The Rom-Commers(85)

“Is it the color?” I pulled one of the corkscrews straight to take an appraising look. “I get it. The way it scratches the backs of your eyeballs. It’s a lot.”

Charlie shook his head. “No,” he said. “I love your hair.”

Huh. Okay. “Is it my strawberry writing hoodie?” I asked. “I know it’s crazy. But my”—my breath caught unexpectedly here—“my mom gave it to me.”

“Your strawberry writing hoodie is adorable,” Charlie said, his voice softer now.

But I was searching for an answer. “Is it how I ripped your screenplay apart when I first came here? That couldn’t have been fun for you. Or how I mocked you so much for trying to open biscuits with a can opener? Or how I keep rolling my eyes at your Mafia movie? I could revise my opinion on that. Maybe I haven’t been giving leather bell-bottoms a fair shot. Am I too chatty—is that it? Too opinionated? Too direct? Maybe if you tell me what it is, I could try to fix it.”

“Stop talking,” Charlie said. “You’re making me mad.”

“So it’s … not fixable. Is that what you’re saying?”

“You don’t need fixing,” Charlie said. “I’m the one that needs fixing.”

There was such impossible finality in his voice.

“You’re asking me what’s wrong with you,” Charlie went on, “but you should be telling me what’s wrong with me. I am not a catch, Emma. I’m an insomniac. I’m a misanthrope. I like imaginary people better than real ones. I haven’t folded laundry in, like, four years. This isn’t a rejection for you. It’s a lucky escape.”

What was he doing? Trying to argue me out of liking him?

None of those things were deal-breakers, but okay.

None of those things were deal-breakers … but maybe the fact that he was listing them was. How fully, incontrovertibly, utterly uninterested in me must he be to construct a whole case against himself like that—to my face?

I took a five-point-five-second breath.

“Okay,” I said, nodding.

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, I get it.”

“You do?”

I nodded. “You really don’t like me.” I nodded some more. “I’ll stop bothering you. I got carried away. I’ve never had a writing partner before. Or lived with a guy. I must have”—and here I quoted him again—“connected dots that didn’t need or want to be connected.”

Charlie glanced away.

“I kept thinking we must be having a misunderstanding. But there is no misunderstanding. Is that right?”

Charlie nodded and met my eyes again. “There is no misunderstanding.”

“You know I like you, and you know I am propositioning you,” I said. “And any feeling I keep having that you like me, too, is just wishful thinking bending my perceptions—because you are clearly, plainly saying no.”

Charlie nodded, like he was really sorry about it.

Then he said, “I am clearly, plainly saying no.”





Twenty-Seven

I NEVER GOT the chance to wake up—as I should’ve—just marinating in humiliation.

I never got the chance to open my eyes and feel horrified beyond description that I had drunkenly fallen off of Charlie Yates’s high dive, and then drunkenly forced him to rescue me, and then drunkenly tried to coerce him—a man who was clearly so not interested—into bed.

It was enough to keep my head churning shame like butter for years.

But there was no time to even begin.

Because before my alarm went off, I got a call from Sylvie.

Not one of her fun FaceTime calls. A real, old-fashioned, middle-of-the-night emergency call.

At three thirty A.M.

“Sylvie?” I said, as I fumbled with the phone in the dark.

“It’s Dad,” she said, and the panic in her voice told me everything. “He fell down the stairs.”

“Which stairs?”

“To our apartment.”

“The concrete stairs?”

“He’s in the ICU right now. He won’t wake up. It’s bad.”

“How bad?” I demanded.

“Emma. You need to come home.”

My mind ground like it was in first gear on the freeway. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll—I’ll change my ticket.”

“No,” Sylvie said. “There’s no time. Send me your flight info. Salvador’s mom works for Southwest.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, opening my laptop and looking for the confirmation email. I forwarded it, and then I said, “Done. Now what?”

“Now go to the airport,” Sylvie said. “Right now.”



* * *



I DIDN’T EVEN shower—or change out of Charlie’s WRITERS DO IT ON THE PAGE sweatshirt. I brushed my teeth, raked my hair into its pom-pom, stuffed everything I owned into my suitcase and still-broken rolling carry-on, ordered an Uber, and left.

No time for a note, even.

Charlie was still asleep, of course.

As I climbed into the back of the Uber, Sylvie was calling me with an update. “We got the flight switched,” she said. “How fast can you get there?”