The Rom-Commers

Chapter Nineteen

IT FELT LIKEten hours before the first fire engine got there—but it was only ten minutes.

Nothing like perching above your imminent death to bend the space-time continuum.

Once the firefighters arrived, they talked to us through our open windows, explaining that they were going to stabilize the Blazer by running cables around the axle at each back wheel and winching it to the engine. Once it was stable, they promised, they’d get us harnessed and help us climb out.

All in all, once the professionals took over—things got pretty easy. We didn’t have to make any decisions after that. We just had to follow instructions.

Which we did. Gratefully.

Minutes later, we were out of the car, safe and sound.

The Blazer was pretty unscathed, considering—but a wrecker still hauled it off to a body shop to get checked out. The cops gave us a ride back to their station, where we could call a ride to pick us up.

Once we were officially not dead, I felt a gale-force euphoria that had me thanking everyone, and shaking hands, and giving hugs.

It happened. We lived. And now we had a story to tell.

But Charlie didn’t bounce back so fast.

He’d been so personable in the car trying to keep me calm. But once we were rescued, he got all quiet and frowny and didn’t want to talk. He stayed like that all afternoon, and after we got home, and all during dinner.

He kept coughing after that, too—like it was his new thing.

Which felt a bit stubborn.

All I wanted was to feel better—and all Charlie wanted, apparently, was to feel worse.

I kept trying to talk and joke around and just kind of celebrate the fact that we hadn’t died.

It was a safe bet that he’d forgotten we had signed up to do research at a line-dancing class across town tonight, and in his current mood, I wasn’t sure how to remind him.

Finally, I just decided to pretend we were all on board.

“Come on,” I said to Charlie after dinner.

Charlie was clearing plates from the table. He read my body language. “Come on where?”

“It’s line-dancing class tonight,” I said.

“Line-dancing class?”

“For the script.”

But Charlie shook his head. “Nope,” he said.

“Yep,” I countered. “I put it on the digital calendar.”

“We are not going to line-dancing class tonight,” Charlie said.

“Why not?”

“Because we almost died today!”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “But we didn’t. And it’s not as easy to find line-dancing classes around here as it should be.”

I waited for Charlie to capitulate. But he didn’t.

So I added, “And it starts in an hour, so we probably should have left already.”

I tapped my wrist to emphasize the time pressure.

But Charlie didn’t get swept up in my momentum. He gave me a look. “I’m not going to line-dancing class,” Charlie said.

Dammit.

“Why not?” I asked. Classic tactical mistake: giving him a chance to solidify his objection.

But he didn’t take it. “Because.”

“Why are you so mad right now?”

“Because I almost killed you today!”

“That’s not my fault!”

“You’re not the person I’m mad at!”

“Look,” I said. “It’s over. We lived. Let’s celebrate and go dancing.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“What? Ever again?”

“I mean—give me a day or two.”

“But the class is tonight.”

“I don’t care.”

“You have to go!”

“I don’t have to do anything.”

“But that line-dancing scene sucks.”

“You’re forgetting that this project is never going to go.”

“You’re forgetting that you promised you’d make it good, anyway.”

“It’s good enough.”

Was he really going to refuse?

I pointed at him. “Are you a—” I couldn’t find the term I needed, so I had to make one up: “A promise breaker? Is that what you are? You said you would do research.”

“I can watch videos on the internet for research.”

“Watching videos is not the same thing.”

“It’s close enough.”

“Why are you fighting this? You love immersion research. You’ve done it for every script you’ve written. You did a cattle drive in Montana for The Last Gunslinger! You lived in a bunker for three months when you were writing Forty Miles to Hell! You got so nauseated doing zero-gravity training for The Destroyers that you threw up three times!”

Charlie looked impressed that I knew all that. “Three times that you know of.”

“That’s exactly my point!”

But Charlie shook his head. “Those were all different.”

“Why?”

“Because those movies mattered.”

That smarted, I’ll admit.

I would’ve expected a comment like that back when I first got here. But we’d been working on this thing for weeks. Talking about these characters like they were real people. Writing scenes that were genuinely funny. Having fun. The scene where they fall on each other that we’d rewritten after we actually fell on each other that now incorporated frozen veggies? Pure delight.

Doesn’t delight matter?

I guess not.

I sighed. “This, right here, is why your screenplay sucks.”

“Because I don’t want to go line dancing?”

“Because you don’t believe in love.”

Charlie snorted a laugh. “Do you believe in love?”

“Of course I believe in love. It’s the best thing humans ever invented. There are books about this.” And then, like books weren’t enough: “There are TED Talks!”

“If you really believe that,” Charlie said, “shouldn’t you be married with like ten kids right now?”

