Page 59 of The Rom-Commers

Was I dreaming too big? I knew too much about Charlie now to be overly optimistic. But I had a shot, at least. I’d just have to take it slow.

On the walk from the pool to the dining table, I’d decided on some long-term goals:

Take Charlie on a journey of de-snobbification about rom-coms.

Write a kick-ass screenplay together.

Watch it get made into a great movie that would bring laughs and hope to folks all over the world.

Not be a failed writer anymore.

And how do you reach your long-terms goals? With short-term goals:

Don’t get fired.

Micromanage Sylvie from afar so well that my father survived the duration.

Completely overhaul that appalling screenplay from the ground up without giving Charlie a chance to stop me.

Easy.

IF YOU’LL ALLOWme to skip to the good part: The negotiations went well.

I told Charlie—with the confidence of someone who was ready to justwalk right out—that I would stay only if he agreed to:one, change his deeply uninformed and insulting unhappy ending into a proper, joyful, satisfying one, andtwo, actually research the crazy stuff he’d thrown into that script—the skinny-dipping, the line dancing, the kiss.

“Fine,” Charlie said.

“Fine to what?”

“Fine to everything.”

“Fine to changing the ending?”

“You’ve converted me on that.”

“And fine to doing all that research?”

“Yes. Fine.”

“You realize that means actuallydoingthose things. With me. For research.”

“I’m not going skinny-dipping with you,” Charlie said then, like this whole thing might be an elaborate plan to get him naked.

“I’m not going skinny-dipping with you, either,” I said.

“Good,” Charlie said, a little too disinterestedly.

“And you don’t have to swim,” I said, “but you do have to get in the pool.”

Charlie held still, like he was mentally scanning for an out.

“How long has it been?” I asked.

“Since I went swimming?”

“Since you got into any body of water at all. A bath, even?”

Charlie looked up, like he was calculating. Then he said, “Twenty-eight years. Give or take.”

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