Chapter Nine
THE NEXT MORNING,all packed for LAX, I tried to make myself some coffee in Charlie’s kitchen.
Big mistake.
“Nope!” He came swooping in. “That’s—You know what? Don’t—” He placed his body between me and the coffee maker. “I’ll get that. She’s temperamental. Did you need some—some coffee?”
Huh. Okay.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I can get some at the airport.”
“No, no—I’m glad to make it. I wanted to talk to you, anyway.”
He set about turning knobs and running water.
“Latte?” he asked then. “Cappuccino? Macchiato?”
“Just—whatever’s easiest,” I said.
Charlie got to work, saying over his shoulder, “This is the only thing my wife ever let me cook.” Then he corrected, “Ex-wife.”
Was he making chitchat with me?
“So, you’re all packed, then?” he asked next.
I frowned. I looked down at my stuff beside me. “Yep. The car comes in twenty minutes.”
“And did you tell your”—he hesitated—“people at home you’re heading back? Husband? Or whatever?”
What a weird question. Had Logan not told him even the most basic facts about my life?
I stood up a little straighter. “I don’t have a ‘husband or whatever,’” I said. “I live with my dad.”
“With your dad?” Charlie asked, a hint of Aren’t you a little old for that? in his tone.
“I’m his caretaker,” I said.
Charlie turned around.
I met his eyes and went on, “He was in a camping accident many years ago, and now he needs round-the-clock care.”
Charlie took that in. “Oh…” Then, “Who’s with him now?”
“My younger sister.” I did not add, An amateur.
I had no idea how they were doing. They’d forbidden me to call them or text them until I was settled. “Don’t even try it,” Sylvie had said. “We’ll fully ignore you.”
In the end, I hadn’t had time to even think about calling. Instead, I’d woken up at four this morning, before my alarm even went off, because my heart was pounding so hard in my chest with so much anxiety about abandoning my dad, I swear it was causing ripples across the mattress.
Then I’d lain awake in bed, worrying.
Had I shown Sylvie where we kept the meclizine? Did my dad take his propranolol? What did they have for dinner? Please, god, tell me she didn’t let him eat potato chips. Was she filling out the chart? Was he okay? Were they at the ER? Was everyone alive?
“So…” Charlie tried again. “Have you told them you’re heading back?”
“Not yet,” I said. And then I met his eyes, to be clear. “I can’t quite face the humiliation.”
Charlie nodded thoughtfully. “Because I was wondering if, rather than going back, you might… stay.”
“Stay where?”
“Stay here.”
“Stay here and do what?” Be his housekeeper? Mow his lawn? Refinish his yacht?
“Stay here and rewrite the screenplay with me.”
I frowned. All I could think to say was, “Why?”
As far as I knew, this guy was dead set against me.
“Because of last night,” Charlie said.
“Because I told you your screenplay was terrible?”
Charlie nodded. “That. And because you were right.”
Huh. How about that. A pompous writer who could admit someone else was right. You didn’t see those every day.
Charlie went on. “You were right about everything. I could see it so clearly after you said it. It’s been a long time since I thought about writing from anyone else’s perspective. It felt strangely good. Good enough that I stayed up half the night reading you.”
That sounded odd. “Reading me?”
“Reading your work. Your writing. The stuff Logan sent and begged me to read that I never read. Your two screenplays and your submission to Warner Bros.”
“He sent you those?”
“Multiple times. But you have no idea how many scripts people send me. Plus I was busy. And an ass. And I thought I knew everything there was to know.” The coffee maker beeped, and as Charlie moved toward it, he added, “About screenwriting—not about life. And of course as soon as he said rom-com my eyes were rolling too hard to read anything.”
I gave him a look. “Of course.”
If Charlie registered the sarcasm, he ignored it. “But then, last night… You were just so…” And then he finished—with a little shrug like he knew the word was too much, but it was the only one that fit—by saying, “dazzling.”
Dazzling.I tried to take it in as he poured the coffee. “You stayed up half the night reading my stuff?” It was so impossible. Charlie Yates… reading my stuff. And saying the word dazzling.
“And it was good,” Charlie said.
“What was good?” He couldn’t mean what I so badly wanted him to mean.
“Your writing.”
Oh, god. He liked my writing.
“Really good. I mean, romantic comedies aren’t exactly my favorite genre—”
“You’ve made that abundantly clear,” I said.
“But it almost made me believe in love. And I don’t believe in anything.”
Charlie set our mugs down at the dining table, and I took a seat facing him.
“So…” I said. “You read my writing, and now you want to—”
“Hire you,” Charlie finished. “For real. For the rewrite.”
