The Rom-Commers(28)

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

“Okay, okay,” Logan said, in a tone like Cut 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. “This is 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. I didn’t have 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 on the 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 WAKE of 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.”

“What happened?” I asked.

The two of them looked at me, then at each other.

So I prompted, “You said you weren’t going to let ‘what happened’ stop Charlie from writing. What was it that happened?”

Charlie frowned, like he didn’t want to talk about this now. Or ever.

“You should tell her, Charlie,” Logan said. “It explains a lot.”

“It’s not really brunch conversation,” Charlie said.

“I can tell her later, behind your back, if you prefer,” Logan said.

Charlie sighed. Then he turned to me. “I got sick a few years ago. And even though I really am completely—fully—better now, I haven’t done much writing in the wake of it.”

“Any writing,” Logan corrected, gently.

“Any writing,” Charlie conceded.

Logan leaned in, like he was sharing a dark diagnosis. “He’s got the yips.”

I frowned. “What’s ‘the yips’?”

Charlie grimaced like he didn’t love hearing the term applied to him. “It’s a sports term,” he said, “for when an experienced athlete has a sudden, unexplained—”

“Performance problem,” Logan completed.

Charlie looked aghast. “I do not have a performance problem.”

Logan corrected: “An abrupt absence of skills.”

“Oh,” I said, like we were just learning vocabulary. “So it’s like writers’ blo—”

But Charlie gave me a hard look, like Don’t you dare.

I stopped mid-word.