Cabin Fever (BXB)

The Night I Got To Know Simon Hopkins

He seems aware of this, this unintentional growth of space, because he comes back to me and squeezes my hand gently. "Can...we start over? Not, not to forget everything, but to do better?" Simon asks, taking a low, slow breath before looking back at me.

"Like how?"

"Like..." He drops my hand and presses his arms into his stomach. His fingers wring his shirt in this kind of adorable display of hesitation. His eyes are uncertain, wild, glowing, watching me. "Hi."

"Hi...?"

He opens his mouth, the ghosts of words drifting from his lips completely lost on us. He clenches his jaw and breaks eye contact with me, ears brushed with pink. Everything about it is painful and sweet. "I...I-I'm Simon," he starts, his words irregularly paced and breaths shaking, "and I really, really love you." He looks at me. "I love you. Like, stupidly, ridiculously love you." Simon pauses, gauging whatever expression's on my face, and his eyes grow wide. I can feel the shame – maybe "shame" isn't the right word, but it isn't embarrassment – radiating off of him, and his words are softer, trembling through the air. "I...I don't know what I did to deserve someone like you, but I don't – I can't let an opportunity like this go. But I'd get if, if everything that's happened is too much for you." He clenches his jaw and sniffs, eyes growing watery again. I can almost see him as a desperate 5-year-old whose just disappointed their parents. "I just...with you, I..." He sighs, and it comes out sounding like a chuckle, and it's such a brief, light sound it makes me shiver. Simon looks at me, face flushed and his eyes shining and dripping with sadness. "...I, just...look at you, and my head goes fuzzy, and, and it stops...panicking for a second. You...make me feel calm, and I see all the things we could do together, and a part of me doesn't want to risk losing this feeling because I was too scared to let you in."

"...Simon – "

"And it's such an amazing feeling that it scares me shitless." He steps forward, hands clasped on the hem of his shirt. "You are one of the best things to ever happen to me. Please don't ever think you're not. And I'm sorry I can only see it as something that's going to end. I don't want to."

I run my hands up my arms, trying to cover up my goosebumps. It leaves me a little breathless and lightheaded. I don't know what to say. I know he's expecting me to say something Micah-esque - "Thank you for telling me", "You are the stars in my night sky", "I forgive you" – but the longer I say nothing the worse I feel. I should forgive him. He came out to find me after I ran away. I don't doubt he took a verbal beating from his parents for me.

"Micah?"

I dig my nails into the palms of my hands. Something in my stomach doesn't want to forgive him, but I know I'll have to, at least, acknowledge this. The effort. This attempt to right wrongs, and accept the reality that I have very little reason to stay quiet, or even outright ignore it.

The air is colder now as the shadows grow darker, and it snakes around my bare skin.

Simon grows solemn, darkness shadowing his eyes as he hangs his head. "If you...need time to, think it over, I'll give you it. No questions asked. However long you want. If you don't ever want to see me again, no questions asked, either. That's fine." It doesn't sound fine. There's a waver in his voice. "I just..." He scratches his neck and takes a step back. "When this is all over, and we can go back to Alabaster-by-Sea, I'll drop you off at the Reynolds' house. And I'll bring back your stuff from the apartment – "

"Simon."

"...yeah?"

I hold my pinky finger out to him. "Promise me this? Okay?"

He nods. He takes my finger with his.

"This won't be perfect." I hate how it sounds. I hate that I thought it at all. "It sucks that it won't, but it won't. But I'll be in your corner if you're in mine."