Chapter Thirty-One
I SHOT DOWNto the ballroom so fast after that, I don’t completely remember how I got there. I mostly remember crying. Crying in the elevator—riding eight floors down with two kids who faced backward and stared at me the whole time. Crying while giving my name at the sign-in table. Crying as I slipped through the closed door at the back of the room.
My thoughts somersaulted unintelligibly around in my head—mainly denial-themed, if I recall. Charlie was sick? But he didn’t look sick. I’d seen plenty of sick people. He looked great! He looked healthy! This was unacceptable! He’d just had his five-year-iversary! Hadn’t he been through enough? This couldn’t be right! He was Charlie!
The ballroom was dark and the crowd was on its feet, cheering as Charlie took the stage. The sight of him captured my attention—and the crying trickled to a stop.
He was here. He was alive. He was just across the room.
Charlie, you astonishing dummy. How could you ever think that pushing me away was a good idea?
I wanted to run right over to him so bad—and wrap my arms around him and refuse to let go—but I held myself still and just focused on him in the spotlight. He walked up to a clear podium and squinted out at the audience.
Charlie, in a tux.
Someone had done his hair so it was all spiking up in the same direction. He was as close to picture perfect as I’d ever seen him. Until I noticed his green-and-white pocket square.
It wasn’t in the square shape he usually wore—but a fanlike triangle.
It wasn’t hemmed, but ripped at the edge.
And it wasn’t even a handkerchief, it was—oh, god.
I held my breath.
It was a piece of that green-and-white fabric from the tropical-print dress I’d almost drowned in. As if maybe, instead of throwing it away, Charlie—without even bothering to find scissors—had ripped a piece of it free with his bare hands, folded it, and declared it to be a handkerchief.
But the effect was oddly charming—almost like he had a pocket full of greenery.
Maybe he’d start a trend.
The crowd settled down and took their seats. I looked around for Logan and saw that he had, in fact, saved a seat for me. But T.J. was sitting on his other side.
Was T.J. wearing a backward baseball cap in the ballroom?
I think you can guess the answer to that. But in the interest of journalistic integrity, I’ll just go ahead and say yes. Yes, he was.
I decided to pass on the saved seat and just stand at the back of the room.
Up onstage, Charlie cleared his throat.
Just when we thought he’d start his speech, he pulled his cell phone out of his pants pocket. Then, flipping on the ringer at the side, he leaned into the microphone and his voice filled the room. “I’m expecting an important call,” he said, and the crowd melted into warm laughter.
I thought about Charlie saying, “You can get away with so much when people have already decided to like you.”
Had I already decided to like him?
I had.
“I’m serious,” he said to the crowd, setting the phone smack in the middle of the podium. “I’ve been waiting on this call all day. And if I miss it now, I’ll have to wait until morning. And I’m just not gonna do that.”
More warm laughter.
“It’s not going to ring, of course,” he said. “It hasn’t rung all day, and I’ll be up here—what?—twenty minutes? Thirty if it’s going well?” The crowd watched, still not sure if he was joking. “But if it does ring,” Charlie said, eyeing the audience like he meant business, “I’m answering.” He checked his watch. “They’re open late on Thursdays, so I’ve still got an hour.”
More laughter.
With that, Charlie settled in, repositioned the phone on the podium one last time, bent the mic closer, put his hands in his pants pockets, and then peered into the stage lights.
We all waited for whatever might be next.
He sure knew how to command a room.
“I had a whole different talk planned,” Charlie began at last. “But I lost interest in that talk. Tonight, the only thing I want to talk about is the very maligned, highly ridiculed, generally dismissed concept of love.”
The crowd felt his vibe and waited.
“Eight weeks ago, I was one of those douchey guys who thought love was made up by Hallmark to sell greeting cards. I thought it was an emotional Ponzi scheme. I thought it was a fiction we’d been tricked into believing by the animators at Disney. And I thought our only hope of escape was to unplug from the Love Matrix and see our true dystopic loveless hellscape for exactly what it was.”
Charlie looked around while the room waited.
“And then,” he went on, “I met a woman who disagreed. Really disagreed. Loudly—and often. Like, she made me watch a TED Talk about it.”
The crowd chuckled agreeably.
“She argued with me,” Charlie went on, “and she made fun of me, and she told me I was wrong so relentlessly… that of course I had no choice but to fall in love with her.”
More chuckles.
“Her name is Emma Wheeler, by the way. And she’s about to be a very successful screenwriter. And before I met her, I thought the only stories worth telling were the realistic ones. You know—like ones about zombies.”
A good rumble of laughter from the crowd.
“I don’t know how I let myself get so cynical,” Charlie went on. “I’ve been wondering about that a lot. All I can figure is this: it hurts to be disappointed. It hurts so much, we’d rather never get our hopes up. And it’s humiliating, too—right? How foolish are you to hope for the best? How pathetic is it to try to win after you’ve already lost? How naive must you be if you don’t know that humanity is dark and vicious and totally irredeemable? But the argument Emma’s been making this whole time—and I’m paraphrasing here—is this: If those are the only stories we tell about ourselves, then those are the only stories we have.”
