My Better Half (Sequel to My Cup of Tea)

Chapter One

It had been a year.

Penny had expected for Simon to get better with each day that passed, but he hadn't. Not in a way that mattered, anyway. Even after a year, he still spent all of his time on the sofa drinking cider and watching romance films on the telly. Some weeks, Penny's favorite weeks, he smiled and went out of the flat for a few hours every day. But then, other weeks, he'd see a newspaper and his progress would restart completely.

Penny tried to hide the papers that came in the mail, especially when the front page was so explicit, but sometimes Simon found them anyway. She would find him on the sofa, in a teary ball, with the crumpled paper tossed aside. Every time she looked at those papers, she saw pictures of Baz and Agatha kissing or holding hands with some kind of headline about their relationship. If she could, she would have liked to burn all of the papers in London if it saved Simon from more heartbreak. Her heart was breaking right along his. She was surprised that he was still alive, at this rate. He barely slept or ate to the point where the bags under his eyes seemed to be permanent and his ribs stood out from under his tawny skin.

Today, Penny was determined to get him out of the house. The past two weeks had been particularly bad since they reminded him that the anniversary of their breakup was on the horizon, and Penny had had enough of it. She refused to let Baz, that piece of shit, determine Simon's sanity for another minute. And, with a party that night, she thought that she had found the perfect reason to get Simon out of the house. It would be a night of drinking, playing stupid games, and (hopefully) meeting other people that he could try and have a future with.

People that were not pompous arseholes like Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch.

"Simon," she said, sitting beside him on the sofa.

He barely registered her voice—he didn't even look at her. Sometimes, Penny wondered if she was even real. When she tried to talk to Simon, she felt like she must've been a ghost because it was like she wasn't even there—not in his world, anyway. Maybe he was a ghost.

"Simon," she tried again, tentatively touching his shoulder.

He shuddered and looked up at her, pulled from his trance. A part of her wondered what he was thinking about, but another part of her didn't want to know at all. Every time she thought about him or what he'd been through too much, her mind reeled back to that night that she'd found him in his bathroom, his arms bloody and that horrified expression on his face as he realized what he'd done.

"Hm?"

It's breaking my heart to see you like this.

"There's a party tonight at Phillipa's."

He looked at her like he didn't understand what her words meant. It had been happening a lot over the past year. He struggled both with speaking and understanding sentences. He could manage a word or two, but stringing them together never worked as planned.

"Okay?"

"And we're going,"

Simon looked up at her, his blue eyes full of confusion at her words. "What?"

"We're going to the party. Both of us."

He didn't protest, even when she helped him pick out an outfit suitable for the event. Even when she watched him examine himself in the mirror—looking at how put together he looked. Sadly, it was the most put together he'd looked in the whole year. Usually, even on the Good Days, he wore his joggers and a tee shirt. Now, for the party, he wore jeans and a nice fitted polo shirt. He hadn't looked so real, so tangible, all year. It broke Penny's heart to see him half-heartedly smile at his reflection, admiring how he looked. It broke her heart to see him realize that he, despite everything, could've looked like this all along if only he'd given himself enough time and energy.

"You look very handsome, Simon," she told him she she wrapped his hands around his waist, peering at the two of them in the mirror.

He smiled (genuinely) and sighed in content.

"Thanks, Pen. I feel...I feel good," he replied.

"You deserve to. Tonight will be fun, okay? We'll drink and play stupid party games and it'll be a good night, then we'll come back and watch Sherlock until it's we're too tired to keep our eyes open."

He hummed in agreement, which Penny took to mean: I'm ready.