Page 23 of The Rom-Commers

I’d walked for about fifteen minutes—and was just starting topanic—when Logan drove up alongside me and matched his pace to mine. His window came down.

“Get in,” Logan called.

I ignored him and kept walking. There was a pebble in my shoe, but I ignored that, too.

“He caved, okay?” Logan called. “He gave in. He says you can stay.”

I kept walking.

“You got the job!” Logan shouted. “You don’t believe me? I have the text right here.”

He held up his phone, but I didn’t look.

“You’re not listening. I’m telling you it worked. He’s in. It’s happening.”

My broken carry-on wheel caught on a rock, but I yanked it so hard I didn’t even break pace.

“You should be thanking me!” Logan called next, a little louder. “It worked, didn’t it?” He shook his phone at me. “He says, and I quote: ‘Fine. Fuck it. She can have the guest room.’”

I didn’t really know what to do in this moment. I didn’t have a plan. All I knew was, I would not get in Logan’s car. Nothing else was clear—at all—except that.

“Are you refusing to spend the night in Charlie Yates’s mansion? Is that what’s happening now? Because I’m telling you: He’s got a wine cellar. And a pool. And a thousand-dollar coffee maker.”

But the pebble in my shoe—or was it maybe a piece of glass?—and I just kept walking.

And walking.

Until finally, faced with my wall of stoicism, Logan gave up and drove off—leaving me behind, now more triumphant and more panicked at the same time.

Really?Was that all the penance he was going to do?

Fine.

How hard could it be to download the Uber app?

I stopped to pull out my phone, and that’s when I saw the low battery alert.

Okay. No freaking out. If worse came to worst, I could find my wayback to Charlie’s house and borrow his phone. I turned back to study the terrain I’d just covered.

At least, IthoughtI could find my way back.

Probably.

If it didn’t get dark first.

I turned back to face the way I’d been going again, scanning the horizon for, maybe, a luxury hotel that was having a 90-percent-off special.

What time did it get dark here, anyway?

On the heels of that thought, I heard Logan pull up alongside me again and idle. Without even looking to the side, or considering if this was the stupidest thing I’d ever do, I tilted my head to the sky and shouted, “Please! Just! Fuck! Off!”

“Really?” a guy’s voice said.

A guy who wasn’t Logan.

I turned, and instead of Logan Scott in a Beemer, it was Charlie Yates in a Chevy Blazer.

A cool, seventies vintage Chevy Blazer, by the way. Baby blue. Windows down. And Charlie Yates in aviators, regarding me and looking—fine, whatever—impossibly cool.

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