Nods and murmurs from the crowd.
“And that’s kind of where I’ve landed, after taking her crash course in why love matters. Humanity at its worst is an easy story to tell—but it’s not the only story. Because the more we can imagine our better selves, the more we can become them.” Charlie nodded, like he was really siding with himself now. “It’s cooler to be jaded. It’s more badass to not care. But I just can’t stop thinking that it’s kind of chicken, too. If you try to write stories about love and kindness, you really are risking being ridiculed. Which might be the worst form of social death. But my friend Emma kept insisting that it was really important to be brave and try. And I’m here to say, after arguing with her from every single angle, I’ve decided at last that she’s right.”
Was this a whole speech about how I was right?
I would have thought, Popcorn, please, if I hadn’t started crying again.
But then, before Charlie could go on—his phone started ringing.
He looked down.
“Oh, god,” he said. “There it is. That’s the call.” Then he looked up at the crowd. “I’m so sorry,” he said, holding up a finger. “I wasn’t kidding. I really do have to take this.”
And then, in front of three hundred dinner guests, he picked up the phone, and, without thinking to step away from the podium—or the mic—put it to his ear and said, “Hello?”
Then: “This is Charlie Yates. Yes.”
Then a pause while he listened.
Then: “Oh, god. How is that—”
Then: “You’re saying—three weeks ago—?”
Then: “I understand. Yes. Okay. Thank you.”
And then Charlie turned off his phone, dropped it back into his pocket, put his head down on the podium, and cried.
For a good while.
Charlie Men-Don’t-Cry Yates… cried. At a podium. In a tuxedo. In front of three hundred people. Hands clutching either side of the dais, shoulders shaking, breaths and chokes and cries finding their way straight into the microphone and filling the room with the amplified sounds—making it feel strangely like it was happening to all of us, too.
Like we were all crying, in a way. But only one of us knew why.
I took a few steps closer to where Charlie was, entering an aisle between the tables that gave me a straight path to the podium.
But I stopped when he finally lifted his head, remembered the crowd, rubbed the many tears off his face with his tuxedo sleeve, and then took a deep breath to say, “I have an announcement to make.”
The whole room braced itself. Something real was happening here.
“I, apparently…” Charlie said, taking in another deep breath, “had bronchitis three weeks ago.”
The crowd burst into laughter and applause, like this had to be a punch line. And Charlie was laughing, too—but he also kept frowning and wiping at his eyes like he was still quite shaken.
“To be clear,” Charlie went on, “up until three minutes ago, I thought I had metastatic lung cancer.”
A murmur from the crowd as the laughter receded.
And then, still watching, a bit hypnotized by everything that was happening in front of me, I took a few steps toward him down that center aisle.
“But it was just bronchitis,” Charlie said next, shaking his head. “And now it’s already gone. Hell of a twist.”
The room chuckled. I took a few more steps.
“Turns out,” Charlie went on, “on a screening test, it’s hard to tell the difference between a ‘concerning mass’ in your lungs and plain old everyday congestion. That’s the news I just got. Better imaging gives a much clearer picture. But my second test with better imaging got postponed because, like a genius, I went to Texas, instead. I skipped my follow-up. Which was worth it, by the way.”
He nodded as he thought about it.
“Bronchitis,” he said next, shaking his head. “I’m not dying, after all.”
Charlie took a deep, five-point-five-second breath.
“And now I can’t even remember why I’m up on this stage. Or what I was talking about. Was it about how we should tell ourselves better stories about who we are? About how we shouldn’t rob ourselves of hope and possibility? About how light matters just as much as darkness—maybe more? Or was I maybe just rambling on about Emma Wheeler? Because, honestly, she’s—”
Right then, I stepped into the reflected stage lights—close enough that he could see me.
Our eyes met.
And Charlie lost his train of thought.
Charlie just stood there staring down at me, and I just stood there staring up right back.
“Because, honestly, she’s…” he tried again, quieter, like he wasn’t even listening to himself anymore—his eyes fixed on me like I might disappear.
“Because,” he tried again, “honestly, unless I’m hallucinating right now… she’s here in this room.”
The crowd all craned to look.
“Are you really here?” Charlie asked into the mic then, his voice low and private, like we were the only two people around.
I nodded.
And then Charlie looked up and seemed to remember where he was. He lifted his award statuette off the podium. And then he said, without pauses or punctuation, “Thank you for this incredible award I’m more honored than I can say and I’ll never forget this night.”
Then he walked straight to the front of the stage, and, without ever taking his eyes off me, he jumped right down.
It took him about ten strides to reach me, and when he got there, he let his award hang forgotten in one hand, like the coolest of cool guys.
