Page 114 of Betting on the Best Friend
He points at me. “I will give you Hitchcock. But I’m thinking one bed trope in the hands of one Mr. John Hughes.”
“John Hughes . . . one bed.”Ferris Bueller?Sixteen Candles?My eyes snap to his. “Planes, Trains, & Automobiles.”
“Yeah. Nice and friendly. I’ll be John Candy and you be Steve Martin.”
I must have seen the movie at least five times growing up once my parents decided that I was finally old enough for my dad to put it on for the family at Thanksgiving. “Charlie, do you remember what happens when they wake up in the morning?”
“Yeah, they . . . oh. Right.”
It’s one of the funniest jokes in the film, but there are definitely wandering hands. Great punchline when it’s comedy geniuses, whole different situation when it’s me and Charlie.
He pulls out his phone, makes a call, and puts it on speaker.
“Is there a problem?” Joey asks instead of saying hello, and my eyes fly to Charlie’s.
“No, not yet,” Charlie says. “Out of curiosity, if Ruby had to choose between staying at a hotel by herself an hour away from a conference in Houston and driving in for the next three days or staying in a hotel room with me, what do you think she should do?”
“Stay with you,” Joey says.
“There’s only one bed,” I yell.
“Stay with Charlie,” Joey says.
“Even if I’m madly in love with him?” I yell again.
Charlie’s eyes widen, but Joey only says, “Did I stutter?”
“No, you did not,” Charlie answers. “That was it. Bye.” He sets the phone down and looks at me.
“Fine. I’ll stay here.” It should at least be clear that I didn’t plan this.
“Hold up. I have a condition now.”
“Seriously?”
He crosses his arms over his chest. “No saying stuff like that.”
“Like what? That I love—”
“That. We will be regular Ruby and Charlie and all that stuff stays out.”
I suppress a snort. If Charlie thinks leaving that “stuff’ out is a thing I have any control over, we might be experiencing very different kinds of love. “It definitely feels like regular Ruby and Charlie right now.”
He smiles. “It does, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. So what do we do now? I think there’s official conference stuff tonight.” I open my event app to check. “A hosted welcome dinner, three courses, plus a moderated conversation with some pretty cool authors for the low, low price of an extra hundred dollars each.”
“Or we Door Dash a bunch of snacks from the 7-Eleven and streamPlanes, Trains, and Automobiles.”
I set down my phone. “You’re a genius.”
“Been telling you that for a minute now.”
Three hours later, we are both resting against the headboard, full of junk food and watching the end credits roll on the movie.
In so many ways, it’s like old times. Us on my sofa or Charlie’s, watching a movie and eating snacks.
But there is a huge difference tonight: my senses are heightened, absorbing Charlie in a way I realize I must have been doing subconsciously for months. Has it been even longer?Is that why I couldn’t help seeing Niles’s proposal for everything it lacked?
