The Rom-Commers(11)

“No.”

“No?” Logan asked.

“No.”

“Does no mean—”

“No means no. No, I don’t want you to bring her in. No, I don’t need help with the screenplay. Or a consultant. Or even a typist. I know how to type. And how to write a screenplay, too, by the way.”

Yep. He’d offended him.

“I don’t need anything,” Charlie went on. “Not from you—or anyone. Especially not some amateur writer friend of yours.”

Ouch. But fair.

“She may be an amateur, but there were circumstances—”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. This isn’t happening.”

“I just think that if you—”

“Buddy. Come on. I’d be irritated if you showed up with anybody, honestly. But some random girl you had a thing with in high school? That’s just insulting.”

“I’m telling you, she’s good.”

“I’m telling you, I don’t care.”

“I’m handing you the help you need to get this done and move on, and you’re throwing credentials at me.”

“Credentials exist for a reason.”

“Look, rom-coms are her specialty. They’re her whole thing. She can recite every line of When Harry Met Sally to you verbatim.”

“Please don’t let her do that.”

“I’m telling you, you’ll never meet another writer who knows more about rom-coms. She’s obsessed. And she’s got nothing else in her life. No relationship. No kids. Nothing at all. This is all she does. Imaginary love is the only thing she’s got.”

Oh, god, Logan. You’re killing me.

Then Logan made a fateful decision. He lied. To Charlie Yates. About me.

I can still hear it in slow-mo.

“She’s read the screenplay,” Logan said, “and she loved it.”

What!

It was all I could do to physically restrain myself from bursting in and correcting the record. I did not love it! I opposite of loved it—times a thousand. I detested it. I abhorred it. I wanted to scorch it from the earth—and my own memory, and all of space and time.

It was one thing for Logan to humiliate me in front of Charlie Yates with true things about my actual tragic life. It was quite another for him to defile my writing integrity with falsehoods.

That’s when Charlie paused. “She read the screenplay, and she loved it?”

I knew in an instant: Logan had so miscalculated.

Logan had made a guess that Charlie didn’t know his screenplay was bad. That he couldn’t help but love his own work. That if he told Charlie I loved his screenplay—the way he thought Charlie secretly loved it, too—that would put us on the same team. United against a cruel world that didn’t understand.

“Yes,” Logan lied.

No!

But it was the wrong call.

“Then she doesn’t know shit about rom-coms. Even I know that thing is an insult to the genre.”

Thank you!

Why did I feel so relieved that he knew that?

Logan registered his mistake now. Charlie Yates knew his terrible screenplay was terrible. Lying to him that I’d loved it was not helping me but doing the opposite. So he rerouted: “The point is, she’s a huge fan of you, man!”

“Has she seen the original?”

“Only a million times. Seen it, read it, studied it.”

“Then there’s no way she loves what I just wrote. She’s either a liar … or she doesn’t know shit from a shoelace.”

Harsh.

Harsh, but well-said.

She doesn’t know shit from a shoelace. Did he just make up a new aphorism?

Logan was still trying to take the ego route. “I’m telling you. She’s a Charlie Yates superfan. She’s so excited to work with you.”

That, at least, was true.

Next Charlie said, “Of course she is. Who wouldn’t be?”

“You’re being such an ass right now. I’m telling you, she’s good.”

“And I’m telling you to get her out of here.”

A pause, where I had to assume they were staring each other down.

Then Charlie said, “Wait. Hold on. Is this the same girl from the video you texted?”

The video? He texted?

I looked down at Logan’s phone in my hand. I’d known his passcode in high school. I tried it, and it still worked. Triple O Seven. Guess some things never change. The screen opened to a text he’d just sent to Charlie saying, There in 5.

Above it, I could see the bottom section of the last thing he’d sent before that.

A video.

Standing on Charlie Yates’s front steps, I tried to process the domino-fall of realizations their conversation had just set off in my mind: Charlie Yates had no idea I was coming. He had not consented to work with me—nor did he want to work with anyone. The job opportunity of a lifetime that I had abandoned my sick father for and robbed my sister of her future for and dismantled my entire life for did not actually exist.

To top it all off, my ex-boyfriend from high school had just both lied about me and told mortifying truths … and, apparently, sent Charlie Yates some mysterious video.