I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. What I mostly felt right now was that, having been too much of a coward to go straight to him and apologize when he’d arrived, I desperately wanted to correct that.
The hurt look on his face before he’d walked away had gnawed at the pit of my stomach from the moment the door clicked shut behind him and hadn’t let up since. There was a drink in myhand, but I hadn’t so much as sipped it. Didn’t know what it was. Didn’t remember who’d handed it to me.
Madelaine looked around the room, brows drawn. “You had him surgically removed from your hip?”
Under other circumstances, that might’ve almost been funny. Under the current ones, it just made my guts hurt.
At least she hadn’t heard the fight. I wasn’t sure who had, but although the house was big, some quality of the architecture meant that sound carried through it most clearly when you didn’t want it to. My working theory was that it was cursed.
I should never,everhave brought Simon back here. I’d made a stupid mistake that could have meant losing him the first time we’d come, and now I was at risk of losing him again.
“We…”
I stopped myself from telling her we’d fought. I hated it, and I didn’t want to volunteer the information. She’d just give me alook, like it was inevitable, likeof courseI’d finally been too much for Simon, of course he was finally sick of my shit. No one’s patience was infinite. Not even his.
“I just need to find him. You haven’t seen him?”
Madelaine shook her head, then broke into a smile. For a second I thought maybe she’d spotted him, but then Cameron stepped up beside us, offering her a bright green drink in a martini glass.
“Where’s Simon?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me.
“Theo was just wondering the same thing,” Madelaine said before I could answer.
“Oh, huh.” Cameron sipped his identical bright green drink. “Last I saw him he was headed for the men’s room. That was at least five minutes ago, though. More, maybe.”
I scanned the room, deciding I couldn’t see him anywhere in it. That made the men’s room the best lead I had.
I walked off without saying goodbye, setting my untouched drink down on the way. I hesitated with my hand on the door handle, unsure what I was going to do if Ididfind Simon in there.
Would he want to see me?
If he’d been in there five minutes or more, was he okay?
With a steadying breath, I forced myself to push the door open.
Simon was in there. At the far end of the row of sinks. Both of his hands were curled around the edge of the counter, his eyes screwed shut, head hanging. A strand of his hair curled in front of his face in defiance of the amount of product he’d had keeping it back this morning.
“Sy?” I asked, feet carrying me to him without conscious input from my brain.
He turned to me, looking at me with one eye open and the other closed. The closed one was red and obviously swollen, as if he’d been… crying one-eyed? He sighed and turned back to the mirror, opening the closed eye with what looked like painful effort. It was so bloodshot it mademyeyes hurt in sympathy.
“I hate contacts,” he said before I could figure out what to ask.
“Can I help?”
Simon huffed. It was more defeated than dismissive, so I stayed where I was, hovering by his side.
“Dropped it. Put it back in wrong. Hurts,” he said, blinking furiously.
“Can you get it out again?” I asked, glancing at the case sitting beside the sink.
“Working up to it.” Simon sniffed, then swallowed.
“Take your time,” I said softly, looking at his face in the mirror. I hated seeing him in pain, although this kind of physical pain was aloteasier to handle than the hurt I’d seen earlier today.
I needed to start working on fixing that. If it could be fixed at all.
I watched in silence as Simon plucked the contact out of his swollen, sore eye, wincing when he did. It fell off the tip of his finger the moment he got it out, dropping into the sink.
