Page 84 of Read My Lips

“She’s lovely,” Simon agreed firmly.

Jo stretched out next to Sev, feet in her lap, talking with lively animation too quietly for me to make out words over the screaming whirr of the blender. Sev, hunched forward squinting at her laptop, was absently stroking her leg. She kept leaning back to speak, clearly not bothered about distractions. A smile. A shake of her head, and a laugh. Eyes on Jo like she could spend a lifetime drinking in everything the woman had to say.

Damnit. I knew that feeling.

“Do you like tinned fish?” Simon asked, voice a notch too loud, and my attention snapped back to him. “I’ve got mackerel or sardines.” He held out a stack of tins. “Bit spicy, but I think you’ll manage.”

“Sure. I’ll give it a go.” I cracked the tins into the bowl and prodded at the pieces with a fork, unsure whether I was supposed to break them up or not.

As soon as Jo had appeared, tightness had curled into his whole body. It finally faded out of him as he pulsed the blender, leaving him smiling as it came together.

I caught his eye, signing instead of trying to speak over the ragged whirr. “Why didn’t your family learn BSL?”

The blender stopped, leaving a gaping echo hanging in the air like tinnitus.

“It’s not like that.” Simon glanced towards the open doors, tone hushed, but no way Jo could see me signing from here. “They’d do anything for me.”

“I can see that,” I signed, tilting my head to keep in his eyeline. Every framed photo showed how great they were. How much they loved him. Even Jo showing up to meddle made it clear. “But you’re so…” I puffed my cheeks. “...fucking tense keeping up with what your sister’s saying.”

A ripple chased along the muscle of his jaw again, and Simon exhaled so hard his nostrils flared. Shit. This wasn’t my place. No matter how much I hated watching it. What an overstep.

“Sorry.” Hands up, I backed off. “Forget I ask⁠—”

“No.” Simon caught my wrist, holding steady. He only let go when I’d stilled completely. “I… didn’t want them to,” he signed.

Honesty furred his eyebrows together. “Not at home. I didn’t need signing at home. Or with friends.” His eyes shied away from mine, and I felt the effort it took him to look back at me. None of his usual throwaway humour there. “I’ve been faking it from context – laughing when everyone else does – for so long I’m practically psychic by now. Didn’t realise it was so obvious I’m not keeping up.”

“It’s not. You do.” I stalled, trying to order my thoughts before I started signing. Constant detective work can’t have been the kind of super power he’d ever really wanted. “How much effort does it take?”

Simon blinked. “No one asks me that.”

Why wasn’t that a surprise? “You really don’t keep the best company, do you?”

His smile contorted to an uncomfortable shape. “Look, Jo got in so much trouble because of me when I started needing an interpreter at school. Which was a joke in itself, because I had to actually learn BSL before it was useful. Ending up dropping out. Repeating a year when I went back. So I got to be the weird older kid no one wanted to be around. And when I got all A’s they said my interpreter must have helped me. Clearly I was cheating.”

“The teachers said that?”

“No. Not the teachers.”

“But that’s ridiculous.”

“Tell that to thirty white teenagers you made feel inadequate.” He rubbed a hand down his face, scrubbing hard at his skin, and my stomach knotted. “Jo was going against these idiots doing impressions of how I speak – my voice. Or, hands all over the place, pretending to sign.

“I wanted to keep it all separate. For school.” He marked a solid place in the space in front of him, boxing it in. Dim, outdated regret soured his face. “Didn’t want my family learning an entire language because of how different I am.”

I winced. How many times had I got myself in trouble over things a stranger had said about Mam? I wanted to punch the little twerps. I wanted to tug Simon in against my chest so hard the kid he’d been felt it from a decade and a half away. But my feet rooted to his kitchen tiles, my hands bunched in useless fists until I forced myself to let it go. To sign again.

“You’re not different. You’re fucking fabulous.”

Simon blurted a laugh. The pleased gleam in his eyes washed warmth all over me.

“Don’t think you can really be fabulous when you’re compromising yourself all over the place. Your flatmate’s the first Deaf person I’ve met in years, and I can barely hold a conversation at his pace. You’re right. Everywhere I go, I’m either paddling furiously to keep it looking effortless, or I’m a complete outsider. Unless you’re there.”

“It doesn’t have to stay like that.”

Simon looked tired. “I’ve spent so long making sure everyone knows how well I get on lipreading. That I don’t really need any accommodations apart from for work. I can’t tell Jo I’ve been bullshitting most of her life.”

I came around the kitchen island, brushing past the herbs and the mint as I caught his upper arm and tipped his chin in my direction.