it’s just Simon’s father and George.
“Do you remember when Simon used to sneak into the living room to watch—what was it?” his dad asks. “We should have known this is what he’d do with his life.”
“Deep Space Nine,” George answers.
“Voyager,” Simon says, under his breath.
“In his little pajamas,” Simon’s dad says. “When he should have been in bed.”
“We always caught him,” George says.
Simon feels like some part of his psyche has been cracked open in front of Charlie and a couple of teenagers he may or may not be related to. For a moment, he’s in his dinosaur pajamas, thinking that if only he’s quiet enough, he might be able to have a place on the couch with everyone else.
The hand that Charlie had on the back of Simon’s chair now lands on Simon’s neck, warm and dry.
“Every foster home I was in,” Charlie says, loud enough for everyone nearby to hear, oozing enough charisma that nobody can help but give him their attention, “there was someone who needed to watch their spaceship show.” He pauses, holding the crowd, all the focus on him and far away from five-year-old Simon. “I think that’s why I’ve stayed onOut Thereso long. One of the reasons, at least.”
“That’s what I think about when I have to cry on camera,” Simon says after Charlie’s made some excuse to pull Simon into the house, around a corner, into what turns out to be a laundry room. “Not being allowed to watch television with my brothers and my dad. I feel like if you needed proof that I had a good life, the fact that this is the worst thing I can drag up is it.”
“I don’t think that means what you think it means,” Charlie says.
Simon doesn’t know how many times he’s seen Charlie hug people—friends, coworkers, literal strangers—but somehow this is the first time he’s ever hugged Simon. He’s known, just from watching, that Charlie’s good at it, and he was right. It’s because Charlie likes hugging people, that has to be the reason, because it feels right—safe and solid and normal—even though Simon isn’t sure where to put his hands. Charlie’s arms are tight around him, tight enough to crush, a three-dimensional weighted blanket. Simon feels surrounded—he isn’t in a laundry room, he isn’t in Connecticut, the only location that matters is Charlie’s arms.
“Why isn’t it enough?” Simon asks when they’re in the car heading back to the city, Edie passed out on the back seat between them.
“What isn’t enough?”
“They love me. And I love them?” He doesn’t mean for it to be a question. “I mean, I do. But not, like, actively. Except Nora.” He tries to fill his lungs. “And my mom?”
Charlie doesn’t ask what it means to love someone but not actively love them, which is good because Simon doesn’t have any answers. All he knows is that he’s unsatisfied down to his bones, greedy for something he can’t identify.
He’s not sure he’s ever felt this exposed. In a few days, they’ll be back home and it won’t be like this, but Charlie will still know all Simon’s secrets.
“Is it always like that?” Charlie asks, quiet enough that the driver can’t hear. “Like you aren’t—I don’t know—part of the main cast?”
Simon is speechless for a minute, because he’s never told Charlie that. Sometimes he wonders if he dreamed it all up, and his family is normal and the problem is, as usual, Simon.
But if Charlie saw it—
“Sorry, shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know what I’m talking about,” Charlie says easily.
“It’s always been like that. I must have had bad vibes even as a little kid.”
