chapter thirty-seven.

Val

I can't remember the last time I put on a red dress.

I stand in front of the mirror, the bathroom door shut behind me as I pinch at the folds in the velvet fabric. I've worn dresses before, sure. But none this form-fitting, none such a deep, sumptuous shade of red. I'm not even sure why I brought the dress in the first place.

Or maybe I am.

I toy with my hair, twirling one of my locs around my finger. I strike one pose and then reconsider and switch to another one. I raise my eyebrows, lower them. Stroke a gentle hand over my jawline, flick one of the earrings dangling from my ears. Will Simon like it? I ask myself, yanking the dress down a bit, in case it's too short. When such an action reveals a fair amount of cleavage, however, I reconsider. What if it's too much?

He knows me, after all. He knows this isn't my usual get-up.

But he made dinner reservations for us. He made dinner reservations and we're at the beach and the air is clear and my heart is clearer. I just want this to be special. I just want him to feel special.

And not in the way he's felt all his life.

I sigh, giving my necklace a final twist. I'm not changing. I've already changed enough.

I back up, placing a hand on the bathroom door's handle. I nudge the door open, a wave of ocean air hitting me in the face from the open balcony. "Simon? I think I'm ready now—"

But the words falter. He's on the floor in front of the beds, convulsing, changing. Switching to one skin and then to another one, and all so quickly I can hardly keep track. My heart drops into my stomach, and then I'm on the ground beside him, shaking his shoulders. "Simon, are you with me? What can I do? What can I—"

When he looks at me, his eyes are like kaleidoscopes, washing from brown to blue and back to brown again, exploding in color for a moment before turning a dull gray. It's fascinating to watch, in a sickening sort of way. Simon shudders, curling into a fetal position, still crumpled on his side. "N-Nothing. You can't—we—wait."

Something crosses his face, then. As his cheekbones heighten and lower again, as his nose and mouth rework themselves. Nevertheless, I recognize it. It's fear. Not the pseudo-fear one feels after watching a horror movie or hearing a strange tale whispered around a campfire. The look on his face is real, like he could lose himself, lose it all, any minute now—and he believes it.

Three minutes later, he goes still again. The skin he wears is Kenzo's, his hair black and curling and his complexion a deep, cool brown. He's shorter and scrawnier and shaken, and the first thing he says to me when he sits up from the floor is, "Dinner. If we don't leave now, we'll be late—"

He starts to get to his feet, but I yank him down again. "Simon," I say, a name that still feels strange to call to anyone but Simon's face, "We can't. You know we can't."

"But..." He begins, and then looks down at me, as if just now noticing the dress I put on for him. "You're...You look so stunning."

"I can look stunning inside our hotel room, too," I say, reaching out to brush his cheek. He frowns at me, closing his eyes, his long eyelashes brushing the edge of my palm. "We'll order room service and have our dinner in here. It'll be fun. I promise."

Simon exhales. "I wanted to take you out. I wanted to treat you."

"And I just want you to be comfortable," I reply. "I want you to be okay. So don't worry about me right now."

Simon closes his hand over my own, lifting his eyes to me. In a way, it's almost like I've gotten used to it. Looking into a different pair of eyes, framed by a different face, and still knowing, automatically, that it's Simon. It's like I just know. It's like I don't even question it. "I'll figure it out," he assures. "I'll figure out what's wrong with me and I'll fix it in no time. I promise, Val."

"Okay, Simon," I say, dragging the menu from its place on the nightstand, beside the TV remote. "Okay."

But okay is not what I want to say.

What I want to tell him is, You can't promise me that.

You can't promise me anything.

Simon orders sushi again. I don't bother reminding him that we had all the hotel's sushi platters last night, because sushi seems like the only thing that can cheer him up after his episode, and I'll be damned if I get in the way of that.

We eat in silence for a few moments, Simon following a strict regimen: topping the sushi with iceberg lettuce first, then pickled ginger, and finally placing the sushi upon his tongue with chopsticks. I watch him out of the corner of my eye, picking at the salad in front of me, which tastes less like salad and more like rabbit food.

For a while the silence is okay. I can sit and think about good things. How lucky I am to have him and be here with him and how amazing it is how we understand each other so easily. I can sit and think about not-so-good things. The fact Simon keeps spontaneously losing control of his powers. The fact my sister is alone again. The fact Caz has started to ignore me whenever we're working.