That was so low. “I have to take care of my dad. I can’t get married and have ten kids.”

He clearly wanted to win—and settle this once and for all. “But doesn’t love conquer all? Doesn’t love find a way? Shouldn’t some cartoon woodland animals show up and help you find your Happily Ever After?”

My eyes flashed. “Don’t use a romance term against me!”

“You’re the one who taught it to me!”

“Are you really this cynical?” I asked. “Do you really think that love doesn’t exist? Or are you just saying dialogue that sounds good? Because if you really think love is something Hallmark made up to sell greeting cards, then we should just burn this screenplay right now. The last thing the world needs is another shitty rom-com. Produced or unproduced.”

“I believe hormones exist,” Charlie said then. “And I believe kindness exists. And affection. And altruism, sometimes. And longing. And I believe that every now and then those things can show up at once and knock you out of your senses for a while. But it’s random. It’s like the weather. It’s not something we all should be aspiring to. Or counting on. It comes and it goes, whether you like it or not. And then one day, you tell your wife the results of your biopsy, and she tells you she wants a divorce.”

Oof.

“So you’re bitter,” I said.

“Yes. Absolutely. But I’m also realistic.”

“And you’re lonely.”

“No argument there. But I’m also honest. And I’m not going to get out there and spin cotton-candy fantasies for gullible people who don’t know that’s not how life works.”

“How does life work?”

“People love you for a little while—when it’s convenient for them—and then they move on.”

“Not everybody’s like that.”

“But there are no guarantees.”

“There are no guarantees for anything!” I said. “Would you rather cancel hope altogether than risk the possibility of being disappointed?”

“The certainty of being disappointed,” Charlie corrected.

I sighed. “But don’t you see how if you decide that’s the way it is, then it can’t be any other way?”

“I don’t make the rules.”

“We all make the rules—all the time.”

“I just can’t make myself believe in a total fiction like that.”

I felt so baffled. “But you’re—a fiction writer.”

“Not that kind of fiction, I guess.”

“Then you should write something else.”

“I can’t write something else! I can’t write anything at all.”

“That’s your problem, right there.”

“Don’t tell me what my problem is.”

“Your problem,” I said, “is that you can’t say no to everything,” I went on, “and say yes at the same time. You can’t cancel one emotion without canceling them all. You can’t hate love—not without hating every other feeling, too. Stories exist for the emotions they create—and you can’t write them if you can’t feel them. This screenplay is a chance for you. You can make anything good”—I was almost pleading now—“but you can’t make it good without believing in it. You can’t bring this story to life without coming to life yourself.”

This was my bid. This was my shot.

But I missed.

Charlie refused to take my meaning. His response just off-gassed disdain. “And you want me to come to life by line dancing?”

Why was contempt so hard to counter?

All I knew was that had been my best, most heartfelt argument.

If Charlie couldn’t hear that, then there was nothing left to say.

“Fine,” I said. And looked down. And sighed.

Charlie watched me.

“You don’t have to go,” I said. “You can stay here and… do whatever it is you do in this big mansion all alone. But I’m going.” And then, on the off chance that it might make him even the tiniest bit unhappy, I added, “I’m going. And maybe I’ll find a six-foot cowboy—with a horseshoe belt buckle and one of those perfect square man-chins with a little dimple in it—and let him buy me beers all night. And maybe he’ll even have a big, crazy Sam Elliott mustache and a whole tragic past full of heartache, and maybe the two of us will just comfort each other all night long till the sun comes up.”

Weirdly, it worked.

Charlie’s eyes went dark. “Don’t you dare.”

“Try and stop me,” I said, striding toward the front door. Then, over my shoulder, grabbing a set of keys off the key hook: “And I’m taking a random car out of your garage. And I’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe.”

But I hadn’t even made it to the entryway when I heard Charlie’s footsteps clomping after me, fast and hard. Then he blew right past me, grabbing the keys out of my hand as he went, spinning back to glare in triumph as he raised them high above his head.

I jumped for them but couldn’t reach.

“You’re an asshole,” I said, shifting tactics to open-palm smacking at his shoulder. “Give me the keys!”

I smacked him a few more times, and then when he didn’t budge—and when hitting him also didn’t make me feel any better—I gave it up.

I pulled out my phone in defeat. “Fine, I’ll get an Uber.”

But that’s when Charlie let his arm down, and I looked up to see him holding the keys out—also in defeat.

“I’ll go,” he said then, in a quieter voice that sounded like surrender.

But the change was so sudden, I had to ask for confirmation. “Go where?”

He closed his eyes like he was sealing both our fates and said, “Line dancing.”

And then, before I could decide if I should thank him or hit him again, he opened his eyes, leaned in close, pointed at me, and said, “No six-foot cowboys for you.”