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Simon
I never thought that time would really slow down during a life-or-death moment, but apparently it does. Okay, so maybe it’s not exactly a life-threatening situation, but as my car careens towards the post faster than I can hit the breaks, everything does seem to happen in slow motion. My ipod, which had just switched to some sappy love song, flies out of the cupholder as I watch it arc gracefully through the air to land in between the passenger seat and the center console. My school books slide onto the floor, and it feels like I have an eternity to watch it happen, yet I can’t react fast enough to stop the crunchhh as the front of my car hits the signpost.
When everything does stop, and time speeds back to normal again, I’m momentarily paralyzed. Usually, I’m good in a crisis, yet apparently today is the exception. But after a moment I shake myself, take stock of everything (all my body parts are still attached, there are no civilian casualties, no fires, and the signpost is still standing mostly upright) and jam my finger into the ‘Audio Off’ button on the dashboard, because I can’t deal with this and some romantic song from some vampire movie at the same time. Carefully, hoping beyond measure that no one has seen me, I back my car away from the pole. It still moves, and since the airbags haven’t gone off and there are no scary lights popping up on the display, I decide that it must still be drivable. The signpost gives a little wobble as I reverse, but it’s still standing, so I cautiously pull back onto the road and drive home.
Unfortunately, Penny is getting home at the same time I am, so I don’t have any time to think up a good explanation. She notices the squished-in hood immediately.
“Simon! What happened? Are you alright?”
Leaving the grocery bags on the sidewalk, she runs over and immediately starts patting down my arms. I think she’s checking for injuries, but it feels more like an airport security patdown.
“I’m fine, Penny, I’m fine.” She doesn’t listen.
“What happened? Did someone hit you?”
On the one hand, I’m amazed that she assumed it was someone else who was careless, and not me. (At least once a week I knock something over in our flat just because I don’t realize I’m standing next to it. All of our dishes are now the plasticy, unbreakable sort.) On the other hand, this means that telling her what really happened is just going to be that much more embarrassing.
“No, umm, I sort of, just… ranintoasignpost?” I rush my words together to get them out, cringing and hoping without reason that there won’t be any follow up questions. Unfortunately, Penny has never let anything go unquestioned in her life, and so she immediately asks for more details.
“How could you run into a signpost? What happened? Did someone force you off the road?”
I don’t give Penny enough credit for being such a loyal friend. I’m regretting everything at the moment though, and so it’s difficult to be grateful for her friendship right now.
“No, nothing like that. I just, umm, got distracted?” I don’t mean for my voice to turn it into a question, but I can’t think of a better way to describe what happened.
“What do you mean, you got distracted?” Penny is persistent, and her eyes have narrowed. We have a no-secrets pact, but apparently she’s forgotten about that.
“I just got distracted. I was looking at, umm, something else, and I got a bit out of the lane, and I drove into the signpost. That’s all that happened.” I can feel the back of my neck heating up, and I know the rest of my face will be turning red soon too.
“What distracted you?” Penny’s got her arms crossed now, and for all that she was a worried mother hen thirty seconds ago, she’s now cutting an intimidating figure, even if she is almost a foot shorter than me.
“Well,” I start, wondering if maybe the ground could just swallow me whole instead, “You know Baz Pitch? From class?”
Penny’s face takes on a truly foreboding expression. It’s not like that’s unwarranted, I did spend most of our first year of uni complaining about him after he made a few snarky comments under his breath and then showed me up in front of our entire Intro to British Literature class, and yes, I may have done some uncharitable things in the name of revenge while we were reading Dracula, but that was three years ago! Now we mostly just ignore each other when we have classes together. Or, at least, we don’t antagonize each other anymore. I don’t think anyone could ever ignore Baz. He’s posh, and always dresses well, in shirts with flowers and lots of pinks and purples and blues. And his hair is really nice, and sometimes he twirls a strand of it around his finger and pulls slightly when he’s focusing in class, but I don’t think he actually means to be distracting when he does it. He’s also really smart, so of course I notice when he answers questions correctly too, but that’s it really.
“Simon. I thought you had let that petty feud with Baz go. Are you trying to tell me that he’s responsible for this?”
“No!” I mean, maybe, but… “No! It’s not his fault, it’s my fault, I swear. I just - I saw him walking? And he was wearing jeans? And he…” I trail off, praying that Penny won’t make me elaborate, but she just raises her eyebrows in a demanding way. “He, umm, his arse looked really nice,” I mumble, and immediately close my eyes and cringe.
To my surprise, Penny starts laughing.
I open my eyes slowly, and she’s nearly doubled over with mirth.
