Page 2 of The Rom-Commers

Logan had told me to sit—but at the sound of that name, I stood up.

Then I froze. Then frowned. Then waited. Was this a trick?

“Hello?” Logan finally said. “Are you still—”

“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I thought I heard you say Charlie Yates.”

“I did say Charlie Yates.”

I sat back down. “Charlie Yates?” I said, like there was room for confusion.

I could sense Logan nodding. “Yes.”

But I needed more confirmation. “Charlie Yates who wroteThe Destroyers? Charlie Yates who wroteThe Last Gunslinger, andSmokescreen, andForty Miles to Hell? The screenwriters’ screenwriter, living legend, reason half the country says the catchphrase ‘Merry Christmas, cowboy’—that Charlie Yates?”

“Uh-huh,” Logan said, enjoying the moment. “That one.”

I took a sip of the ice water in my glass—

“He’s written a rom-com,” Logan said.

—and I coughed it back out.

Logan waited while I recovered.

“Charlie Yateswrote a rom-com?” Now I was suspicious. A Western? Sure. A horror flick? Absolutely. A dystopic space adventure where the robots eat all the humans? In a heartbeat. But arom-com?

No way.

“He didn’t,” I said, answering my own query.

“He did.”

“Is it… good?” I asked, and then immediately shook my head to cancel the question.

Of courseit was good.

I’d seen every movie Charlie Yates had ever written, and I’d read every one of his screenplays—produced or unproduced—that I could get my hands on, printing them off the internet and lovingly binding them with brass brads before alphabetizing them on their own dedicated shelf on my bookcase. And I didn’t justreadthem. I highlighted them. Annotated them. Covered them with Post-its and exclamation points.No questionit was good. Charlie Yates couldn’t write a bad screenplay if you threatened to take all his awards away.

“It’s terrible,” Logan said then.

“What?” It couldn’t be.

“It’s so terrible, even calling it terrible is an insult to the wordterrible.”

I took that in. “You’ve read it?” I asked.

“My eyes will never be the same, but yes—I read an entire draft.”

“You read a draft?” I asked. “How?”

How was my ex-boyfriend from high school just casually reading the private first drafts of the world’s most beloved superstar screenwriter?

Logan paused for a second and then he said, “So, I’ve been waiting for the right moment to share this with you, but… I am actually his manager.”

“What!”I stood up. Again.

“I’ve been waiting to tell you because I knew you’d freak out.”

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