Page 107 of The Rom-Commers

“You got that Warner Bros. internship and you didn’t even go.”

“I didn’t not go because I didn’t know how to hustle,” I said. “Icouldn’tgo. Because we found out right after I won that my dad neededanother surgery that nobody had seen coming, and there was no one else to look after him.”

Charlie looked down then, and I could see him regretting assumptions he’d made about me. I wished I could send a little snippet of this moment to the me from weeks ago, freshly arrived in LA, trapped in Charlie Yates’s car as he berated me for not wanting success badly enough.

“Ah,” Charlie said, humbled in a satisfying way. “I didn’t know that.”

“Of course not. How would you? You were too busy stuffing awards into that awards drawer of yours.”

Charlie gave me a look.

“The point is, you’ve had it too easy. I heard you once took a phone call onstage—at an awards ceremony—while receiving an award!”

“That was a really important call.”

I glared at him.

“It was also an accident,” Charlie said. “I left the ringer on.”

“But youanswered!”

He gave a half shrug, likeFair point. “That might have been a questionable decision.”

“I’ll say. And that didn’t even surprise me. Because I saw that interview you did with Terry Gross at the Kennedy Center where you were drinking a smoothie the whole time.”

“Should I have been hangry instead?”

“You should have respected the audience! And Terry Gross, for that matter!”

“I offered her a sip,” Charlie said.

I let out a growl of frustration.

“The audience thought it was funny! And so did Terry Gross, by the way. You can get away with anything if everybody has already decided to like you. People love it when you break the rules.”

“Everything you’re saying here is validating my point.”

Charlie decided to get us back on track. “What I don’t understand about that whole Donna Cole debacle back there is why you didn’t just ask me to introduce you.”

I paused.

Now Charlie had to listen tomysilence.

That idea had never occurred to me.

Finally, I said, “I didn’t realize that was an option.”

“Why wouldn’t it be an option?” Charlie asked.

“I guess I’m used to just—going it alone.”

“But you’re not alone,” Charlie said.

I shrugged. “Maybe not right here, right now. But in general, in life, I am.”

“You have your dad,” Charlie said.

“My dad’s not a writer.”

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