Page 38 of The Rom-Commers

“He sent you those?”

“Multiple times. But you have no idea how many scripts people send me. Plus I was busy. And an ass. And I thought I knew everything there was to know.” The coffee maker beeped, and as Charlie moved toward it, he added, “About screenwriting—not about life. And of course as soon as he saidrom-commy eyes were rolling too hard to read anything.”

I gave him a look. “Of course.”

If Charlie registered the sarcasm, he ignored it. “But then, last night… You were just so…” And then he finished—with a little shrug like he knew the word was too much, but it was the only one that fit—by saying, “dazzling.”

Dazzling.I tried to take it in as he poured the coffee. “You stayed up half the night reading my stuff?” It was so impossible. Charlie Yates…reading my stuff.And saying the worddazzling.

“And it was good,” Charlie said.

“What was good?” He couldn’t mean what I so badly wanted him to mean.

“Your writing.”

Oh, god.He liked my writing.

“Really good. I mean, romantic comedies aren’t exactly my favorite genre—”

“You’ve made that abundantly clear,” I said.

“But it almost made me believe in love. And I don’t believe in anything.”

Charlie set our mugs down at the dining table, and I took a seat facing him.

“So…” I said. “You read my writing, and now you want to—”

“Hire you,” Charlie finished. “For real. For the rewrite.”

My brain quivered from the whiplash. As excited as I’d been when I arrived here yesterday, by this morning, I was feeling the polar opposite: desperate to get home—back to safe, friendly territory with people who didn’t think I was worthless.

Like Charlie had.

But that was yesterday.

I tried to make the shift: today, apparently, he thought I was dazzling. And now, also, after reading my stuff:someone he wanted to hire.

“You want to hire me?” I asked. “For the rewrite?”

“Yes, but just for a week.”

“A week?” I said. Logan had saidsix. “You can’t fix that script in a week.”

“I don’t want to fix it. Just make it passable.”

I shook my head, likeDoesn’t compute.

“Did Logan explain the whole deal to you?” Charlie asked then. “Why I even wrote this thing to begin with?”

I thought back. “It’s like an exchange? With some executive? You write this for him, and he’ll produce your Mafia script?”

“Yep. But it’s not the exec who wants this script. It’s his mistress.”

What a weird, old-timey word. “Hismistress?”

Charlie nodded. “She loves this movie, and she wants to star in aremake. She’s pushy as hell, and she’s been nagging him, and he wants something to give her.”

“So you’re saying it’s not a real project.”

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