The Rom-Commers(51)

I gave Charlie the wobbly smile that happens when you try to shift emotional gears.

Something was making me feel shaky. Maybe that I wasn’t just a writer to him. Or that he was glad to have me in his life. Or that I was doing things to him—just like he was doing things to me.

“You have to eat one,” Charlie said then, putting his arm around my shoulders and turning us both toward the waiting doughnuts. “So many canned biscuits gave their lives for this moment.”

And now I really smiled. Despite myself.

I sat down at the table. And I let Charlie sing me an off-key, caterwauling version of “Happy Birthday.” And I blew out the candles. But it wasn’t until I took a polite bite of one of the doughnuts that I really felt better …

Because that doughnut … was good.

“Charlie, this is perfect,” I said, mouth full, shaking my head in disbelief.

I wasn’t lying. The outside was crispy, and the inside was fluffy. It was the perfect mix of doughy and oily, soft and crunchy, sugary sweet and bready.

It was like taking a literal bite of comfort.

“Is it?” Charlie asked.

“How did you do this?” I asked.

Charlie looked just as surprised as I was. “Your dad said it was easy,” he said, “and after five hundred tries, it was.”

“You nailed it,” I said, taking another bite.

Charlie sat up straight and watched me chew, like he was very proud of himself. “This is the first thing I’ve ever cooked from scratch.”

I tilted my head. “That’s not what ‘from scratch’ means, but I’ll let it go.”

“Now you have to cook these for me on my birthday,” Charlie said.

“When’s your birthday?” I asked.

“October,” Charlie said.

I shrugged. “I’ll be long gone by then.”

Charlie nodded, like that was a good point. He looked me over for a moment, and then, like he was making a suggestion, he said, “I’ll be cured of cancer before you go.”

I tried to understand that. “You’ll be cured of cancer? Before I go?”

“A few days before you leave is the five-year anniversary of my last treatment,” Charlie said. “And that’s when I can officially call myself cured.”

“Oh,” I said, nodding. I hadn’t realized he wasn’t already cured. Five years is a long time.

“Better than a birthday, really,” Charlie went on. “Every time I go for a checkup, I keep expecting bad news—that it metastasized, that it’s back somehow. But I keep on being fine. It seemed impossible that I was sick then, and now it seems impossible that I’m well. That’s what Margaux was here for—to make sure I didn’t miss that final checkup.”

“You won’t, right?”

He shook his head. “I won’t. I’m ready. I’ve been thinking about how to mark it. Some people take vacations. Or plant a tree. One guy I know got a tattoo. I was wondering if I should do something really wild. Go cliff diving. Or bull running. Or shark-cage snorkeling.”

“That’s a lot of choices.”

He met my eyes. “But now I wonder if maybe I just want to hang out here. And eat homemade doughnuts.”

Were we still talking about doughnuts? Something about the way he was looking at me made it feel like he meant something else.

“Oh, god!” Charlie said then. “I forgot the whipped cream!”

He grabbed a can of Reddi-wip out of the fridge and shook it as he walked back to the table. “Your dad said this was essential.”

He popped the top off and brought the nose of the can over the plate of doughnuts.

“That’s not what that’s for,” I said.

Charlie paused and looked up.

I stood and took the can from him. Then I squirted a dollop of whipped cream on the back of my hand and set the can down. “It’s for doing this,” I said, and I brought the hand with the whipped cream up just as I smacked down on my wrist with the other hand. The dollop of cream launched up in the air, and I opened my mouth, positioned myself under it, and caught it as it came back down.

For a second, I swear, Charlie had a look on his face like I was the most amazing woman who ever lived.

And I kind of agreed.

Then he grabbed the can off the table and copied what I’d just done—launching the whipped cream just fine, but overshooting it so it blopped on his ceiling instead of coming back down.

“Softer,” I said.

He tried again and this time got a nice arc, but the cream missed his mouth and hit his cheek instead. He wiped it off and licked his finger.

“Keep your eyes on the puff at all times,” I said, sounding like a coach. “Be the dollop!”

Charlie tried again and missed again—hitting the floor, the counter, the tabletop, and somehow the window before getting close to his face again.

I did a few more demonstrations: “It’s all in the timing,” I said. “As soon as it launches, you need to be moving into position. Head back! No fear! You’re a champion!”

When Charlie finally got one, he was so excited, he hugged me. And then he offered to squirt some straight out of the can into my mouth.

An offer I graciously accepted.

We were sticky, the floor was sticky—even the ceiling was sticky. But we’d clean it all up later. Life felt suddenly impossibly bright—the kind of bright that feels like it’s going to stay that way forever.