Page 82 of The Rom-Commers

“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 itbirthdaysyou 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—notthatshe 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’swhy I yanked you into the pantry.That’swhy I hid. And when she came back in and found us, and I pretended like you were just some randomcoworker—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.”

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… wasgood.

“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.

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