Before I could twist my stomach into a pretzel about it, Audrey held up a hand in refusal. “Oh, no. I’ve still got half a run to finish and I think it might just take me a couple of hours. But your mom asked me if I’d seen you this morning,” she said to me. “Figured I’d return the favor you’re doing me by warning you.”
“We’d better go,” Simon said wryly, squeezing my hip one final time before his hand fell away. The warmth of it lingered like a brand, but I missed the pressure instantly. “See you back at the house?”
“Eventually,” Audrey promised, taking off at a jog and waving without looking back at us.
I watched her go, wondering what Mom wanted with me. I didn’t understand why I was flavor of the month all of a sudden. She usually pretended I didn’t exist.
“You know, we could always stage a big messy breakup,” Simon said as he held Gertrude’s passenger door open for me.
Cold dread dropped into my stomach like a lead weight, my pulse speeding up so fast my ears rang.
“What? Why?” I asked before I could stop myself. If Simon wanted out of this arrangement, I didn’t want to force him to keep it up.
“Audrey,” he said, as though it was obvious, rubbing the back of his neck. “I mean, if you’ve changed your mind about her. She sounds kinda perfect for you?”
Did she?
Maybe on paper. In reality, though…
“I haven’t changed my mind,” I said. “That is, I mean… if you want to go home, I’ll?—”
Simon stopped me with a raised hand. “If you want me here, I’m staying,” he said. “Just didn’t want to get between you and your soulmate. You were, y’know, flirting a little there.”
“I wasn’t,” I said. “I… umm. I was doing what I thought you’d do. You know. Being kind.”
Simon snorted. “You’re always kind.”
“I thought?—”
Simon stopped me again. “Doesn’t matter what youthought. It only matters what you did. You apologized for being a tiny bit rude, you offered her a golden opportunity. It was kind. You’re not a bad person because you were annoyed at your mother for springing a blind date on you. That only happened in your head. It didn’t hurt anyone.”
I took a breath to respond, but I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. Simon had cut clean through my bullshit, like always. I wished Audrey was still here so I could kiss him.
“You’re not a bad person, Theo,” he added, soft and gentle. “Don’t let your family get into your head.”
Easier said than done, but he knew that. He was here with me because he knew it.
I could never have deserved him in a million years.
“Let’s head back.”
9
SIMON
The soundof sobbing coming from the kitchen—where I was headed to raid the fridge for orange juice, in the hopes that Theo’s mom was still buying the really good stuff—made me pause at the threshold.
It was a woman’s voice. Not Theo’s mom, who’d grabbed him the moment we’d come back to the house and whisked him away somewhere. Younger.
I peeked around the doorframe to see Delilah sitting alone at the table, head resting on her arms, which were folded on top of an assortment of papers spread over nearly the whole surface, sobbing like she’d had her heart broken.
Theo would have told me this wasn’t my problem. That I didn’t have to fix everything, always.
Theo, for better or worse, was not here.
“Hey,” I said as I approached the table approximately the same way I would have approached an injured wild animal that might have had rabies.
Delilah froze, the sobbing cutting off instantly. She lifted her head just far enough to peek at me.