The whole room was watching, and now flashes were going off.
I glanced down at the award. “Another award for the drawer?”
But Charlie, never taking his eyes off mine, shook his head. “There is no more awards drawer.”
I waited for clarification.
“I took them all out, one by one, and polished them, and apologized to them, and put them on a shelf, like a person determined to be grateful for his blessings. And I even glued the angel’s broken wing back on.”
I kept my face deadpan. “The Women’s Film Critics Association will be very pleased.”
“Did you hear that just now?” Charlie asked, tilting his head to gesture back at the stage without breaking eye contact.
I nodded, and stepped closer.
“All of it?” he asked.
I nodded again, and took another step.
“Specifically the part about how I’m not dying?”
One more nod. “So that cough that you thought was allergies—it was actually bronchitis?”
“That’s right.”
“So you were sick when you had your screening test? But by the time you went back for the real test, you were well?”
“Exactly.”
“So,” I said, “just to confirm: You’re not dying?”
Charlie nodded in awe, like he could barely believe it himself. “Not at the moment.”
I let that sink in.
“What do you think?” Charlie asked next.
“I think you’d rather feed my heart into a wood chipper than tell me you were sick again.”
“Correct. And I’d do it again, too. Because I was not going to be another person ruining your life.”
“You really don’t understand how life-ruining works, do you?”
“You can’t be trusted to do the right thing for yourself.”
“For the record, I would never have left you because you got sick.”
“I know that. That’s why I had to leave you first.”
But I shook my head. “Logan sent me your video. The one I wasn’t supposed to see until you were dead. And I came down here ready to force you to let me be with you—no matter what.”
“That’s a hell of a decision.”
“That was a hell of a video.”
“But I’m not sick. So it doesn’t matter now.”
“It matters that you lied to me,” I said.
“I misled you,” Charlie said, like that was different.
“You said I was a hypochondriac.”
“You are a hypochondriac.”
“But you said it in a mean way.”
Charlie lowered his head. “I’m sorry.”
“You shut things down with me. You said there was no misunderstanding.”
“There was no misunderstanding. Not on my end, anyway.”
“You said you didn’t care about me.”
Charlie took exception to that. “I never said I didn’t care about you.”
“You said, and I quote: ‘Absolutely not. No way in hell.’”
“I was trying to do you a favor.”
“That’s a shitty favor.”
“It was a shitty situation.”
“But it’s better now.”
“Yes,” Charlie said, frowning like he still couldn’t believe it. “It’s better now.”
“More proof for my theory,” I said.
“What theory?”
“Sometimes things get better.”
Charlie nodded like that was a bit of a revelation. “I guess sometimes they do.”
Then he leaned down to set his award respectfully on the floor and stood back up to meet my eyes.
“Did you hear the other thing I said up there, too?”
“What other thing?”
“The part about how I’m in love with you.”
“That does sound familiar.”
“Is that okay?”
I nodded. “It’s okay.” Then I added, “Better than okay, in fact. Because now we’re even.”
At that, Charlie put both of his hands in his pockets.
I looked down at one, then the other, then back up. “Are you Ji Chang Wook–ing me right now?”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“The guy in the turtleneck. Who perfected the pockets kiss.”
Charlie smiled in that way that made his nostrils dimple. “Then I guess I must be.”
“Did I ever tell you,” I said then before I could stop myself, “that I really love your nostrils?”
Oh, god. It had to happen, I guess. A Chekhov’s gun moment: You can’t forbid yourself from mentioning someone’s nostrils in Act One without finally doing it by Act Three.
Or wait. Maybe this was Act One—and we were only just getting started?
As if to answer, Charlie stepped closer, hands still in his pockets like a champion, and completely closed the gap between us—pressing his thighs to my thighs, and his chest to my chest. Then he tilted his head until his mouth was just breaths away from mine.
“How’s my angle?” he asked, like he really wanted to know.
“You’re a remarkable student,” I said.
“Are you kidding me?” Charlie said. “I’m the best.”
And then he pressed his mouth to mine, and as he did, he slid his hands out of his pockets so they could skim around my waist to hold me right there.
Not that I was trying to escape.
I think the whole ballroom broke into applause—but I can’t say for sure. And I feel like a live camera fed the moment to the jumbotron up front—but I’m not positive about that, either. All I remember for certain was the feeling of my heart unfolding to its full wingspan in my chest, like a bird that had decided to stretch out wide at last and absolutely soar.
Was this a happy ending?
Of course. And also only a beginning. In the way that beginnings and endings are always kind of the same thing.
I had no idea where we’d go from here, or how we’d manage it all, or where the future would take us. But it was okay. We don’t get to know the whole story all at once. And where we’re headed matters so much less than how we get there.
Charlie was here right now. And I was here, too.
And that was enough for now.
“I’m so in love with you,” Charlie said then, his breath against my ear. “It’s terrible.”
And so I said, “We’re gonna need a better word for terrible.”