Better Than People (Garnet Run 1)

He stuck out his hand, almost hitting Jack in the chest with the plastic container of cookies.

“These for me?” Jack asked, stepping back to let him inside.

Simon rolled his eyes.

No, they’re for the other person whose chest I just shoved them into.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jack said. He peeled off the lid and inhaled. His eyes got big. “Are these those cinnamon things with the weird name?” he asked, clearly enthused.

Simon nodded.

“Snickerdoodles.”

The word came out choked but audible.

“Right, right. What the hell kind of name is that?”

What the hell kind of name is Bernard for a St. Bernard and Puddles for a dog afraid of puddles?

Jack’s brow furrowed and for a moment Simon had the ridiculous notion that the other man could read his mind.

“German, maybe? Sounds kind of German.” He shrugged and stuffed a cookie into his mouth.

His eyes got wide again.

“Mmmisooogood,” he garbled and Simon smiled. Cinnamon and sugar gilded Jack’s lips like they’d been caught in the sweetest flurry.

Jack grunted and held the container out to him.

Simon shook his head.

“Too early for me,” he said. The words came out and in their wake a deep heat flushed through his throat and face. But Jack just smiled and shrugged, then shoved another cookie in his mouth.

Jack gathered the dogs and Pirate with a whistle.

“Did you make these?”

“My grandma.”

Something flickered in Jack’s eyes that Simon couldn’t read.

“Wow. Real grandma cookies. Thanks.”

He sounded utterly serious, as if cookies baked by a grandmother were categorically different than cookies baked by someone else, and he held the container reverently, tucked under his arm like a football.

A pillow with a head-sized indentation lay on the couch, a comforter half on the floor. Had Jack been sleeping here instead of in a bed?

Jack’s eyes followed Simon’s.

“Uh. I don’t sleep well. Much.”

Now that he said it, Simon could see that he looked weary, not sleepy.

“Why?”

Jack ran a hand through messy hair the color of copper.

“I haven’t for a long time. Since I was a teenager. And usually when I can’t sleep I draw. But...”

He shook his head.

Why did you stop sleeping as a teenager? What changed? What do you draw? Why can’t you draw now? What do you do instead? How much sleep did you get last night? Does your leg hurt? How did you hurt your leg?

The familiar cacophony swelled in Simon’s head and chest as he opened his mouth, and what came out was...nothing.

Jack’s eyes on him were sharp and Simon looked at the floor. He blinked furiously and made for the door.

This part was always the hardest. The moment when he could see the person he would have been—the connections he would have made—if only he weren’t like he goddamn was.

* * *

He still didn’t entirely understand it, the war inside of him.

It had been raging as long as he could remember, and as in any war, all sides lost.

As a young child he’d been able to stay quiet, to watch the world from inside himself, and the only comment was to his parents at their luck that he was so well-behaved. He could press to his father’s side and be lifted high above the fear. He could turn his face toward his mother’s stomach and be gathered close in her arms, shielded and comforted.

But at a certain point—and Simon couldn’t have identified it because it passed without him noticing—rescue and comfort were rescinded. There was no discussion, no negotiation. One day he simply realized that when he pressed close to his father he was given a clap on the back; when he turned toward his mother, he got a smile and a hair tousle.

Without warning, he had been set adrift on dangerous waters even as he still lived under his parents’ roof. The praise for his good behavior was a thing of the past. Now the comments weren’t complimentary, but questioning. Eventually, they stopped altogether because everyone knew.

Something was wrong with Simon Burke.

“Nothing’s wrong physically,” the doctor told his parents. “He’s just a little shy, aren’t you, Simon?”

That he would grow out of it was the general consensus, and Simon began to imagine the present as hard-packed soil and the future as the moment his reedy seedling would press through earth and grow toward the sun.

By high school he knew he was mired in the dirt permanently, buried alive, and instead of hoping to grow, he wished he’d stop.

His looks became less in sync with how he felt the taller and broader he got. Suddenly taller than most of the girls at school, taller than many of the boys, he wasn’t small enough to hide anymore, and he began to hunch his shoulders and duck his chin to his chest.

It had the added benefit that he couldn’t see the looks on people’s faces when he didn’t answer them. Teachers couldn’t catch his eye in the hallway and give him the perplexed, disappointed look they reserved for students failing to perform to their potential.