Page 109 of The Rom-Commers

“I thought she was just messing with me.”

“Maybe a bit of that, too.”

In front of his house now, Charlie kicked a rock and watched it skitter down the road.

“I’m not, by the way,” he added.

“Not what?”

“In love with you.”

“Oh,” I said. Then, in case my voice sounded weird, I added, “Of course not!”

“I googled it,” Charlie continued, “and I’m not.”

“You googled whether or not you’re in love with me?”

“I googled how long it takes to fall in love.”

“And?” I asked. “How long does it take?”

“Eighty-eight days,” Charlie answered, definitively. “And we’ve only known each other for thirty-one. So. Problem solved.”

Why was Charlie googling this? And what nutty professor came up with that number? And what problem, exactly, were we solving?

“I wish I’d known that back at the coffee shop,” I said then. “That would’ve been a great comeback.”

THE NEXT AFTERNOON,we made it to Act Three, and there were only two—huge, insurmountable—things wrong with Act Three: The ending was 100 percent wrong, and the kiss was terrible.

We were almost done with the rewrite. In a week, I’d pack up all my office supplies and head home. We were galloping toward the finish line now. But I’d saved the hardest part for last.

And by “the hardest part” I meantthe kissing. All the physical stuff, really. Charlie had done it so wrong, it felt like there was no way to explain to him how to do it right.

“It’s fine,” Charlie kept saying.

“It’s not fine,” I kept insisting. “All you wrote is, ‘He storms in. They kiss.’ That’s it.”

“That’s plenty.”

“It’s really not.”

“I’m not telling the director what to do.”

“I get that it’s not our job to get in there with blocking. But you have to give them something.” He knew this already. A good screenplay had to make readers see it in their minds. And a good rom-com screenplay had to make readers feel it, too.

I grabbed my laptop and plunked it down in front of him.

“What are you doing?” Charlie started, but then he saw all my open tabs up top with rom-com after rom-com. “Are these—?” he started.

“Compilations of movie kisses,” I answered, likeOf course.

“Where did you find these?” Charlie asked.

“On YouTube,” I said, likeDuh.

But Charlie shook his head.

“You know—best-of compilations,” I prompted. “‘Best Movie Kisses Ever’? ‘Swooniest Kisses in Movie History’? ‘Most Rewatchable Kisses of All Time’?”

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