The Rom-Commers(50)

“Hey!” Charlie said. “I’m doing something here!”

“Don’t do anything,” I said. “I’m shutting this down.”

“But I bought three bags of powdered sugar,” Charlie said, like that was some kind of counterpoint.

I was already walking away.

“Where are you going?” Charlie asked.

Um—I was in a swimsuit. Walking toward a swimming pool. But okay. “I’m going swimming,” I said. “Alone.” Then I gave the kitchen a quick glance, and said, “Just leave all this. I’ll clean it up when I’m done.”



* * *



CHARLIE DID NOT “just leave all this.”

When I came back in from my swim, bundled in my terry cloth robe, my hair towel-dried and pulled back in a damp bun, and far less refreshed than I wanted to be—the kitchen was worse: sprinkles all over the counter, cocoa powder everywhere like the container had exploded, open biscuit cans and hunks of dough on every surface, and the remains of smoke in the air, as if Charlie might have set a thing or two on fire.

But on the little kitchen table, sure enough, there was a tidy plate of semi-successful doughnuts. With candles in them.

Mission accomplished.

When Charlie saw me walk in, he grabbed a box of matches and bounded over to light the candles—but I stopped him.

“Please tell me you didn’t fish those biscuits out of the trash can.”

“Nah,” Charlie said, stepping over to the fridge and opening the door. “I panic-bought, like, thirty tubes.”

Sure enough, lining the fridge shelves were enough cylinders of canned biscuits to keep us fed on doughnuts for possibly ever.

“Didn’t I tell you not to do this?” I asked.

Charlie paused and studied my face. “You don’t seem very happy. What’s the story? Do you secretly hate doughnuts but you can’t bring yourself to tell your dad and now it’s become a whole thing?”

“I love doughnuts,” I said, shaking my head.

“Is it birthdays you hate, then?”

“I love birthdays, too.”

“So what’s going on?”

“I just…” What to even say? “I just think we should get to work.”

Oh, god—were my eyes tearing up? Over Charlie Yates calling me “nobody”? That couldn’t be right. I had to be homesick. Or tired. Or maybe feeling the emotions that we all feel when we turn another year older and confront the relentless march of time and the inevitability of death. Right? This had to be just normal birthday weeping. Didn’t everybody cry involuntarily on their birthday?

I needed to go pull myself together.

I turned to walk away—but Charlie grabbed my wrist and stopped me.

“Hey—” he said.

I looked up to try to drain the tears back.

“Is this about—” he started, but then he changed his mind. “This couldn’t possibly be about … meeting Margaux yesterday. Could it?”

“I think I’m just homesick,” I said, trying to gaslight us both.

But Charlie kept going, just in case. “Because that wasn’t a date or anything. That was a meeting. It was a check-in. She forces me to do them every few months because she regrets how she left me—not that she left, but the timing. And she doesn’t trust me to take care of myself and not get sick again—which is fair, actually. She shows up and drags me out and we sit at a table and she grills me to assess how well—if at all—I’m taking care of myself. She pulls out spreadsheets of health statistics and confirms that I’ve made all my checkup appointments. And none of it’s about me. It’s about her. Her guilt—and trying to find a way to feel better about her choices. I hate going. I dread going. My ex-wife and the fact that I got sick are the two last things I want to think about.

“But guess what?” Charlie went on. “Yesterday, for the first time, I didn’t dread it.” He shook his head in wonder, like he was telling me something impossible. Then he said, “I completely forgot it was even happening. I was just hanging out with you, strolling around the grocery store and teasing you about never having eaten Frito pie—and then we were putting away canned goods in the pantry in that ordinary comfortable way, and I was just … I don’t know. Happy? I think I was happy. Then she showed up like the buzzkill of all buzzkills. That’s why I yanked you into the pantry. That’s why I hid. And when she came back in and found us, and I pretended like you were just some random coworker—it was only because I didn’t want how I feel about you and how I feel about her to get mixed up with each other. Does that make sense?”

I wasn’t sure. Did it?

Charlie nodded, like not getting it was valid. “I don’t know how to explain it. But one thing’s for sure. I’m not making you birthday doughnuts because your dad guilt-tripped me. I’m making you doughnuts because I’m grateful that you’re here—for whatever you being here is doing to my life. And I genuinely want you to have a happy birthday.”

Ugh. One of those unwelcome tears of mine spilled over.

And Charlie, like a reflex, reached up and wiped it away. Like you might do for someone you cared about.

“Also,” Charlie said, “I burned a hundred canned biscuits before I got the hang of this, so these little guys really are miracles.”