SIMON
When my phonerang in my hand just as I was about to toss it in my bag to leave, I almost dropped it. The last couple of days hadn’t improved my mood—or my job performance—at all, and Abdul had all but threatened me with being marched out by security if I didn’t take the afternoon off and head to my parents’ place early.
Unknown number.
I hesitated. Normally I’d assume it was a scammer, but…
I hadn’t heard from Theo since Sunday. That was the longest time I’d gone without speaking to him since we’d met.
If he thought I was mad at him, then he might borrow someone else’s phone, maybe, thinking I wouldn’t pick up if it was his number.
I couldn’t risk not picking up if he was calling me. However else I felt—which I wasn’t sure of, to be honest, aside from miserable—Theo still meant the world to me. Would always mean the world to me.
“Hello?”
“Simon!” a familiar voice enthused on the other end of the line.
Corey?
“Corey?” I asked aloud. I could hear upbeat music in the background, and the murmur of a crowd. Corey and Delilah had gone to Spain for their honeymoon—it must have been mid-evening there by now.
“Long time no see,” he said. “You kissed and made up with Theo yet?”
What?
“What?”
Corey sighed the most put-upon, world-weary sigh I’d ever heard. “Can we not play games? I heard your fight. It’s been eating at me ever since.”
“Are you serious?” I asked, pinching the bridge of my nose. “How did you even get my number?”
“See, now,” Corey began. “That’s why I’m calling. Because Theo gave it to me.”
“What? Why?”
What possible use could Theo have imagined Corey would have for my number?
“You’re asking all the right questions today. Theo always said you were smart,” Corey responded. There was a rustling sound—clothes, maybe—and the background noises faded away. “He gave me your number while we were dating. Because, and this is,as far as I remember, a direct quote,if anything happens to me, call Simon.”
My stomach bottomed. “What’s happened to him?” I asked, pulse already pounding in my ears as I grabbed my bag. What if it was bad? What if he was really hurt, or… worse? What if the last thing I’d ever said to him was?—
“Nothing, nothing!” Corey said, cutting off the panic spiral I’d been about to slide down so fast it felt like I’d slammed into a wall. “As far as I know, anyway. I’m sure he’s fine. I’m sure someone would havecalled youif he wasn’t, because that’s the point I’m trying to make here. Theo gaveme, his boyfriend, the guy who, culturally, is usually meant to be the one who sits and worries by a hospital bed,yournumber. In case anything happened to him. Because he didn’t want me, in his hypothetical hour of need. He wantedyou. He’s always,alwayswanted you.”
“No, he?—”
“Yeah,” Corey interrupted me. “So I’m getting from this conversation that youhaven’tmade up yet, which was what I was afraid of, because Theo, God love him, has many fine qualities, but his ability to talk about his feelings is not one of them. Except…”
“Except?” I prodded, pulling my desk chair out again. If this was going to be a long conversation, I needed to sit down. Corey had that effect on me.
“Except the night we broke up,” he said.
My hand tightened on my work bag, the waxed canvas creaking under my grip. “The night you broke his heart so badly I thought he’d never come back from it, you mean?”
I still hadn’t forgiven him for that. Wouldn’t. Ever.
Corey huffed a wry laugh, trailing off into a bitter chuckle. “He tell you that? That I broke his heart?”
“He didn’t have to. I couldseeit. You didn’t see him after.”
