“No,” I decided. “Thank you.”
“No need to thank me. I’ll bust you out of here and take you somewhere nice for breakfast in the morning.”
“You really don’t have?—”
Simon raised a hand to stop me. “If you starve, I will be leftalone with your family,” he repeated. “You wouldn’t wish that on me, would you?”
I would not. I wouldn’t have wished it onme.The fact that Simon was here with me was the only thing keeping me from having a breakdown. Or at least hiding in the bedroom as much as possible.
“Never,” I said.
Simon nudged my knee with his own. “There you go. I’m taking you to breakfast and you can’t stop me.”
I went to respond, but as soon as I opened my mouth, it turned into a yawn. Now that I’d eaten, I felt as though I’d been hit by a truck full of melatonin gummies.
The pit of my stomach twisted again at the thought of curling up in bed beside Simon. Wehadshared a bed before—more times than he should have let me—but we’d never gone to bed together. Not like this.
“Tired?”
“So tired.”
“Me too.” Simon yawned, covering his mouth with his hand. “Bed time?”
“Bed time,” I agreed.
We both went through our bedtime routines quietly, moving around each other with the same ease we had when we’d lived together. Simon’s hand brushed over my shoulders, my arm, my hip as he squeezed past me. Never lingering, just enough to know he was there and to stop me stepping backward into him.
I’d missed this. The quiet, domestic intimacy of sharing space.
I’d been chasing it since I moved out, leaping at every scrap of it I could get from anyone, but it never felt like this. Being around Simon wasn’t just as easy as breathing. Being around him made it easier to breathe.
For the first time ever, I crawled into bed before Simon did, curling up on my own side and closing my eyes. My stomach swooped as the mattress dipped under him, an ache pulsing in the center of my chest as he joined me. The bed was big enough that we could each have more than enough space withouttouching—bigger than Simon’s double, where there was just barely enough room for two grown men.
I wished it was smaller.
“Night, Theo,” Simon murmured. “Sweet dreams.”
“Night, Sy,” I responded, cracking my eyes open to look at him. All I could see in the moonlight filtering through the blinds was the shape of his body under the covers, but I would have known it anywhere.
My fingers itched to reach out and touch.
I closed my eyes and rolled over, curling my fingers into the sheets so I wouldn’t be tempted.
“Sweet dreams.”
“As promised,”Simon said, passing me a paper cup of coffee and setting maybe the most appealing breakfast sandwich I’d ever seen down in front of me. Bacon, avocado, and a fried egg on thick-sliced seeded bread, the soft-cooked yolk dripping decadently over the rest of the filling.
I licked the salt the breeze coming off the water had left on my lips, raising the coffee to my mouth and letting my nose rest against the rim of the cup. The food truck Simon had stopped at had sailed so far past pretentious that it had circled back around to earnestly kitsch, with gingham and lace curtains, a handwritten chalk sign, authentically burned drip coffee and absolutely zero kale-containing smoothies on the menu.
The rich scent of frying bacon joined the salt on the breeze, the sounds of laughter and children playing on the beach punctuated with demanding seagulls milling around people’s feet and under tables. One of them was perched on a little girl’s bike and wasn’t moving, no matter how petulantly she pleaded with it.
The sun was shining in a cloudless blue sky, the day already starting to warm up. Simon’s foot nudged mine under the table, and when I looked at him, he smiled a lopsided smile I couldn’t have stopped myself returning if I wanted to.
“You’re too good to me.”
Simon huffed, leaning back in the seat opposite me, drumming both hands on the weather-worn wooden table between us. The table was small enough that we couldn’t avoid our feet tangling under it, and far enough from the growing line in front of the truck that it felt private, even out in broad daylight.
“Eat your breakfast,” Simon said, lifting his own sandwich and taking a bite out of it. He moaned, wiping a drop of what I assumed was hot sauce—since his mouth was apparently made of asbestos—from the corner of his lips with his thumb before licking it off.
