Page 124 of Read My Lips

“Well, fuck. Don’t hold back.” Everything I’d wanted to say unravelled in the face of his neutrality. Too bloody late to take it back now though, wasn’t it? His disappointment bloomed through me.

“I don’t need you.”

Ouch.

“Okay.” I frowned, balling my fists so tight my too-short nails bit into my palms. “Well. I – I’m sorry.” I owed him this, after refusing to trust what he wanted might really be me. Even if he didn’t want me anymore. “I thought you should know I’m sorry. Because it wasn’t convenient. Ever, really.”

He tilted his head, eyes softer. “I thought I needed you. But I don’t.”

My nostrils flared with the sting of that. “Right. Well. Anyway. I know you didn’t want to use that interview tape from Possimus. But it’s out there now.”

“For goodness sake, I told Sev not to let Mel have it⁠—”

“I sent it to Mel.”

“You’re right,” Simon growled. “You are an idiot.”

All the air exited the world. “Great. Good to know.” The sounds of the street slid away from me. The world was just him, and it was spiralling in on itself, disappearing into nothing. Like a black hole. “I’ll jog on then.”

It wasn’t a misunderstanding, him cancelling all my bookings. Sev was wrong. He’d meant it. And I was a sweaty mess, standing on his doorstep when he didn’t even want me there.

I got all the way to the wrought iron gate at the bottom of the path, and stopped with my hand heavy on the sun-warm metal. A bubble of thick enamel paint had splintered and the edges of the scar were sharp.

“No.” I turned around. “You know what? You’re the idiot. Anyone else qualified could interpret for you; what I do is the bare fucking minimum. I’m nothing special. It’s a really shit excuse so you don’t have to admit we could have been something and⁠—”

“I know.”

“What?”

Simon stepped down to the tiled path. The scuff of his soft-soled shoes on the gritty stone steps sounded ridiculously loud. My breath whooshed out of my chest, and my trainers melded to the ground.

His mouth softened with the promise of his smile, but it didn’t pick up. My optimistic eyes tracked the fullness of his lips anyway.

“Ben, I’ve needed you since the first day you turned up at the office. Told myself I did. And I thought – I’ve always thought – if I fucked up, and you left, that’d be it.”

Simon wouldn’t let up looking at me. “Well, I fucked up. And you left.”

“I didn’t leave. You fired me.”

“Yeah.” He stepped in closer. “I did. Because when it’s you, what I want is waking up next to you in the morning, and making you laugh. And all the ridiculous ritualistic, painfully sentimental time-wasting courting rituals don’t seem quite so horrendous.”

“Oh.”

His lips tipped up in a wry smile. “I want to catch you when you’re letting all those thoughts spiral – telling yourself you’re not good enough. Because you are. And you always have been. And I’m done watching you believe people who tell you you’re not. You see me, in the middle of a room full of people who aren’t looking at anything apart from what I’m showing them. And I think – I hope – I see you too.” He grimaced. “I want to. And maybe, if I’m very lucky, you’ll forgive me for not trusting myself without you sooner?”

“Oh fuck.” The step towards him I took wasn’t entirely down to me. Universal forces were definitely at play. “Simon⁠—”

He held a hand up. “One more thing. I should have spelled this out days ago rather than leaving you to join the dots.”

“Spelled what out?”

He rolled his eyes, scuffing at the ground with one ombre-toed shoe.

“Oh for goodness sake. Read my lips for a change, Ben Cooper.”

Simon let the volume drop from his voice completely, laughter sparking in his eyes as he made his lip shapes more exaggerated. He spoke the last three words with soundless care, and I knew exactly what they were.

Joy expanded between my ribs like a helium balloon, rising me up on my toes, and I was laughing, shaking with it.