Page 58 of The Rom-Commers

“I can see that.”

“I just want to ask you a question.”

Charlie sighed. “What?”

I gave it a beat, and then I asked, “Why did your wife leave you?”

It was a hell of a question. The second I asked it, though, I knew I was right. His face shifted to extra indifferent. Then came the shrug. Then he said, “I guess she just got sick of my shit.” Then he added, “And I don’t blame her, either.”

There it was.

Charlie Yates had a tell.

The things that he acted like mattered the least? Those were the things that mattered the most.

What would happen if I pushed past the nonchalance?

“Tell me about the day she left,” I said.

“No,” Charlie said. Then, “Why?”

“Because I’m not coming down until you do.”

“Maybe I should just walk away and leave you there.”

“Maybe you should. But then I will definitely do a swan dive off this thing. And maybe pop an organ or two.”

Charlie squinted up to study me. Then he finally asked, “It has to be that? I have to tell you about that? There’s no other way you’ll come down?”

It felt so mean, but I had to know if I was right. Slowly, like there was no room for negotiation, I nodded.

Charlie sighed.

Then he looked around like he was checking for escape routes.

Then he frowned, and looked up at this crazy woman swinging her feet from his diving board… and then his face went extra nonchalant. He glanced off to the side like he was waiting for a bus or something, and then, in a tone like no one on earth had ever uttered a more boring statement, he said, “My wife left me on the day I found out I had cancer.”

Fourteen

THAT WAS HOWI decided to stay.

More specifically, that was how I decided to try to convert Charlie Yates into a fan of rom-coms. A tall order. Maybe too tall. But that little epiphany about him changed everything.

Suddenly, I was curious about him in a new way.

Curious enough to stay.

I could give up anytime, after all. I might as well hang out for a bit in Esther Williams’s mansion.

And so I climbed back down that high-dive ladder and followed Charlie to the dining table and sat across from him to start negotiations in earnest—from the new power stance of being happy to go home, but also willing to stay, if he’d give me enough of what I wanted.

Here’s what I wanted: to do the screenplay right.

And seeing how aggressively indifferent Charlie was to the whole project… given his tell, I suspected that maybe, possibly, in some deep-down place he’d never admit to, he might want that, too.

And maybe—just maybe—in that same deep-down place we might find something more interesting and complex than just disdain. Something rich and nourishing enough to cure his yips. And jump-start my career in the process.

It was worth looking, anyway.

---