Page 45 of The Rom-Commers

“Congrats on the new job! Isn’t nepotism great?”

This from the grandson of Christopher Heywood and the esteemed auteur of the Beer Tower series. I cocked my head. “You’d know best.”

He nodded, likeTouché. Then he said, “I see you’re already busy ending Charlie Yates’s career.”

Was this happening?

“Great hat,” I said. “Where do you get those—with the brim on the back like that?”

“Okay, okay,” Logan said, in a tone likeCut it out.

I looked down, a tiny bit scolded, wondering if I should’ve taken a higher road, but then I felt Charlie looking at me, and when I glanced his way, his eyes were smiling.

But T.J. wasn’t quite done. “Thisis your romance expert?” he said to Logan. Then he looked me over. “No offense, but has she ever even been on a date?”

“That’s it,” Charlie said then, standing up and dropping his napkin on the table. “Knock it off.”

Was Charlie taller than I’d realized?

It felt nice to be defended. But T.J. was actually right. Ididn’thave much experience with real-life romance. Even the quickest scan of my past made that painfully clear: The high school BFF I’d tried sex with for the first time—more like a science experiment than anything else—who later turned out to be gay. The fellow professor who I’d started seeing just as he left for a two-year sabbatical in Alaska—and who I got dumped by just as he returned home. A few attempts at dating that never got very far because I was always either tending to my dad, worrying about my dad, or on my way to the ER.

But that’s not to say I’d never been in love. I was not stingy with my crushes. I had a thing for the guy at the meat counter at the grocery store, and the doc who’d stitched my dad up after his last fall, and a cute young maintenance guy who worked at our building.

I fell in love all the time. Just… nobody fell in love with me back.

Fiction really kind of was all I had in the romance department.

But that wasn’t a weakness. That was a strength.

I had a theory that we gravitate toward the stories we need in life. Whatever we’re longing for—adventure, excitement, emotion, connection—we turn to stories that help us find it. Whatever questions we’re struggling with—sometimes questions so deep, we don’t even really know we’re asking them—we look for answers in stories.

Love stories had lifted me up, delighted me, and educated me onthe power of human kindness for years. I knew a lot about love. A lot more, I bet, than all the people who took it for granted.

So it was fine. I knew who I was.

And I was not someone who could be insulted by some dude-bro named T.J. on his third Bloody Mary.

Though I did love that Charlie had just stood up for me. Literally.

Logan was busy shutting T.J. down. “Your table is waiting for you, Teej.”

T.J. turned to look and, sure enough, it was.

When he turned back, he looked right at me and said, “Welcome to Hollywood.” And then, before he walked away, he added, “You’re going to need to get that hair straightened.”

IN THE WAKEof that moment, Logan and Charlie pointedly shifted back to normal life, discussing the writing project at hand as if nothing had happened.

“We’re going to need a serious contract,” Charlie said. “I don’t trust you anymore. I should probably get a new manager.”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Logan said, totally unworried. “You finally read her stuff.”

“But what if it hadn’t worked?” Charlie gestured at me. “You’d have crushed her.”

“You think I don’t know you? You’re not as mean as you pretend.”

“It was a risk,” Charlie said.

“Everything’s a risk. She needed a push. And so did you. And if you think I was going to let what happened just stop you from writing forever, you haven’t been paying attention.”

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