The Rom-Commers(100)

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.”