Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
It’s cute, very Madison. And that’s the problem.
I still can’t believe she made Charlie do this.
It’s so wrong. So wrong, and she is going to hear about it at length when I get home.
And then she’s going to call Charlie and figure out how to make this up to him, like maybe skim a cool million off the top of her trust fund and give it to him for his pain and suffering.
Charlie looks at me, his face worried. Keeping the mic down, he mouths, You good?
I am straight up thinking murderous thoughts about Madison, and the audience looks anywhere from confused to worried with a few expressions of anticipatory glee—the kind my brothers get on their faces every time someone is about to lose it at a Ramos party.
I take a deep breath, straighten, cross my legs and pose my hands on my knee, princess-style. Then I give a head shake to set my hair moving and beam out at the audience with an exaggerated Crest smile.
It works. They laugh, and Charlie smiles.
“Hey, y’all,” he says into the mic. He’s not doing it hype man style, but he’s nice and clear, and the audience immediately adjusts to his energy, leaning back, reaching for drinks, eyes on us.
“Change of plans,” he continues. “Madison had an emergency, so she tagged me in as the only other person who could truly do justice to our friend, Ruby.”
There’s applause and one feminine shout of, “Yes with that orange sweater, girl!”
I pretend to brush off a sleeve, my face both prissy and coy, earning more laughs. I don’t want to be here, but I don’t want to make anyone else wish they weren’t either. Four more minutes and Charlie and I can both blow this joint.
“Ruby is . . .” Charlie trails off, looking at the slide.
Madison titled it, “Ruby R is Pure Gold,” and posted four pictures around it.
One of me doing a story time, one of me chopping vegetables in my parents’ kitchen, one of me in the pastel floral bridesmaid’s dress from my brother Leo’s wedding, and one of me petting a pygmy goat.
Charlie’s forehead furrows, and he advances the slide.
She’s done them in ruby red lettering on a pastel blue background, and this one has the word “Smart” centered in a cursive font.
On the left, there’s a picture of me in cap and gown and holding my diploma from UT.
On the right, a photo I didn’t know she snapped when I was doing my Benoit Blanc-style reveal of my Joey-and-Ava sche—uh, strategizing last year.
“Hold on a minute, friends,” he says. “We’ve got a technical problem.”
He flips through the remaining three slides, which are organized around the words kind, generous, and dependable.
He looks back at the audience. “Technically, these slides are correct, but they’re incomplete. Gentlemen, here’s what you really need to know in three minutes or less.”
He goes back to the first slide. “Ruby is a librarian.” He pauses for the cheers.
You can count on a decent part of any mixed crowd to have big, good feelings about libraries.
“When she does story time, she does all the voices, never worries about looking silly, and only cares about the kids having a good experience. She does cook well, but she only wants to be in the kitchen if that’s where her people are, so she can hear about what everyone is up to.
She will enjoy their stories and threaten their enemies.
Probably with the vegetable knife if she gets too heated on your behalf. ”
He points toward the bridesmaid dress photo. “She doesn’t wear pastels unless forced to, like she was for this wedding where she was a bridesmaid but also backed down the bride’s overbearing mother without causing a generational family feud. As for that goat . . .”
He looks at me askance. “I think Madison was trying to paint you as wifey material. All this domestic stuff, plus nice with animals, but I’m telling them the truth about that goat.”
I nod. “Do what you have to do.”
“That goat was a lady-goat humping menace, and Ruby kept him in a corner of that pen the whole time we were in there and told him to behave himself so the girl goats would get a break.”
There are more cheers from the audience.
He flips to the next slide, the one that says Smart.
“Smart is underselling it. That’s from her undergrad, but she also got her master’s in library science while working full time, so add hardworking.
Also, if she says she knows a thing, she knows it.
Don’t bother arguing with her. It’s not that she has to win.
It’s that she’s not going to state anything she doesn’t know for a fact.
And she will call you on stuff if you try to bluff.
If you’re fragile, move on. She reads a lot.
She knows a lot. She’s not a showoff, but she’ll share when she knows something relevant. ”
Lots of the women cheer. A couple of the guys squirm, but most of them are smiling or grinning.
Charlie continues through the slides, turning the genteel Southern woman Madison had apparently meant to showcase on those slides into something else.
