Page 21 of The Rom-Commers

And despite everything, seeing him in real life like that had a seismic effect on my body.

Like the nearness of him was causing fractures and fissures at deep, subterranean levels.

Like the presence of the living, breathing Charlie Yates was somehow… fracking my soul. Or something. The sight of him, for just a second, took me deep inside my own body. Where everything suddenly felt radicallydifferent. Like I might go to turn on some internal faucet and watch fire come out instead of water.

Am I overstating it?

Probably. But I know what I know.

The sight of me seemed to affect Charlie Yates, too.

What would Charlie have seen in that moment? A random, weeping female in his yard. Blotchy face. Eyes red from crying. Tear-smeared, shiny cheeks. Puffy pink nose. And so angry. Angry like a person with lightning bolts shooting from her eyes. Not to mention the hair: I always have to remind myself how carefully I haddefinitelyclamped my hair back into a sensible pom-pom before we arrived—because my imagination always wants to say that, in Charlie’s first-ever sight of me, I had fire-orange medusa snakes writhing around my head.

How often do you step out of your front door in life to find a sight like that?

Poor Charlie.

Even without the snakes, I’m sure I was a sight.

But before Charlie could react, or scream, or run back into the house and dead-bolt the door, Logan pulled us back on track. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said to me.

At that, my gaze shifted back to Logan. “Do you?” I demanded.

“My motivations were honorable!”

But I was shaking my head, Charlie Yates now forgotten. “Mymomis in this video.” I held out Logan’s phone. “She’s here,” I said. “Mymom. Myfamily. How could you just… text it around? I”—and here I tapped my chest with my hand—“Ihaven’t even seen this. How could you just send it to—to a stranger? It’s mymom, Logan.”

To be honest, I didn’t even know what I was trying to say.

Rare for me.

Usually I started with words and found the feelings later, if that makes sense.

But here, all I had was a feeling. A feeling that this lost moment in time—these lost people, this lost family—was too precious to share.

Was it weird that Logan still had the video—much less that he would text it to his client without ever even showing it to me? Yes, of course.

But that’s not what had me so appalled.

This wasmy mother. Her jean skirt. Her favorite sandals. Her warm voice like butterscotch. This was my beloved family. My unbroken father, my preteen sister, my forgotten self. This was everyone who wasprecious to me—captured just weeks before the end. It was everyone I’d ever loved, beautiful and hopeful and frozen in time. It was valuable beyond description. It should be nothing less than cherished. And it wasn’t for anyone, even Charlie Yates, to watch on some phone while he was sitting on the toilet.

Or wherever Charlie Yates checked his texts.

“Emma,” Logan said, “I get it. I’m sorry. But—”

I shook my head, busy forwarding the video to myself.

“Emma, look,” Logan went on. “I was trying to get you this job.”

“You told me Ihadthis job.”

“I was working on it.”

“You lied to me.”

“A white lie.”

“Go ahead and tell yourself that.”

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