Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 71726 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71726 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
“Thought she might be.”
There was a long enough silence that Simon relaxed. When Charlie spoke again, his voice was softer.
“After my parents died I would wake up in the middle of the night terrified. Sit up in bed and feel like I was being crushed. They were dead. I had a little brother to take care of. Bills to pay, meals to cook, parent-teacher conferences to go to, a store to run or sell. I didn’t know how anything worked.”
Simon imagined being seventeen and waking up to stare that in the face. When he was seventeen he vomited at speaking in front of his twenty-person history class.
“Don’t know if it was anything like how you feel,” Charlie went on. “But it was horrible. It was...worse than the way I felt when they died, honestly. So. I get it a little. You don’t have to talk to me. We’re good, okay? You’re Jack’s guy, I got your back.”
Tears of gratitude replaced Simon’s tears of panic.
Apparently being a huge goddamn sweetheart ran in the Matheson family too.
“Anyway, you can hang out in here, but if you wanna come inside, we’re fine. You can just eat and hang out. Whatever you want.”
Charlie stood up slowly.
“Did it ever go away?” Simon heard himself say.
“Yeah. Little by little it happened less often. Though sometimes, I still—Anyway. You come in when you’re ready. Stay, Jane.”
Simon was amused at the idea that Charlie thought a cat would obey an order, but as the door closed, Jane rolled closer to Simon and rested her paw on his leg.
This close, he could tell she was covered in sawdust.
“Your dad’s pretty great, huh?” he said softly, stroking her back in a combination of petting and attempted sawdust removal. Jane’s torn-metal meow turned into a yawn and then a deep purr as Simon combed more of the sawdust from her fur.
“They’re both pretty damn great.”
Warring feelings clashed in Simon’s gut. Why hadn’t more people been kind the way the Mathesons were? And then: What if he’d simply never given people the chance?
The only reason he’d spoken more than three words to Jack was because it had felt worth seeing him over and over in order to walk the pack. It was happenstance that the person he’d matched with on PetShare was a kind, lovely, patient one, right? And now, the fact that Jack liked him explained why Charlie was being so kind.
And all of that had happened because Simon hadn’t run away at the first twinge of discomfort, the first panic.
Horror began to eat away at his hard-won calm. If he’d just been able to stick it out, to open up, to make himself vulnerable to more people would more of them have turned out to be like Jack and Charlie? Had he done this to himself?
No! he screamed inside his head. Stop it!
He’d been down this path before. He had years of others’ voices in his head telling him that if he just tried harder, just socialized more then it would all work out.
But it wasn’t that simple. He’d attended school with people for years, seen them every day, and they’d tormented him. He’d spent months and months seeing his coworkers every day and never felt comfortable with them.
His anxiety was real, diagnosed, medicated. He couldn’t fix it by just trying harder. It wasn’t his fault.
It’s not your fault.
“It’s not my fault,” he whispered to Jane. She purred.
* * *
Simon went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. He was pale and redness from crying had left the blue of his eyes looking strangely violet. His hair was a mess. He sighed, tried to smooth it, gave Jane, who’d followed him into the bathroom, a final ruffle of the fur to dislodge the last of the sawdust, and took a deep breath.
In the dining room, Jack and Charlie sat like bookends, legs stretched out in front of them, hands resting on their stomachs. As he entered, they both smiled at him. Charlie warmly and Jack with concern in his eyes. He wished he could crawl onto Jack’s lap and bury his face in his neck. Instead, he tried to smile back.
Jack caught his hand as he returned to his seat and kissed it.
“Charlie was telling me about the additions on the house,” Jack said casually. “Just try not to lose consciousness directly into the spaghetti.”
It was so clearly a tease on his behalf, a way to say he didn’t have to participate, and Simon could tell he was about at the end of his capacity to be upright because it brought tears to his eyes.
He fixed his gaze on the cold plate of congealed spaghetti in front of him, knowing he’d throw up if he touched the meatballs, wondering if he could get away with just moving the food around on his plate. The last thing he wanted to do was insult Charlie’s cooking, but he supposed it would probably be an equal insult to take a bite and immediately run to the bathroom to puke it up.