“Penny? Are you okay?”
“Simon!” she gasps, attempting to bring herself under control again, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard! And for a moment I thought that you were serious!” She mellows out a bit more to ask, “But really, what happened? We have a no-secrets pact, you know you can tell me.”
“I just did! I didn’t realize that Baz has, y’know, that he looks good in jeans I guess, and I got distracted and I crashed into the post.” I’m getting frustrated now, because this is embarrassing and annoying.
“Simon.” Penny looks hurt. “You can tell me the truth. What really happened? Are you covering for someone? I would help you bury a body if need be, you know that, you can tell me anything.”
“There are no dead bodies!” I shout, possibly a little too loud for the residential area we live in. “Truly, Pen, I was just distracted by Baz. That’s it.”
“Fine,” she huffs, and stomps back to her car to grab the abandoned shopping. “I can’t make you tell me, but I wish that you would.”
When I try to take a few of the bags for her, she just turns away and stomps into the apartment.
Great, now I need to fix my car and my friendship.
When I finally trudge up the stairs after Penny, Shepard is waiting for me at the door.
“Simon! Are you alright? Penny just said that you were in a car accident!”
“‘m fine, Shep, it was nothing.”
He gives me an expression he must have learned from Penny, and I hold my hands out in a placating gesture.
“Seriously, I’m fine, I just got a bit distracted and hit a post. It didn’t even fall over,” I add, trying to mollify his curiosity.
“But what happened?” he presses, offering me the open bag of crisps from the table.
“I told you, I got distracted.” I shove a handful of crisps in my mouth; if I’m eating, I can’t be expected to talk. (I talk with my mouth full all the time, but I’m hoping Shep will forget about that right now.)
“By what? Penny said that you saw Baz, was it something that he did?”
Shep is one of my best friends, but I also haven’t known him for that long. He was assigned to work on a group project with Penny for a class two years ago, and they started dating the year after. He practically lives in our flat, and we hang out all the time, but right now I have no clue how to talk about this with him. I don’t even know how to explain it to myself.
“No, I don’t even know if he saw me.” Fuck. He probably did, after I hit the post. He probably saw me while I was sitting there, motionless, and had time to walk away before I could look back to see him. “I just… he was wearing jeans.”
“Okay?” Shep draws out the word with an even stronger American accent than usual, and I flounder once again.
“It was distracting?” I try. “I’ve never seen him outside of class. Or standing up, maybe? With trousers? I mean, obviously he wears trousers to class, he doesn’t just show up in his pants, but, this, I, urgh!” I tug on my hair, trying to straighten out my thoughts.
“Alright,” Shep says, joining me at the cramped kitchen table as I sink into one of the chairs. “But what happened? You saw Baz, he was wearing jeans, and then… what?”
I look up at him, and I feel a bit betrayed. Do I really have to explain this again?
“That was it. I saw Baz, I hit the post, now my car is crunched up. Do you know a good mechanic? Preferably a cheap one?”
Shep looks thoughtful, which is almost always concerning. “Simon, what really happened? You can tell me, I promise I won’t judge you.”
I blink at him, completely forgetting about the crisps in my hand.
“I just told you. That was it.”
“Simon,” Shep’s brows pull together and his forehead wrinkles. Disappointing him feels worse than disappointing anyone else. “You can tell me what happened. I’m sure it’s really embarrassing since you’ve picked an embarrassing, and frankly weird, lie, but seriously, you can tell me what’s going on.”
“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,” I mutter, scooping up the remainder of the crisps and stalking off to my room.
After spending a few hours kicking my heels against my bed and trying to figure out how I’m going to be able to pay for a mechanic (do I even need to get it fixed? People drive dinged-up cars all the time, don’t they? It’s not like it caught fire or anything, so I should be fine, right?), I start to smell beef wellington cooking in the kitchen. Penny is a horrible cook, but she learned how to make beef wellington when I was sick a few years ago, and it’s what she makes when she thinks I need emotional support. Right now, though, I’m wondering if it might also be a trap. Is she trying to lure me out there, just so she can keep interrogating me about the accident?
In the end, my stomach wins over, as Penny probably knew it was always going to. She really is my best friend though, because the beef wellington is an I love you and you’ve had a rough day dinner, and not a trap at all.
Unfortunately, the reprieve at dinner is only temporary. Over the course of the next few days, Penny and Shep are merciless. Penny doesn’t believe me at all, and remains convinced that I’m covering for someone, while Shepard believes that I saw Baz, but that something even more embarrassing must have happened for that to be my cover story. Together they’re insufferable, and I’m a little concerned that I’m going to start developing bruises from how much Penny has been poking me.
