Chapter 41
Chapter Forty-One
Ruby
My new friend Beth the Wonder Staffer slips out of the room and gives me a nod.
We’ve been trading emails all week, but until this morning, I’d never met her, so I’m touched when she reaches out to give my hand a light squeeze.
“The video is playing. Good luck,” she whispers, holding the door so I can slip in, hopefully without drawing Charlie’s attention.
“I owe you forever,” I whisper back. Librarians really are the best.
She smiles and hurries off to her next task. I let the door close behind me, stopping it at the last second so it won’t latch and distract Charlie from my video.
“It Had to Be You,” the Harry Connick Jr. version from When Harry Met Sally, plays over a series of photos of the two of us, and there are a lot of them. I wish I could see Charlie’s face as he watches, but there’s some coordinating left to do.
One minute left. You ready?
When I get the affirmative, I watch the rest of the video and feel a flicker of sympathy for Niles as the photos of me with Charlie from the last year start appearing, even the ones from before Niles and I broke up. The truth is written all over Charlie’s face.
But it’s also written all over mine, from my smile to the look of contentment in my eyes. I’m watching a woman who is whole when she is with Charlie.
When the video ends, he stirs like he’s about to turn around, probably trying to figure out what comes next. But Beth and I chose this room because it has two entrances, and the one at the front opens.
Charlie straightens as Ava, Madison, and Sami file in. They’d stayed with one of Sami’s sorority sisters who lives right outside Houston last night, and I fight a laugh when I see them wearing bedazzled “Team Chuby” shirts. They have to know that is the worst version of our possible ship names.
As planned, none of them look at me to avoid giving away that I’m standing back here. Charlie obviously knows I must be around, but hopefully he’ll be expecting me to come in through the same entrance the girls used and not check behind him. I want to watch this play out unobserved.
There’s no dais, but a lectern sits on a table with four chairs behind it. Madison and Ava take two of them, but Sami takes the lectern.
“Good morning, Charlie,” she says, as if it’s any old day at the Grove that he’s stopped by for a visit.
Charlie relaxes, stretching his legs and crossing them at the ankles. “Hey, there, Sami.”
I smile at the resigned amusement in his voice.
“Welcome to Pitch-a-Friend.” She points a clicker and a picture of me appears. “You know our friend Ruby?”
“I do.”
“She’s great.”
“I’m convinced. How do I connect with her?”
Sami glares at him. “Let me finish. She’s great, and I know we don’t have to convince you of that.
We thought we might have to convince her that you’re great for her, but we didn’t.
She figured it out by herself, and now our job is to convince you instead that you should believe her when she says she loves you. ”
Charlie shifts but only to settle in.
“I will be taking point one.” Sami clicks to a slide reading Ruby picked you over Niles all the time.
“Do you know how many pictures we have of you in the middle of our escapades and not Niles? A lot.” Click.
The photographic evidence appears as a collage of snapshots.
“This isn’t because he wouldn’t come. It’s because she never asked him to.
She was always very Charlie-forward because you were always the guy. ”
Click. The next slide reads, Point 1: Ruby has chosen Charlie for years.
She sits down and Madison stands up. She clicks to show a picture of all of us, including Charlie, on our sofa from a movie night a couple of years ago. “You were in the group chat before Josh, Oliver, and Joey. Her own brother, Charlie. That’s how much you belong.”
Click. Point 2: We’re already family.
She sits down and Ava stands up. Click. A chart with a bunch of columns crammed with numbers appears. It’s labeled “Pack mammal behavior as quantified in aggregate data analysis.”
Madison and Sami both produce notebooks from somewhere and act like they’re ready to take notes. Nice one, girls. I can hear Charlie’s snort clearly.
Ava glances at the screen. “That’s probably hard to read so I’ll summarize.
The data shows that Ruby is a lioness. A lioness will tolerate a lion who is present simply because he’s present.
But once a new lion comes, she will make a choice.
And the lion she doesn’t choose, she chases off.
Then that’s it. The lion she chooses is hers for the rest of her life, and if he leaves, the lioness dies. ”
Almost none of that is true. I helped a fifth grader research animals of the African veldt last fall. Also, I will not die if Charlie leaves me. Though I might feel like I want to for a while and definitely never love anyone again for the rest of my life.
Click. An animation plays of two magnets attracting and sticking.