Into me. By the time he’s wrapping up, he’s presented me as a funny, low-key control freak who loves adventure and spontaneity but not chaos, a bookish genius who likes to have a good time, a mischief maker, and a ride-or-die bestie.
But then he gets to the last slide, “dependable,” where one of the pictures Madison included shows me giving Joey a noogie.
He studies it for a second before he says, “Now for the bad news in which I reveal one of Ruby’s deepest secrets.”
“Uh, what? Excuse me,” I call to the moderator, “is there a clause that says they’re not allowed to do that?”
“Nope,” she calls back, and the audience laughs.
“Then lucky for me and all of them, we get to find out about my own deepest secret together, because I wasn’t aware I had one.”
More laughs.
Charlie points to the noogie picture. “That is Ruby with her brother, Joey. He’s the one closest in age to her, but also the youngest of her four older brothers.
Four.” He holds up the appropriate number of fingers.
“Brothers. Older brothers.” He wiggles them.
“So do Ruby wrong and . . .” He turns the finger wiggling into a wave goodbye to more laughter.
“When Ruby tries to tell you that Joey is her least-favorite brother”—he gives me the side eye before saying loudly and straight into the mic—“she’s lying. Big time. He’s her favorite. She even fixed him up with her best friend.”
“Only because I hoped it would make him less annoying,” I say.
Charlie doesn’t even look at me. “Lies. And there you have it, gentlemen. Ruby R., liar, goddess, imp.”
Applause breaks out, and my cheeks are hot. I never want to be pitched again to a room of people as someone to date for as long as I live. But listening to someone who knows you, faults and all, talk about how great you are? That part is pretty good.
I don’t think even Ava sees me more clearly, to be honest, and I smile at Charlie, putting all my thanks into it, as he nods once and touches his hand to his heart.
“Why aren’t you dating him?” One of the ladies calls.
“Why aren’t you dating her?” A guy shouts out next.
They haven’t asked these questions after any of the other pitches, and if my cheeks were hot before, they’re flaming now. Poor Charlie. Of all people, why did he have to be put on the spot like this?”
Charlie shrugs and smiles. “I asked. She said no.”
The noise goes from lively to raucous.
“What? No, why—”
“You’re joking!”
“Why would she—”
Objections, questions, and a demand for a recount all fly. Not sure what we’d recount, but okay.
I look at the chaos then frown at Charlie, the man who told the crowd I don’t like chaos.
He smiles, and there is no apology in it. Instead, he holds up his hands as if to say, What do you want me to do about it?
Another question jumps from the audience, picked up and repeated by several women.
“Can we date him?”
“Want my info, Charlie?”
“I want your number, Charlie!”
One girl around my age stands and cups her hands around her mouth. “Hey, emcee lady. Can we get a pitch on Charlie?”
“Yeah, a pitch on Charlie!” another voice calls.
Within seconds, there’s a chant of “Pitch Charlie, pitch Charlie, pitch Charlie!”
The moderator hops up on the low stage and takes the mic from Charlie. “Everyone being pitched has to agree to it, so I’ll allow it, but it’s up to Charlie. Charlie, do you consent to being pitched?”
Charlie slips his hands in his pockets and looks at me. “That’s nice of y’all, but Ruby won’t have time to make a slide show.”
“I’ll give her the last spot so she’ll have until then to put it together,” the moderator says. “She can totally do it. Ruby?”
“Pitch Charlie, pitch Charlie, pitch Charlie!” the foaming masses scream. Or maybe, like, six well-behaved women.
I don’t want to pitch Charlie. I don’t want him going out with any of them. I want everyone else to go away and leave us alone. My roommates. This crowd. All of it. Let us get back to normal.
I find a smile. “Of course I’ll pitch him.”
“Then let’s buy you some time and get our next pitch up here!”
I don’t know if the applause as we leave the stage is for me agreeing to this or for the next pair coming up, but I smile at everyone we pass on our way back to our table where the women who joined us earlier eye us with curiosity.
“This is exciting,” one of them says to Charlie. “I’d date you.”
Charlie smiles and crooks his head at the stage as if he doesn’t want to interrupt the new person presenting.
This seems like a nice crowd, but as I scan it, I can’t imagine any of them with Charlie.
I don’t want to imagine any of them with Charlie.
Charlie is mine.
It makes me the most selfish friend ever, I know.
I owe him at least the generosity he showed me by doing Madison’s stupid pitch for her.
All these things are true at once.