The Rom-Commers(102)

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.”





Epilogue

SO MY DAD was right, in the end.

We all really did manage to be okay.

And it only took us ten years.

But what does okay even mean? Life is always full of worries and struggles, losses and disappointments, late-night googling of bizarre symptoms—all tumbling endlessly over one another like clothes in the dryer. It’s not like any of us ever gets to a place where we’ve solved everything forever and we never have another problem.

That’s not how life works.

But that’s not what a happily ever after is, anyway.

Poor happy endings. They’re so aggressively misunderstood. We act like “and they lived happily ever after” is trying to con us into thinking that nothing bad ever happened to anyone ever again.

But that’s never the way I read those words. I read them as “and they built a life together, and looked after each other, and made the absolute best of their lives.”

That’s possible, right?

That’s not ridiculous.

Tragedy is a given. There is no version of human life that doesn’t involve reams of it.

The question is what we do in the face of it all.



* * *



AND WHAT DID we do, our little family?

We did the only thing we could do. We made the best of things.

Sylvie and Salvador both wound up working in medicine—him as a physician’s assistant, and her as a nurse anesthetist. They stayed with my dad in his apartment for two years after their elopement before Mrs. Otsuka got the bright idea that maybe my dad should come live next door with her.

My dad loved that idea—but he said they should get married first.

Which Mrs. Otsuka was happy to do.

And so they had a little ceremony in the community garden, and then Salvador helped my dad move all his instruments next door—and Mrs. Otsuka didn’t even have to put foam cushions on her sharp corners, because by that point, my dad had been spending so much time at her place that she’d already done it.

She took on a lot of caregiving, marrying my dad. But she told me once that it’s worth it. He cures her loneliness. He shines light on her shadows. He makes her laugh all day long and into the night. That’s how she sees it: she takes care of him, but he takes care of her, too. And it’s so plain to see that they have much more fun together than they’d ever have apart.