My brain quivered from the whiplash. As excited as I’d been when I arrived here yesterday, by this morning, I was feeling the polar opposite: desperate to get home—back to safe, friendly territory with people who didn’t think I was worthless.
Like Charlie had.
But that was yesterday.
I tried to make the shift: today, apparently, he thought I was dazzling. And now, also, after reading my stuff: someone he wanted to hire.
“You want to hire me?” I asked. “For the rewrite?”
“Yes, but just for a week.”
“A week?” I said. Logan had said six. “You can’t fix that script in a week.”
“I don’t want to fix it. Just make it passable.”
I shook my head, like Doesn’t compute.
“Did Logan explain the whole deal to you?” Charlie asked then. “Why I even wrote this thing to begin with?”
I thought back. “It’s like an exchange? With some executive? You write this for him, and he’ll produce your Mafia script?”
“Yep. But it’s not the exec who wants this script. It’s his mistress.”
What a weird, old-timey word. “His mistress?”
Charlie nodded. “She loves this movie, and she wants to star in a remake. She’s pushy as hell, and she’s been nagging him, and he wants something to give her.”
“So you’re saying it’s not a real project.”
Charlie nodded. “It’s never going to go.”
I stirred my coffee.
“It doesn’t have to be good,” Charlie said. “It just has to be good enough to pass her muster.”
“Sounds like she didn’t like your first version, either.”
Charlie shook his head.
“So we’re doing all this for a vanity project?”
“We’re doing all this so I can get my Mafia movie made.”
“Does the world really need another Mafia movie?”
“I don’t know about the world,” Charlie said, “but I know I need it.” Then, leaning forward, like he was really sharing something tender and vital about himself, he looked into my eyes and said, “I just need to do something I’m proud of.”
Right then, my phone dinged. I glanced down. My ride was outside.
Here’s the thing. Honestly, in that moment, I just wanted to go home. “Charlie?” I said. “No.”
Then I stood up and walked over to my bags.
Charlie followed me. “No?”
I slid on my backpack and grabbed my bags, lifting the broken carry-on so it wouldn’t screech. “No.”
Charlie took both bags and led the way out. “You’re saying no?”
WasI saying no? To working with Charlie Yates? This was lunacy. But there it was. “I’m saying no, Charlie. I don’t want to do this.”
“You wanted to do it yesterday.”
“You wouldn’t even hire me yesterday!”
“I didn’t know how good you were yesterday.”
“Well, I didn’t know it was a fake project yesterday.”
We made it to the front walk, and when I didn’t slow, Charlie dropped my bag, like Carry your own crap, then. I circled back and grabbed it, letting the broken wheel squeal and scrape toward the waiting Uber.
But Charlie kept following. “You don’t want to work with me? It’s practically free money! You’re already here, anyway! This is an unbelievable opportunity for you! Let’s make a few minimal adjustments to this shitty screenplay, collect our checks, and move on. Do you know how famous I am?”
I’d made it to the car. I turned around to face him. “How very inspiring.”
“Inspiration isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
The Uber driver popped the trunk and got out—but Charlie held up his hand like Halt and then turned back my way.
“Why can’t you just help me?” Charlie asked, leaning in close.
I wasn’t playing hard to get. The truth was—I really just wanted to go home. The mansion, the untouchable coffee maker, the fake project for some weird mistress. It just wasn’t for me.
“Look,” I said, hoping this would kill it for Charlie. “I live in a crappy apartment with my half-paralyzed father. I work all the time. I don’t have money, and I don’t have friends, and I haven’t even made eye contact with anyone attractive in over a year. All I’ve got is my writing and my love of rom-coms and my basic human dignity—and I’m not sacrificing any of those things for this weird, sad project. I am needed at home. I was willing to leave for something big and inspiring. But I am not willing to abandon my family for some abomination of a screenplay that doesn’t even matter.”
That oughta do it. Right?
I turned toward the car, but Charlie grabbed my wrist to spin me back around.
“What do I need to do to get you to stay?”
And so I looked deep into his eyes and quoted Charlie back to Charlie: “I just need to do something I’m proud of.”
To my surprise, that landed. Charlie blinked. “Fine.” Then he started nodding. “Fine. Okay. You want to write it for real? We’ll write it for real.”
“I don’t want to write it for real, Charlie. I want to go home.”
“Name your terms,” Charlie said then.
“What?”
“Anything. However you want to do it—that’s how we’ll do it.”
I let out a long sigh. “Why are you doing this, Charlie?”
Charlie squared his shoulders like he was steeling himself to say something true. “Because last night, when I was reading your stuff, I wanted to work with you. And I haven’t wanted anything—anything at all—in a very, very long time.”