The Rom-Commers(7)

He was cheerful.

He lost everything in that rockfall—and he found a way to keep going. And not only that. He found a way to laugh. And sing goofy little ditties. And close his eyes and turn his face to the sun.

And he got me to do all those things, too.

How did he do it? How did he stand beside a personal Grand Canyon of suffering and manage to feel … grateful?

And how on earth would I cope out in the heartless world without him?

Who even was I on my own?

Before the rockfall, my dad was a cellist.

After the rockfall, he taught himself every instrument you can play with one hand—mastering the harmonica, the bones, the zither, the tambourine, the tin whistle, and the slide trombone. He also learned one-handed crochet, and potting on a wheel, and beading. “You pick the colors,” he said, “I’ll make the magic.” He got so good at beading necklaces that he opened a jewelry shop on Etsy.

Which actually added a fair bit of cash to our monthly budget.

I would really miss him, is what I’m saying. And I found myself wondering, as we hit some turbulence and I white-knuckled the armrest, if maybe dreams were better off never trying to become reality.





Four

DON’T MEET YOUR heroes. Isn’t that what they say?

Oh, god. They’re so right.

Logan picked me up at LAX in his BMW SUV with a vanity plate that read KILL 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 red that 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 like No 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 tragic Parent Trap situation.” And then Logan would lean in and say, “Please don’t trigger her any further.”