Eventually, the silence begins to eat at me. "You don't dip it in soy sauce?" I blurt.

Simon lifts a dark, nearly black eyebrow at me. He still looks like the boy I had a brief fling with in junior year, like Kenzo. I get the feeling he's too frightened to try switching back; it's something in the cautious way that he's moving. "No," Simon says, and I'm relieved when I see a smile crack his face. "True sushi connoisseurs don't. It messes with the natural flavors."

I roll my eyes. "You're such a nerd."

Simon rolls his eyes back at me, twice as dramatically. "Says the girl that was obsessed with Yu-Gi-Oh in middle school."

"Yeah, that's middle school, dumbass," I snap, flicking him in the head. "You're allowed to be as nerdy as you want in middle school, as long you outgrow it."

Simon opens his mouth to search for an argument to that, but he doesn't find one, because I'm right. Shrugging, he says, "So that's sorta right. My little sister, Abbie, used to have her walls plastered with random anime and manga posters. Most of them looked sorta like gay porn, which I pointed out, but she worshipped them nonetheless."

"And she outgrew it?"

"Yeah," Simon says. "Threw all the posters out once she hit high school."

I stuff an arugula leaf in my mouth. "Case closed."

A flicker of nostalgia crosses Simon's face, and however brief it is, I catch it. "Simon?" I say, and he looks up, silhouetted against the pinkish-purple sunset behind him. "You get along with your family, don't you? I mean, I haven't met any of them besides Larry, and your brother. I just—I just want to make sure—"

To my relief, he grins at me. "If you're searching for a depressing backstory, Val," he says, setting his chopsticks down, "you won't find one. My family and I had our dark times, but every family does. In the end, though, they've always had my back."

I cock my head. "But not Larry's?"

"Larry's...not the same," Simon replies after a beat, his gaze floating down towards the floor. I remember the shock that had flooded his face when Larry had called out to him outside of the bakery, just moments before I discovered the truth. I remember that, and I wonder if saying Larry's not the same is a large understatement. "He and I have never had precisely the same goals."

"What's your goal, then?"

Simon hesitates. I see the gears in his head turning, those artist's gears, taking lofty dreams and breathtaking ideas and containing them all within the words of the English language.

"To live," Simon replies, shoving our dirty dishes aside. He tilts his head back, watching the hotel room's ceiling fan spin. "To live and die just like everyone else."

I frown at him. "Aren't you already doing that?"

"Maybe," he says. He gets up from his chair, walking in a slow circle before parking himself back on the edge of the bed. "But it's not enough."

I want to ask him, When will it be? but the words never come.

Instead, Simon rubs his eyes for a moment; when he looks up at me again, they're faintly bloodshot. "I'm sorry. I keep staring at you in that dress and thinking about the steak I was going to buy you and I—" He hides his face in his hands. "I am suffering from a severe case of FOMO right now."

"If I took it off, would that make you feel better?"

Slowly, Simon drags his hand down his face until it plops into his lap. "The dress, you mean?"

I reach behind me, swinging the curtains over the balcony shut, trying to pretend like my heart isn't hammering inside of my chest. "Well, I'm not wearing a steak, am I?"

Simon's eyes have gone flat with a sudden seriousness. "Val."

"Simon."

"I—"

I shake my head, rising from my own chair, approaching Simon. He blinks at me as I find the hem of his shirt, curling my fingers underneath it. My nails brush the bare skin on his stomach and both of us shudder. "I don't want anyone else," I whisper to him, and though I am scared, and though I have never done this before, that is the one thing I'm sure of. "I'll never want anyone else."

With my other hand, I comb a hand through his hair. To my surprise, it straightens and lengthens underneath my fingertips, shimmering once again with Simon's natural ginger hue. Simon—the real Simon, the one body that is his and his only—blinks at me, red-faced. "What are you doing?"

Instead of answering, I kiss him, slowly, passionately, so that he feels the heat pouring off of me and I off of him. He says my name, softly. "Live," I tell him. "I am telling you to live."

He lets me lift his shirt over his head, while his hand finds the way up the side of my leg, underneath my dress. Everything is hot and cold and pain and pleasure.

And soon we are close, closer than we've ever been, closer than that.

I fall asleep curled against him, skin to skin and breath to breath, and a distant part of me doesn't even want to bother waking up.