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It occurs to Charlie that it might be easier to stumble off of that stage if the audience were booing him. That would make this a funny story. He could come up from the basement, maybe, howling about it. He might get a snide comment or two from Dennis, and probably a good laugh out of Mac, and that would make the whole thing worthwhile. Instead, it’s completely silent, a sea of unblinking eyes looking up at him, waiting. Someone shifts in their chair. In a room that quiet, it rings out like a gunshot.
He makes his way back to where Dee is sitting, head ducked slightly to avoid actually meeting anyone’s gaze. He doesn’t give a shit what any of these people actually think of him. There’s only one person in that room that he has any real interest in impressing, and she’s already halfway out of her seat, angled toward the door.
Before the next person can wrest the microphone from the host’s hand, the two of them are back out on the street. It’s still warm out. There’s still life left in the evening, still space for the moon to rise higher into the darkness, for tiny pinprick stars to emerge by the handful. Charlie looks over at Dee.
“Why do you keep doing this again?“
“It’s supposed to be good practice.”
“For what?”
“Like, acting, I think, but I haven’t been able to actually do it.” Dee sighs. “It’s just been practice for getting booed off the stage.”
Charlie thinks about saying something, thinks about what he could possibly say. He holds out his hand instead. Palm upward, fingers splayed wide — an offering left ambiguous on purpose.
When she takes it, she interlaces her own fingers with his.
He squeezes once. If he had tried to say what he meant by it, it would have gotten lost in translation. Blurred and distorted. The warmth of his hand, though, comes through perfectly clear.
“Let’s go back to mine. Just, y’know, to debrief,” Dee says, and she hopes it lands.
“Sounds good,” he replies, only just loud enough for her to hear it.
Neither of them say anything the rest of the way back to Dee’s apartment, but she doesn’t pull her hand out of Charlie’s until she has to fish her keys out of her purse.
The lights are off in her apartment, and it’s warm, and it’s quiet. Not quiet like before, though. Charlie unzips his jacket, stretching his arms over his head as he pulls it off, and drops it on the back of a chair. Dee gets a couple of beers out of the fridge and offers one to Charlie. It's a mirror of his gesture from earlier — she's trying to say almost the exact same thing. In the few seconds it takes her to turn around and look for the bottle opener, Charlie’s got his mouth around his bottle, trying to wrench it open with his teeth.
“Damn it, Charlie,” she says. It comes out more fond than exasperated. “I got it.”
She pops the cap off of the bottle and hands it to him, then opens her own. Charlie wanders over to the couch and flops down on one side. He sprawls out — legs up on the coffee table, arm thrown across the back of the couch — and when Dee finally rounds the corner and comes out of the kitchen, he smiles contentedly at her.
“Tell me your jokes,” he says.
“What? No way.” She stops halfway into the living room, scowling. “Don’t be a dick, Charlie.”
“I’m serious. I wanna hear.”
It takes her a second to consider. She weighs the microscopic chance of Charlie thinking less of her against the opportunity to perform without such a big audience. Maybe she won’t get the urge to dry heave if it’s just one person. Maybe it would help, too, if she had seen that person choke down a whole can of cat food and huff glue out of a paper bag the night before.
“Fine. But you can’t, like, say anything after. Don’t clap or whatever.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “And don’t look at me too hard.”
“I won’t,” he says, and he scrunches his eyes shut.
Dee laughs at the face he’s making, but the gesture makes her blush a little. She runs through a handful of jokes — about the dating pool in Philly, and about customers at the bar, and one toward the end about getting nervous enough to start gagging on stage — and when she finishes, Charlie doesn’t say anything. He swore he wouldn’t. His eyes are still closed. He leans back on the couch, though, and motions for her to sit back down next to him. When she does, he wraps an arm around her, lightly squeezing the high point of her shoulder.
“You can open your eyes now.”
“Can I say something?” He opens one eye, waiting for some form of resistance that doesn’t come.
“I mean, if you want.”
“They’re missing out.”
“Y’know, that’s the first time I’ve been able to get all the way through it.”
“Oh, shit, really?” His eyes light up, all wide and wild, hopelessly sincere.
“Yeah.”
“It’s real good. I liked it.”
“Thanks, Charlie.”
Dee tips her head back against Charlie’s shoulder. Something catches in his throat at how warm it makes him feel. The two of them sit in silence for a while, finishing the last of their drinks. Charlie falls asleep eventually. it's a lot easier without the cats howling out in the alley. Dee thinks about slipping off the couch — she thinks she could do it without waking him up, if she’s careful. Instead, she moves slightly closer into the space at Charlie’s side, pulling her legs up to her chest. She knows she’ll wake up the next morning with a knot between her shoulders, but that feels so far away from where she’s sitting, and if she wakes up next to Charlie, maybe it won’t be that bad.