Page 11 of The Rom-Commers

Logan picked me up at LAX in his BMW SUV with a vanity plate that readKILL N IT. Which felt very LA.

Although apparently nobody ever picks anybody up at LAX.

I know this because it’s the first thing Logan said to me as I got in the car. “I hope you’re grateful,” he said.

I was late to meet him because my enormous suitcase had gotten caught on the conveyor belt at baggage claim, and my carry-on bag had a broken wheel that dragged and squeaked like it was begging for mercy and slowed me down. Also because I’d stood so long in the airport bathroom trying to wrangle my curly red hair into something, um,less curly and redthat I lost track of time.

I didn’t hate my hair or anything. It was just… a lot.

It was the first—and last—thing you noticed about me. As my friend Maria once said about having curly hair:You don’t control it. It controls you.

In the end I settled for the same thing I did with my hair every day:pulling it back into a high ponytail that looked like a pom-pom and calling it a day. The other option was to leave it down—flowing out of my head like lava. But I had to consider poor Charlie Yates. That would be a lot to take in at a first meeting. Visually.

I didn’t want to frighten the poor man.

I overthought my outfit, too, for the record. Jeans, and Converse low-tops, and a little boatneck printed blouse. Was this too casual? Too cutesy? Not badass enough? Should I maybe put on a gunmetal-gray suit and some aviator shades? How did one even dress for meeting the best screenwriter on the planet?

Logan, in contrast, knew exactly how to dress—a perfectly tailored suit so crisply pressed I was almost afraid to hug him. It was the first time I’d seen him anywhere but an occasional FaceTime in eight years, but he looked exactly the same.

“You haven’t changed at all,” I said as we buckled up.

“Are you kidding? I’m way cooler.” Then he looked me over. “You’re the one who hasn’t changed.”

So what if I was wearing the same hoop earrings I’d worn at my high school graduation? They were sterling silver.

I thought we might stop for lunch, or coffee, but Logan drove straight for Charlie Yates’s house in the Hollywood Hills—no stopping allowed.

Guess this was happening.

“Hope you peed at the airport,” Logan said, in a tone likeNo turning back now.

“Like a racehorse,” I said, in a tone that I hoped said,Bring it on.

Yes, Logan and I had dated in high school—but we’d always been friends first. His very dashing father—American, and Black, and from Atlanta—had met his elegant mother—British, and white, and a TV producer—while working as a war correspondent overseas. Logan was raised mostly in London until his dad got a job as a nightly news anchor in Houston, and he showed up as the new kid at my high school.

We bonded because we were the only two students in our English class who thought Robert Frost’s poem “After Apple-Picking” had to be about sex.

Also—even though he was tall and I was not, and even though he had a posh British accent and I just sounded like a plain old American teenager, and even though his complexion was a warm beige and mine was so pale and befreckled that a guy in my photography class kept squinting at me and saying he wished he could add some contrast… we had the exact same color hazel eyes.

Exactly the same.

And so we started telling people we were twins.

“Not identical twins, obviously,” we’d say.

This game was so fun, and we got so good at it, sometimes people believed us. If they pointed out our obvious genetic dissimilarities, I’d say, “Genetics are complicated. Deal with it.” And then Logan would add, “The eyes don’t lie.”

If a genius noted that one of us talked like the royal family and one did not, I’d wince as if pained by a cruel memory and say, “We were separated as infants in a tragicParent Trapsituation.” And then Logan would lean in and say, “Please don’t trigger her any further.”

Our specialty was getting double free birthday desserts at restaurants.

Logan’s family moved away after high school when his dad got an anchor job on the national nightly news—that’s right: Logan’s dad isMalcolm Scott—and Logan went on to graduate from Stanford and then seamlessly transition into a wildly successful career.

He didn’t have to stay in touch with me, is what I’m saying. Me, stuck at home and not transitioning into a wildly successful anything.

But he did.

And, now, having not seen him in person since the night before he left for his freshman year of college—when he broke up with me, claiming, and I quote, “We both need some freedom”—I suddenly felt nervous.

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