Baz sighs. I know all his sighs; I lived with them for eight years. This one means: Simon Snow is a chronic pain in my neck.
“Do you want me to leave?” I ask. I’m on my back with my arms up, my elbows folded over my face.
“No.” Baz’s voice is quiet. “Are you going to?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“That’s something.”
I breathe out hard. “I want to, though. I kinda want to die when I think of having to face you again.”
Baz pulls my arms away from my face. “Here.” He’s hovering over me.
“Get it over with.”
My eyes slide away from him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t,” he says.
“Because apologies don’t matter?”
“No—because you don’t have anything to be sorry for. Come on, Snow, look at me.”
I try. He looks tired. And sad. And embarrassed.
“I don’t mind this,” he says. “Any of it.”
“Oh my God, Baz—don’t lie to me! This isn’t what anyone wants to happen in bed.” I try to cover my face again, but his hand is on my cheek.
He’s too close.
“I’m not lying! I don’t mind comforting you, Simon. Or holding you. I don’t mind giving you what you need, whatever it is you need. I prefer it to you pushing me away. Or ignoring me.”
I look up at him. “But you could date anyone you want. You could date everyone you want. And none of them would start bloody crying during foreplay.”
Baz shrugs. “You don’t always cry … Sometimes you go glassy-eyed and nonresponsive.”
My hands are twisted in my hair. “Fucking a, I can’t believe you’re joking about this.” I try to roll away from him, but he’s all steel bands when he wants to be. He pins me down by the shoulders.
“Wait,” he says. “Listen to me. Are you listening?”
I close my eyes but stop trying to push him off.
“I want to be with you,” he says. “And this is where we are right now.
And I truly don’t mind, Simon.”
I open my eyes. Baz is looking right down at me.
“You don’t want more?” I ask.
He shoves at my shoulders. “Of course I do. But not with just anyone. I want more with you, you twit.”
I try to sit up, away from him, and this time he lets me. “What if I can’t give you more?” I say. “What if this is my best-case scenario?”
Baz is dismissive. “I don’t believe that.” Then he goes still. He turns to me with one eyebrow raised. “Are you saying you don’t want more?”
“Are you barking? Of course I want more!”
He relaxes again. “Then I’m confident we’ll get there … someday, I don’t know, eventually. Honestly, Simon, this isn’t even our biggest problem.”
He shocks a laugh out of me with that. “What’s bigger?”
“The vampire thing, for one.” Baz looks so twisted up and peeved and, like, unimpressed with me. It makes me want to start inhaling his carbon dioxide again.
I can feel myself smiling at him. “That’s not a real problem…”
“It’s about to be.” He’s rubbing his jaw. He sighs. “If I leave to hunt, will you be here when I get back?”
I’m still smiling. “I’ll do you one better: I’ll come along.”
Baz frowns at his lap, picking at the knee of his jeans. His hair has dried fluffier than usual, and it’s falling over his eyes. “Simon…” he says, like I’ve said something unkind and tiresome.
I take his hand. “Baz, if you really don’t want me to be ashamed of what a complete and utter shambles I am, you can’t be ashamed of your thing either.
You already know I don’t care—I’ve known you were a vampire since we were fifteen!”
He lifts his chin. “Yeah, and you tried to fucking Van Helsing me, Snow!”
“I never properly tried…”
He frowns. “Have you ever made an effort with me?”
I tug on his hand. “The takeaway here is—I truly don’t care that you’re a vampire.”
“Well, I care. It’s humiliating.”
“Baz, I hate to say this, but…” I’m grinning at him, and I can hardly believe it. Like, I really expected to be miserable for days after breaking down so completely. But somehow I’m still here, and he’s still here, and even though I still feel like a hopeless case, this thing between us doesn’t feel hopeless at all.