Shepard, on the other hand, seems to be attempting to humiliate me to the point of confession, suggesting increasingly horrifying scenarios and asking if that’s what actually happened. My head is starting to hurt from all the times I’ve tugged on my curls or thrown my face into my hands, and by Friday afternoon I’m done.
“For the final time, I’m telling the truth!” I explode, almost pushing Penny into the building next to ours as I fling out my arms.
“Simon,” she says, and her tone drips with sympathy, “we love you. You can tell us what really happened, and we’ll believe you, and still love you, no matter what it is.”
“I’ve been telling the truth,” I grit out, starting to stomp ahead of them. I can’t hear it, but I just know they’re exchanging a look behind my back.
“Sure, Simon,” Shep starts, and I jam my fists into the pocket of my hoodie, hunching over and trying to walk even faster, slamming into our building without holding the door for them. “Except, I just don’t think we get it. I mean, you keep saying that you were distracted by Baz because, and I quote, his arse looked good in those jeans, but,” he pauses, and I brace myself for what is sure to come next. But you’re not even gay. You don’t like blokes. “Baz doesn’t have that nice of a butt.”
I stop three stairs above them and whirl around.
“He does so!”
I can’t tell if my cheeks are flaming from embarrassment or anger right now, but I don’t have space in my mind to try and figure that out.
“Simon,” Penny tries, and I wish they’d stop saying my name like some sort of support group. “He really doesn’t.”
“Yes,” I protest, “he does.” I frown at them both for a second, casting around wildly for anything that could help me. “He plays football! All footie players have nice bums!” Penny and Shep still look skeptical, and perhaps a touch concerned about my sanity. “Watford has a match tonight; we can go, and you’ll see then!”
Shep doesn’t seem to share in my current triumph, and Penny looks outright disgusted.
“Are you suggesting that we stalk Basil in order to ogle and-slash-or objectify him?” Her nose wrinkles.
“Not exactly,” I mutter, and trudge the rest of the way up to our flat in silence.
Despite Penny’s moral misgivings, three hours later we are all sitting on the bleachers, watching the Watford Football Team take warmups.
“I will admit,” Shepard says, “that he is slightly more muscled than I was expecting.”
Penny scoffs.
“He’s still not worth crashing a car over.”
I attempt to sink low enough to become one with the cold metal of the bleachers, while Shep considers Penny’s statement.
“Is there anyone worth crashing a car over?”
“Some sort of international standard, you mean?” Penny asks, eyes lighting up. This, right here, is why they’re such a good couple. Shep is constantly asking questions, and he is genuinely interested in dissecting the issues all the way to the end, which is all Penny has ever wanted to do. I tune them out as they begin attempting to run actual numbers on their insane hypotheticals, but that means I miss when the conversation shifts back to reality once more.
“So, Simon, would you say it was the size of Baz’s arse that distracted you, or the definition?”
Fuck.
I whip my head up, already trying to shush Penny, but Niall is already looking over at us. Shit. He’s one of Baz’s best friends, and there is no way he won’t be telling Baz all about this.
“Or was it the overall perkiness?” Shep adds, completely oblivious to my distress.
Niall is doing a poor job of hiding his laughter.
“He crashed his car into a post, Shep, it has to be more than just that!”
Maybe I can find a new best friend. After all, Penny and I can’t both survive this conversation - I’m going to have to kill her, unless I die of embarrassment first.
“Please just stop,” I plead, twisting so that I’m no longer facing them and doing my best to act like I’ve come here alone and have never met the two of them before in my life.
I don’t think it makes a difference though. Niall is almost crying with how hard he’s laughing, and I’m pretty sure I’ll never be able to look at him or Baz ever again.
The only redeeming part of the evening is the fact that Watford wins. (And that Baz scored three of their goals. And seeing him in his football kit, although since that’s connected to the thing that got me into this trouble in the first place I do have some mixed feelings about it.)
The next morning, though, Penny and Shepard don’t say anything about Baz or my car as we walk to the dining hall (they do pancakes and waffles every Saturday, so we buy meal plans just for that, it’s tradition), and I allow myself to be cautiously optimistic that maybe the football match actually did put an end to everything.
The subject doesn’t come up as we find a table and wait for Agatha, it doesn’t come up while we get our breakfast, and when it still hasn’t come up by the time that Agatha has finished and pulled out her phone to start ignoring Penny like she always does, I start to relax.
