“Do you want me to leave?” I ask. I’m on my back with my arms up, my elbows folded over my face.
“No.” Baz’s voice is quiet. “Are you going to?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“That’s something.”
I breathe out hard. “I want to, though. I kinda want to die when I think of having to face you again.”
Baz pulls my arms away from my face. “Here.” He’s hovering over me. “Get it over with.”
My eyes slide away from him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t,” he says.
“Because apologies don’t matter?”
“No—because you don’t have anything to be sorry for. Come on, Snow,lookat me.”
I try. He looks tired. And sad. And embarrassed.
“I don’t mind this,” he says. “Any of it.”
“Oh my God, Baz—don’t lie to me! This isn’t what anyone wants to happen in bed.” I try to cover my face again, but his hand is on my cheek. He’s too close.
“I’m not lying! I don’t mindcomfortingyou, Simon. Or holding you. I don’t mind giving you what you need, whatever it is you need. I prefer it to you pushing me away. Or ignoring me.”
I look up at him. “But you could date anyone you want. You could dateeveryoneyou want. And none of them would start bloody crying during foreplay.”
Baz shrugs. “You don’t always cry . . . Sometimes you go glassy-eyed and nonresponsive.”
My hands are twisted in my hair. “Fuck-inga,I can’t believe you’rejokingabout this.” I try to roll away from him, but he’s all steel bands when he wants to be. He pins me down by the shoulders.
“Wait,” he says. “Listen to me. Are you listening?”
I close my eyes but stop trying to push him off.
“I want to be with you,” he says. “And this is where we are right now. And I truly don’tmind,Simon.”
I open my eyes. Baz is looking right down at me.
“You don’t want more?” I ask.
He shoves at my shoulders. “Of course I do. But not with just anyone. I want more with you, you twit.”
I try to sit up, away from him, and this time he lets me. “What if I can’t give you more?” I say. “What if this is my best-case scenario?”
Baz is dismissive. “I don’t believe that.” Then he goes still. He turns to me with one eyebrow raised. “Are you saying you don’twantmore?”
“Are you barking? Of course I want more!”
He relaxes again. “Then I’m confident we’ll get there . . . someday, I don’t know,eventually.Honestly, Simon, this isn’t even our biggest problem.”
He shocks a laugh out of me with that. “What’s bigger?”
“The vampire thing, for one.” Baz looks so twisted up and peeved and, like, unimpressed with me. It makes me want to start inhaling his carbon dioxide again.
I can feel myself smiling at him. “That’s not a real problem . . .”
