Page 90 of Read My Lips

“So would the bloke poking through the bins earlier have anything to do with Your Simon being all over my newsfeed?” he signed.

I spluttered on a hot mouthful of tea, nearly scalding myself. “What?”

Matt fished a batch of pastel-toned post-it notes, dense with smudgy biro, out of his pocket. “Mrs F spent ten minutes writing down her concerns about that video bringing down the tone of the neighbourhood.”

“He’s not my Simon.” I laughed. Borderline hysterically. How very hilarious. Matt would see us like that, now it was never going to happen. “Why would you call him that?”

Matt full-on scoffed. “Mate, he’s been Your Simon for three years. You’ve been going on about him long enough. And according to the internet, all that time, you’ve actually been screwing each other senseless. So yeah, he’s Your Simon.”

I sagged against the wall. None of that was even remotely true. “Did you watch it?”

Matt’s nose wrinkled. “God no. I don’t want to see you naked.”

“It’s not full-frontal!” Why did my brain decide that was the important bit?

“Oh, in that case...” Matt pulled his phone out of his pocket, making a show of scrolling to find it, before he widened his eyes at me like I’d truly lost it.

He had a point.

“Look, “ I signed, “it’s not real. It’s for Simon’s work, so he doesn’t get fired.” After today, I really needed to remember that.

Matt’s face contorted, his signs sizing up. “What are you on, Ben? That is not your job description.”

“It’s fine. It’ll blow over in a couple of days. People only care about Richard Whittaker, and now they don’t think it’s him, so it’ll just... fade away. And anyway, It’s only sex.”

“Wait—”Matt’s raised hand halted everything. Disbelief boggled into his eyes. “It’s fake, but you’re actually sleeping with him?”

I cringed. How had I juggled this many versions of the truth? “It doesn’t mean anything. I don’t think.”

“You don’t think?” Matt echoed me with perfect intonation to his signs. “What is wrong with you? You’re his interpreter – if he didn’t like you, it’d be harassment at this point. You’re not subtle.”

“Harassment?” The golf ball in my throat was back. No way had Simon known I was into him this whole time. He’d have fired me years ago. Exactly like he was going to first thing in the morning.

My breathing shuddered. Oh god. It had all caught up to me now, and I was the only one to blame.

Matt stopped counting out wing-nuts from the bits bag. “Are you alright mate?”

The sting in my sinuses redoubled. I wedged my tongue hard up against the roof of my mouth and it still didn’t stop hurting. “Not really. No.”

Without a word, Matt went out of the room, and came back with a handful of loo roll.

“I’m not fucking crying.”

“So wank with it later. What’s going on?”

I spluttered a laugh.

“I… said no-strings was fine – and it is – but we needed pictures for the Richard thing, and I showed him all the ones I took of me and him.”

Matt winced. He knew what I was talking about immediately; I’d been unsubtle about Simon forever.

“Not the Christmas Party one?”

“All of them.” My gut turned over again at the look of horror on his face.

“Why would you do that?”

“I don’t know! There were three billion shitty work ones to sort through, and Simon was going on about how absolutely vital it was. And my brain malfunctioned, alright?” I gritted my teeth. “And now he probably thinks I’m obsessed.”