Being with Simon hasn’t meant what I thought it would.
It seemed at first that all my dreams were coming true, that he was finally mine. Mine to love, mine to live with—to walk with—to have. I’d never been in a relationship before.“I want to be your terrible boyfriend,”Snow said, and I couldn’t wait for it.
Maybe I should have taken him at his word.
For we are indeed terrible at being boyfriends.
We’re very good atthis,though—standing uncomfortably in the same space, absolutely not saying what we’re both thinking, squeezing through a room full of elephants. We’re champions.
“I’ll take the sofa.” Snow brushes past me and drops his bag near a brown settee. “My wings’ll pop in the middle of the night.”
I take the bed.
I’m the only one who takes a shower. But I’m also the only one who spent half an hour behind a skip, wrestling tabby cats. I have a nasty scratch on my chest, plus my nose is still charred from the sun. (That’s never happened before, and I’m not wholly confident that it will heal. Maybethisis how you disfigure a vampire.) I’m glad I brought my toiletries from home. The hotel soap smells like marshmallows.
When I get out of the bathroom, the lights are out, and I can’t tell if the others are asleep.
I lie in bed for a while, watching the ceiling fan spin in the dark. I think Bunce might be crying.
I don’t blame her. I don’t have half the security she had, and I can’t bear the thought of losing it.
17
SIMON
It’s freezing in this hotel room.
Penny’s crying.
Baz is clean. He opens the door to the bathroom, and steam and cedar and bergamot roll out. It takes me back to our room at Watford. To every morning that he stepped out of the shower, and I pretended not to care—no, I wasn’t pretending. I just didn’t know.
I genuinely didn’t know how I felt.
I thought I hated him. I thought about him all the time. I missed him so much in the summer. (I thought I was just lonely. I thought I was hungry. I thought I was bored.)
Baz stepping out of the shower with his hair slicked back. Baz tying his school tie in the mirror—I could never take my eyes off him.
We used to spend every night together and wake up together every morning.
How long has it been since I fell asleep listening to him breathe?
If I wait, tonight, could I sit up and watch him sleep? (I used to be that shameless.)
It wasn’t supposed to be like this—Baz and I were supposed to kill each other.
And then it wasn’t supposed to be like this—we were supposed tobetogether.
I’m the one who fucked it up (I am fucking it up) by being too fucked up in the first place. By not wanting to talk to him. And never wanting him to spend the night. By not wanting him to look at me. (By not wanting him to see me, actually.)
“How can you expect me to do this?”I said one night. When he— When we—
“I thought you wanted this,”he said.
And Idid. But then Ididn’t.
“It’s just a lot,”I said.“You’re pushing me.”
“I’m not pushing you. I won’t push you. Just tell me what you want.”
