Page 24 of The Rom-Commers

As impossibly cool as a guy in a rumpled Oxford could be.

Way cooler than any writer deserved to be.

I turned to face him. “Sorry,” I said, vastly more polite now. “I thought you were Logan.”

It wasn’t Charlie’s fault that Logan brought me here. Charlie wasn’t doing anything wrong by not wanting to work with me. Yes, he’d said a few mean-ish things earlier. But I wasn’t going to hold that against him. I wouldn’t have wanted to work with me, either, if I were him. He could still be my favorite writer.

This was on me, really, for believing Logan’s cockamamie story in the first place.

“Get in,” Charlie said. “I’m here to rescue you.”

“Oh,” I said, still just wanting to stay as far away from both of these guys, and this whole experience, as possible. “It’s fine.”

Charlie leaned his head out the window then and checked the brightsky like an old sea captain reading the wind. Then he put the Blazer in park—just right there in the road—got out, and came around to face me. “It’s not fine,” he said then. “It’ll get dark in a few hours. And that’s when the coyotes come out.”

“The coyotes?”

Charlie nodded, likeYep. “And the mountain lions.”

“You have mountain lions?” I asked. “In the second-largest city in America?”

Charlie nodded. “Almost four million.” Then he added, “People. Not lions.”

He hadn’t answered my question. “Should I believe you?” I asked, mostly to myself.

“I can’t tell you what to do,” Charlie said. “But I have yet to mention the bears.”

“Seriously?” I said.

“It’s cool,” Charlie said then, calling my bluff. “I can tell you prefer to be”—he looked around—“alone.”

“Wait—” I said, as Charlie started to walk back around toward the driver’s side.

“You’ll be fine,” Charlie said. “Just a quick tip: If you do see a mountain lion, don’t run.”

“Don’t run?” I echoed. Can youlosea conversation? Because that’s what I was doing.

He shrugged. “You can’t outrun a mountain lion.”

“You know what?” I said. “I’ll come with you.”

“Naw,” Charlie said, enjoying this now, “you don’t have to.”

“I want to,” I said.

Charlie, like convincing me had been much easier than he’d expected, came back around to where I was, and, holding my gaze the entire time, stepped close and leaned in until there was less than a foot between us—close enough to spark aWhat the heck?question in my head—before I realized he was sliding my backpack off my shoulders and then picking up my bags.

He tossed both in the back of the Blazer, and then, when I stillhadn’t moved, he opened the passenger door for me. “I’ve got you,” he said. “Hop in.”

AND THAT’S HOWI wound up spending the night with Charlie Yates.

Although not like that sentence implies.

On the short drive back to his house, I tried to adjust: I was with Charlie Yates. We were in his very cool, vintage—reconditioned and now hybrid, he told me—truck. The Allman Brothers played on the radio. The windows were hand-cranked down. The famous zero-humidity LA air fluttered all around us. Charlie drove one-handed, his free arm resting out the open window.

Almost like I wasn’t there.

I snuck looks at his profile. Had he really just agreed to work with me? Logan said so, but now we all knew exactly how trustworthy Logan was. Still, the dialogue “Fine. Fuck it. She can have the guest room” rang true. Logan could never write dialogue like that.

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