Page 4 of The Rom-Commers

Unless Charlie Yates wrote them.

He was that good. I loved everything he did, even though the only genre that I myself truly personally liked was… romantic comedies.

Which was the only genre he didn’t write.

Until now, apparently.

That’s how good he was. He forced me to love him—against my entire personality.

“He loves the Mafia thing, too,” Logan said. “He spent months and months in Chicago for research and he wore a pocket watch the whole time. And he’s hell-bent on getting it made, especially now that he’s back from his”—Logan hesitated before finishing with—“hiatus. But that can’t happen until he does this rom-com. And as I mentioned—”

“It’s terrible.”

“We’re going to need a better word for terrible.”

I gave it all a second to sink in.

“That’s where you come in,” Logan said, ready to move on to details. “It’s going to need the mother of all rewrites. Uncredited, of course—”

“Of course.”

“But for good money.”

“How much money?”

“More than you’re technically entitled to, Writers Guild–wise.”

There it was. There were levels to how much you could earn, depending on how much success you’d had. And since I’d had—and I say this with great compassion for myself—almost no success, my level wasn’t high.

Didn’t matter. Who cared?

This was Charlie Holy Shit Yates.

“Send it to me,” I said. There was nothing more to discuss. Would I uncreditedly rewrite Charlie Yates’s incomprehensibly terrible screenplay?Of course I would.I’d do it for no money. Hell, I’d payhim.I’d already mentally opened a new file in Final Draft and saved it as CHARLIE F@$%ING YATES.

“There’s a catch, though,” Logan said next.

“What’s that?”

“You have to come to LA.”

Now I started pacing the walkway again. “Come to LA?” I echoed, like that was something no one ever did.

“Notforever,” Logan said. “Just for the working period of the rewrite.”

How long did a rewrite even take? I’d never done a rewrite for someone else.

Logan read my mind. “Six weeks,” he declared next. “Possibly longer. This has to be an in-person thing.”

“But—” I started, so many objections in my mind, it was hard to choose. “What about Zoom? What about FaceTime? What about Slack? Google Meet? Hell—even Skype! There are a million virtual ways to do it.”

“He’s old-school,” Logan said.

“That’s no excuse.”

“And he’s got a massive ego.”

“He deserves that ego,” I said, shifting sides. “He’s earned it.”

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