Unfortunately, that’s when Baz walks into the dining hall. Even worse, Niall and Dev are with him, and I can see the exact moment when Niall notices me, recognition and memory flashing comically across his face. The dining hall is too loud for me to hear what he’s saying, but his animated hands and ridiculous facial expressions make it only too clear what he’s conveying to Baz.
I turn in my chair so that Baz won’t be able to see how red my face is when he inevitably looks over (Niall was pointing, for goodness sake!), and Shep breaks off mid-word to ask if I’m okay.
“‘m fine,” I mumble, trying to guess where Baz and Niall might sit so that I can escape without being seen.
Penny takes that as a sign to stand halfway out of her chair and start looking around to see what I’m trying to avoid.
“Oh my gosh, Agatha! We didn’t tell you!” Penny’s noticed Niall, I guess.
“What?” she says, hardly glancing up from her phone. (In fairness to Agatha, Penny frequently starts conversations this way, and more often than not it’s a conversation that has nothing to do with Agatha at all.)
“Simon crashed his car!”
Agatha raises her eyebrows and looks up at me, but still doesn’t seem interested. “And?”
“And he-”
Shepard interrupts Penny. “Aren’t you going to ask if he’s alright?”
Agatha looks up at me again, as if to say, clearly you’re fine, but Penny doesn’t let her verbalise that thought.
“He’s fine. But Agatha! He crashed into a signpost!” This time, Agatha’s raised eyebrow look has more disdain behind it. I grimace and shrug. I know. “He told us that he was distracted, but you’ll never guess what he said distracted him!”
Agatha finally looks up at Penny, with another quick glance over at me. “What, Pen?”
“Baz!”
“Baz wearing jeans!” Shepard adds, with far too much enthusiasm.
“And?” Agatha is still poised to type, her phone held aloft as though she’s going to go back to it at any second and as if none of this is any sort of shock at all.
“And?” Penny splutters. “And he’s obviously lying, or covering for someone!”
“Yeah,” chimes in Shepard, “Imagine how much more embarrassing the real story is if that’s the cover story!”
“We even went to a football match last night, just so he could prove to us that Baz was fit enough to crash a car over.”
Agatha rolls her eyes, and I sink lower in my seat, staring at a bite of syrup-soggy french toast and wondering how much longer this will be my life. Unfortunately, my refusal to make eye contact with my friends means I also don’t notice when someone else walks up to our table.
“Snow?” a posh voice says, and I lift my head, still slouched with most of my body under the table.
It’s Baz.
I freeze. (Why is that always my response around him? First I froze when I crashed my car, now I’m freezing stuck between a booth and a table, it’s humiliating.)
“Err, hi,” I say, when my brain finally clicks back on and I struggle to sit up properly.
“Hello,” he says, still way too posh, and smirking at me as I wiggle back up in the booth. I’m vaguely aware of the fact that all three of my friends are looking between us like we’re playing tennis, but I can’t seem to react properly.
“I heard that you recently crashed your car,” he says, when I don’t offer any other words. “Niall said that you were,” he pauses, and I can tell he’s enjoying this, the prick, “distracted by something.”
My face is on fire. Just let me die here, please.
“Must have been pretty impressive, for you to completely miss the pole with the giant yellow sign atop it.”
How on earth can he make me feel so many things at once? Attractive people shouldn’t be allowed to be this smug or infuriating.
“Anyway, my aunt is dating a mechanic. He could probably fix your car for you at a much more reasonable rate than anyone else in the city would.”
“Really?” I stammer out. “Thanks, alright.” What is even happening right now?
“Of course. Meet me at Lorenzo’s on Friday at seven. We’ll have dinner and I can give you his contact info then.”
Baz looks slightly less composed than usual, but I’m too grateful to delve into why.
“Sure, seven on Friday, okay. I guess I’ll see you then,” I force out, trying to figure out why he’s being so nice.
Baz taps his fingers twice on the back of the booth. “It’s a date,” he says, and saunters off as I can feel my mouth dropping open.
“Did he just-”
“Were you really-”
“You mean that actually-”
Agatha cuts us all off.
“Of course he just asked you out, Baz has had a crush on you for ages, he just thought that you were straight.” I open my mouth again to protest, although I have no clue what I’m going to say, but Agatha keeps going, this time speaking pointedly to Penelope and Shep. “And of course Simon was telling the truth about being distracted by seeing Baz, he’s been distracted by Baz every time he’s seen him for the past two years!”
Penny, Shep, and I all sit in shocked silence for a moment, before Penny speaks up.
“I still can’t believe he crashed his car over that though.”
Agatha, who has gone back to texting, doesn’t even look up.
“Of course he did. Simon is the worst driver I’ve ever met, and Baz does have a better-than-average arse.”