Page 2 of Oh, Christmas Con

A handful of audience members howled their support, and the actor with the perpetually cold neck, presumably Christoffer Robert R. Walker, placed a hand over his heart and smiled at the woman. His smile, which looked sincerely appreciative, showed off his perfectly straight teeth and full lips. Maye pulled her phone as close to her eyes as she could. He held the pose like he was waiting for someone to yell ‘cut.’ His scruffy, dimpled chin and wrinkled forehead were a perfect balance of masculine and playful.

“Oh, he’s good,” Maye said.

Sheila chuckled into the microphone and continued, seeming more comfortable. “So I’m here today because I have always wanted a Christmas wedding, like so many of you have had in your movies, but my boyfriend is dragging his feet. I was hoping to get some advice from the experts. You see, my boyfriend has been saying for years that he’d like to marry me, but whenever I bring it up, he has an excuse about how the timing is not quite right.”

The audience groaned a collective “boo.”

“I know, right?” Sheila said. “Anyway, I’d like to know what I should do. Should I stick with him or is this a lost cause?”

“Too bad Lacey’s not part of this panel,” Ashley joked. “Her characters have had a lot of experience with this.”

The audience roared.

Maye was not familiar enough with Lacey’s catalog, so she would just have to take Ashley’s word for it.

“You know, I’ve had a bit of experience with this scenario,” Chris-With-The-Perfect-Face said. The audience cheered as he pushed back the textured layers of his hair into a perfectly quaffed wave on top of his head. He looked like an off-brand Glen Powell, or even a bargain Ryan Gosling. “Early in my career, my characters were often in a stage of arrested development—”

“Yeah!” a deep voice boomed from the audience.

“Not that Arrested Development,” Chris pointed at them. “I mean, my characters were boyfriends who didn’t want to grow up. I may have strung along an unsuspecting sweetheart or two.”

“Yeah, you did…” Sheila chimed in.

“Hey!” Chris played along as if he were offended. “Well, I guess my characters deserved that.”

A voice from the other side of the stage jumped in. “Didn’t you once leave a fiancé at the altar to rescue a gorilla from a tree in South America?” Marcus said.

“Actually,” Chris sat up in a very professor-like manner with his chest puffed out. “It was to save bees from conservation land that was going to be leveled and rezoned for mixed-use properties. Do you even know how important bees are to our ecosystem?”

“This is true,” Alec added.

“To answer your question, Sheila, this reminds me of a film I was in not too long ago where my character was in a very similar situation and faced an ultimatum. And you know what? It was the best thing that could have happened for him. So I think you should do that. Better yet, call your boyfriend right now and do it!”

The audience gasped and then cheered. A quiet chant of “call him…call him…call him…” picked up momentum, and then the audience erupted when Sheila took out her phone.

“No, no, no!” Maye shouted. “That’s terrible advice!” She buried her head in her hands.

Sheila held her phone up to the microphone as it rang.

“Hey babe, what’s up?” A burly voice said. It was slow and relaxed, in a surfer-kind-of-way.

“Hey, so um, I’m at the Christmas convention and I’m at a Q&A with some actors and I have you on speaker so everybody can hear you.”

“Oh, cool. Hey everybody.” He sounded friendly.

“Hey Sheila’s boyfriend,” the audience said.

“So,” Sheila continued. “You know how we say that someday we’ll get engaged?”

“Yeah…?” a bit of skepticism appeared in his voice.

“But someday keeps getting farther and farther away?”

“Well, yeah, I guess…I mean, my sciatica keeps flaring up so…”

“What I’m getting at is…” Sheila took a sharp breath. “You either need to propose to me or we’re breaking up.”

A few audience members whistled.