The Rom-Commers(47)

How had I never noticed those before?

Wait—

What was I thinking about?

Had I really been insisting all this time that there was nothing even remotely romantic about two people randomly falling on top of each other?

Because this was working.

Had I just proved myself wrong? In front of the Great Charlie Yates?

This was not going to end well.

And then my weird heart took that moment to start doing its thumping thing again.

“Is that you or me?” I asked.

“What?” Charlie asked.

“The thumping.”

“I’m not thumping,” Charlie said.

I put my hand on his chest. “Yes, you are.” Then, out of fairness, I shifted to my own. “But I’m thumping worse.”

Why did this keep happening?

For a second, I got caught up in the scientific question of it all—but then I looked down to see Charlie shaking his head at me like I was the most exasperating person on earth. “Emma?” he said.

“What?” I asked, like it might be something important.

“Can you get off me now?”

Oh, god! His broken tailbone! What was I doing?

But before I could scramble up, from across the kitchen, we heard a sound that pinned us in place a little longer. A woman’s voice like an irritated schoolmarm’s, demanding: “What the hell is happening in here?”

And in the one second that followed—that felt like ten hours—I didn’t even need to see the wry Thank you so much for this moment expression on Charlie’s face to know that this was, of course, his wife.

Sorry—ex-wife.



* * *



AS CHARLIE AND I scrambled up—Charlie notably not clutching his tailbone now—she watched us, arms crossed, like she’d just discovered a pair of naughty teenagers.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

I knew her face already, of course. I’d seen her in many red-carpet photos with Charlie—always dressed in black and wearing superhuman heels even though she was tall to begin with, the two of them smiling like nothing, not even an insurmountable height difference, could scare them. With her straight dark hair slicked habitually back into a low bun, she was always then, as she was right this minute, tall and sophisticated and sleek as a mink.

The opposite of me, is what I’m saying.

I wasn’t short—but I definitely wasn’t tall. And you’d probably come up with a thousand words for me before you landed on “sophisticated.” And if there was one thing I’d never, ever be, it was “sleek.” My curls would make sure of that.

“We were just”—Charlie glanced at me—“doing research.”

She crossed her arms and looked at the scatter of vegetables. “Is that what they call it?”

What was that expression on Charlie’s face? I hadn’t seen it before. Was he embarrassed? Guilty? Something was going on between these two that I couldn’t read.

The ex-wife looked at me and touched her collarbone. “I’m Margaux,” she said, like that should explain everything.

“I’m—” I started.

But Charlie jumped in. “She’s just a writer. Here to do some—writing.”

Huh. That smarted a little. Just a writer.

Margaux tilted her head, like If you say so. Then: “We were supposed to have dinner when I came to get Cuthbert tonight, Charlie. Did you forget?”

“Of course not,” Charlie said.

Um, I thought. We were supposed to have dinner tonight. What was Charlie talking about?

“We were just finishing up,” Charlie explained to Margaux, like we’d been hard at work doing something important.

Margaux nodded, with a vibe like I’ll allow it.

Then she looked Charlie up and down. “We’re already late,” she said then, “so…”

“Right,” Charlie said. Then he looked at me like he’d forgotten I was there. “You probably need to get going. I know your car had that … that … flat tire. Why don’t you just take my Blazer and bring it back for our—working day tomorrow?”

I guess we were hiding the whole living together thing from the ex.

“I can just get an Uber,” I said.

“No,” Charlie jumped in—weirdly eager to get rid of me. “The Blazer’s faster.”

“Okay, then,” I said.

Why was I feeling so rejected? Charlie had a right to go out to dinner with his ex-wife. It wasn’t like we had real plans. We were just eating together by default. And he certainly didn’t have to tell her about every detail of his life—and maybe I was one of those details he didn’t feel like getting into. That was fine. That was fair. And technically, he hadn’t even said anything wrong about me.

I was just a writer.

That’s exactly what I was.

So why was me getting kicked out so that Charlie could hit the town with this tall, slender, straight-haired woman with a perfect pedicure and matching manicure disappointing me so hard?

Oh, well. I could puzzle over that later.

They were waiting for me to go.

“I’ll just leave most of my writing stuff here,” I said, trying not to overact my part. “Since we’ll be doing more writing again when I return—tomorrow.” This was terrible dialogue.