“There’s an actual equation for that, but this is the gist. You are Ruby’s true north, and she will always be drawn to you.
” Click. A slide with still shots of famous movie kisses.
“We heard the kissing is pretty good. Can you confirm that for the data, Charlie?”
“Confirmed.”
She nods. “This aligns with Ruby’s report of turning from a solid to liquid state when heat is introduced. That concludes point three.”
Click. Point 3: Biology, physics, and chemistry indicate scientific certainty of Ruby + Charlie forever. “Any questions?”
“A couple,” Charlie says. “Is forever a scientific measurement?”
“Only in the phenomenon of love, where it’s a very precise unit.”
“Sure, that makes sense. Next, did you make up the lion stuff?”
“Yes. But only because every other biological argument I could make sounded like middle school health class. It was hard to avoid using the word ‘mate’ even with fake lion facts.”
Madison flat out guffaws and shoots a look at me before she remembers she’s not supposed to and fixes her eyes on Ava, but Charlie twists around anyway. He sees me, and I think he almost smiles but he turns to the front without commenting.
“Any other questions?” Ava asks.
“I didn’t hear anything about geology,” he says. “Got anything on that?”
“You’re dumber than a box of rocks if you think Ruby doesn’t know her own mind.” Her tone is pleasant, but Sami winces, and I call, “Ava!”
She shrugs. “Scientists deal in facts.”
I’m already walking to the front to deliver the closing. She hands me the clicker and sits down.
Charlie shifts, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped between them, watching me.
“Hey, Charlie Bucket.” My stomach flutters wildly as I stand there in his favorite of my dresses and a fresh coat of Ruby Woo, because that’s what I’m about to do. Woo him.
“Hey, Ruby Slippers.” His voice is mellow. Warm.
“We’ll conclude with some random facts,” I say. He gives a small smile as if to say, Of course.
Click. “That’s how much it would cost to rent a truck big enough to accommodate your apartment for a move to Golden, Colorado.
” Click. “That’s how much it costs to get a masters in geotechnical engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.
” Click. “This is a list of the top five geotechnical engineering programs in the country. UT Austin is on that list.” Click.
“This is how much you would save by getting your master’s at UT instead. Aren’t those interesting random facts?”
“Suspiciously random,” he says.
“Here’s another fact.” Click. A picture of us dressed as Dorothy and the Tin Man for Halloween at the library appears, and a song starts playing. “Long Time Coming.” The band did a rough cut for me. For this.
I click to bring up a zoomed-in section of Charlie’s Tin Man costume as a pop-up box next to the full picture. It shows the heart he has pinned to it, the one the Tin Man got from the wizard.
“You know what shade of red that heart is, Charlie?”
“Ruby red,” he says softly.
Madison gives a small, happy sigh.
“You didn’t choose that just to match my slippers, did you?”
He shakes his head. “No, Ruby. I did not.”
“I know my own heart when I see it, Charlie. Just like I know my own mind. And I love you with all of both. Will you let me?”
He stands but doesn’t move closer. Instead, he glances from the picture to Ava. “You know why I didn’t pick the scarecrow, Ava?”
“Because you are not dumber than a box of rocks and you have a brain?”
He nods. “I am not, and I do.” He shifts his gaze to me.
The heart under discussion pounds in a way only Charlie has ever made it do.
He takes a step toward me. “Maybe I was cosplaying as a cowardly lion this last couple of weeks.”
“Better man up,” Madison says.
“I’m sorry, Ruby.” Charlie’s gaze is steady. “I messed up.”
“I meant like destroy her lipstick,” Madison says, “but apologies are good too.”
He doesn’t break eye contact, but a smile turns up one corner of his mouth.
I walk around the table. “Are you going to let her boss you around like that?”
His answer is to take one more step toward me and haul me against him. “Only because it’s such a good idea,” he says, smiling down at me. “I love you, Ruby Slippers.”
“I love you too, Charlie Bucket.”
The peanut gallery breaks out in cheers.
Still not taking his eyes off me, he says, “You’re making them change our ship name, right?”
“Obviously.”
“You can’t make us change it,” Sami says.
I don’t look their way either. “I have to. I need to cut up those shirts and turn them into sparkly sashes because you all win.”
I think they cheer again. I don’t know.
I’m too busy helping Charlie destroy my lipstick.