Page 36 of The Rom-Commers

“Fine. I will.”

We faced off for a second until Charlie said, “The point is, people fight all the time in rom-coms.”

“At firstthey do. But then it has to give way to something better. They can’t just fight the whole time and then have hate-sex and call it a day.”

“Don’t knock hate-sex. It has its upsides.”

“I’m sure it does. But it’s not love.”

Charlie paused to write “hate-sex = not love” in his Moleskine and box it.

I built on my advantage. “This’ll take forever if you keep arguing with me. We’ll be here all night.”

Charlie frowned. I was right again.

“So,” I went on, “I’m going to need you to just sit quietly and listen while I rip your screenplay to shreds. ’Kay?”

And here’s the thing: he did it.

He really sat there quietly after that, while I earnestly went through every single sticky note on every single page of that script, enumerating every single way it was terrible—from structure to motivation and everything in between.

By the time we were done, it was after midnight, my voice wasgetting hoarse, and Charlie Yates had taken five pages of notes. And his handwriting wasn’t large.

It felt like a triumph. Like this whole trip hadn’t been for nothing. Like I’d maybe proved at least a few of his assumptions about me a little bit wrong.

Not that I cared, of course.

But as I repacked my backpack and Charlie read over his notes, I couldn’t help but gloat a little to myself.See that, Charlie Yates? I’m less worthless than you thought.

Was that something to gloat about?

I would have loved to leave it there. But that’s when I remembered I had to get myself to the airport in the morning. And thus I was forced to close out the evening by leaning over to Charlie and saying, “I’m so sorry. Could you explain to me how Uber works?”

Nine

THE NEXT MORNING,all packed for LAX, I tried to make myself some coffee in Charlie’s kitchen.

Big mistake.

“Nope!” He came swooping in. “That’s—You know what? Don’t—” He placed his body between me and the coffee maker. “I’ll get that. She’s temperamental. Did you need some—some coffee?”

Huh. Okay.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I can get some at the airport.”

“No, no—I’m glad to make it. I wanted to talk to you, anyway.”

He set about turning knobs and running water.

“Latte?” he asked then. “Cappuccino? Macchiato?”

“Just—whatever’s easiest,” I said.

Charlie got to work, saying over his shoulder, “This is the only thing my wife ever let me cook.” Then he corrected, “Ex-wife.”

Was he making chitchat with me?

“So, you’re all packed, then?” he asked next.

---