Page 13 of How to Write a Rom-Com

I give him the same smile I gave Jillian. Maybe fake smiling should have been part of my small-town training. “Nope, just me.”

“You must be Al’s and Mella’s guest,” he says, his bushy gray mustache bouncing up and down as he speaks. I confirm that I am and have the same conversation for the third time today. “Well, welcome!” he exclaims.

“Thank you, it is certainly awelcomingplace,” I reply, trying to mask the sarcastic tone in my voice.

“I’m Maximus Lucia, pleasure to meet you,” he says, sticking out a large, calloused hand. I shake it with a smile. He’s an older man, short and plump, with a bald head everywhere but above his ears and around the back. His most defining features are his aforementioned mustache and James Earl Jones-like voice.

“Maximus? Wow, that’s quite a name,” I blurt, quickly regretting it. I close my eyes and scold myself. “Er, I mean, I’ve never met someone with such aprestigiousname before.”

“Prestigious? Well, that’s a first!” he says with a big belly laugh. He goes back to scanning my items.

“I’m Lucy,” I offer. Maximus hands me my bags with a grin.

“I hope to see you around, Miss Lucy.”

Even though I was slightly anxious about being the new girl, I feel more confident having met Maximus, Jillian, and Robbie. Anne said I needed two characters with lead potential and maybe five prominent side characters—I think I may have just met a few of them.

I mentally scold myself for not bringing my notebook with me on this expedition into town, so I could jot all of this down. I bought a new notebook just for this trip and I am low-key fangirling over it. Aunt Josie always used to tell me that one way to spot a writer was their love of a new notebook. Whereas my mother drilled me in schoolwork, Josie loved to encourage my writing. And I loved her for that.

As I drive back up to the house, I reflect on my day so far and mentally draft my email to Anne. Day One Summary: met two townies, embarrassed myself in front of an actual small-town romance hero, and pumped gas at the creepy gas station without being murdered.

I’d call that a success.

Chapter Five

Operation Small Town, Day 2

“Small towns aren’t the enemy, babe,” Aunt Josie says, her face barely visible on the screen of my phone.

“Nobody said they are. I just said I prefer the city,” I reply, leaning my phone against the napkin holder on the kitchen table.

“The coffee doesn’t define a place. The people do,” she states, her large brown eyes coming into view on the screen.

“If you ever tried a pumpkin spice latte, like I’vetoldyou to, you wouldn’t be saying that,” I rebut, pulling my bagel out of the toaster. I scowl at this piece of cardboard that is being marketed as a bagel. I feel bad for people who don’t know what New York bagels taste like. Life without real bagels is no life at all.

Aunt Josie is in Europe somewhere, on assignment for her job as a reporter for a glamorous fashion magazine. Josie couldn’t be more of an oxymoron. She lectures me on not taking small towns for granted but spends most of her life gallivanting from Paris to Milan to Barcelona.

When she finally sits down and actually focuses on the screen, I can tell she is in the living room of her rental in London. She’s been stationed there for a few months, but she’ll be on her way to Paris soon for Men’s Fashion Week. She pushes her short hair back with her glasses and puts on another pair so she can see me on the screen. I discreetly laugh at the image of her with two pairs of glasses on her head. If there was a picture next to the word “scatterbrained” in the dictionary, Aunt Josie and her multiple pairs of spectacles would be it.

“And as I’ve told you before, there is more to life than Starbucks. Don’t be one of thosebasic bitches, Lucy. Be an original,” she says. I always felt that Aunt Josie would have thrived in the 1930s or 1940s, with a cigarette between her fingers, her hair done even if she’s just sitting around the house for a day—not that she does that very often. Her voice is the combination of Phoebe Buffay and a decades-long chain smoker.

“Please don’t use the phrasebasic bitches,” I groan, plugging my laptop into an outlet behind the kitchen table. I sit down on what may be the most uncomfortable wooden dining chair in existence and immediately question my “work from home” seating choice. I miss my office chair already.

“Darling, I have to be off,” she says, and I can tell her attention is already elsewhere. It’s hard to keep Aunt Josie’s mind in one place for very long. I wish I could bottle her up and keep her contained, like my own personal genie, that way I’d always have her with me.

“Yes, you’re always telling me,” I grumble, rolling my eyes. She exchanges the glasses on her head for the ones on her face and grimaces at me.

“Listen buttercup, don’t make your mind up yet. You might find you surprise even yourself.” I glare at the phone and Josie grimaces at me. She hangs up before I even have a chance to say goodbye. Classic.

I check the time. I bring up Anne’s name in my phone and press call. It rings twice before she picks up.

“Hello,” she chimes in a harmonic voice.

“Hello, this is Lucy calling from bumblefuck nowhere,” I start.

“Ha! It’s not bumblefuck nowhere,” she scoffs. “How’s it going?”

“Well, I’ve been trying to connect to the internet for five minutes so I’m not optimistic,” I quip.

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