The Rom-Commers

Chapter Twenty-One

IT’S SO HUMILIATINGto admit this, but the next afternoon, when Charlie had a meeting with the mistress we were doing this screenplay for and he told me to make myself scarce, there was no mistaking it—I was oddly jealous.

“I can’t stay for it?” I asked.

“Trust me, you don’t want to stay.”

“You don’t know that.”

“This woman would eat you alive,” Charlie said.

“She doesn’t eat you alive.”

“No,” Charlie agreed, “but she flirts with me. Which is weirdly similar.”

We were entering our sixth and final week of writing—which meant I’d only known Charlie for five. Five puny weeks out of my whole lifetime. Why did the idea of some mistress flirting with Charlie bug me so much? “It seems like we should both be here,” I said.

“The thing is,” Charlie said then, “there’s another issue.”

“What?”

“The mistress,” Charlie said, with an apologetic shrug, “happens to be T.J. Heywood’s stepmother.”

I frowned. “The mistress—?”

Charlie nodded. “—is married to T.J.’s dad and cheating on him with this United Pictures executive.”

I took it in. “The mistress is Mrs. Jablowmie?”

“Mrs. Jablowmie Senior,” Charlie corrected. “There is no current Mrs. T.J. Jablowmie.”

“Shocker.”

And then I couldn’t help it. I pulled out my phone and googled T.J.’s father “+ wife”—and got a thousand photos of a woman who looked like she might still be in high school.

“How old is she?” I asked.

“She’s younger than T.J., actually. He brings it up a lot.”

“Wow,” I said. “No wonder he hates women.”

“Does he?”

“Doesn’t he?”

Charlie thought about it. “Yeah. I guess that’s right.”

“So…” I said, still processing. “This teenager is married to the directing legend and very middle-aged Chris Heywood, but she’s also sleeping with this even more middle-aged executive who wants to make your Mafia thing—at the same time?”

Charlie nodded. “That’s pretty much it.”

“And everybody’s fine with it?”

“As fine as it gets in this town.”

I nodded. “She must be a hell of a multitasker.”

“So that’s the hesitation,” Charlie said. “It’s possible T.J. might show up at the meeting.”

“Ah,” I said. And suddenly, Charlie was right. I didn’t need to stay. “But why do you have to meet in person? Can’t you just email?”

Charlie shrugged. “She wants to come by the house,” he said, like that was that.

It bothered me. A lot. “She’s not going to try to seduce you, is she?”

“What!” The very notion prompted a coughing fit. “No!” When he recovered, Charlie said, “Turn off your brain, and go down to the coffee shop. Maybe you’ll run into Spielberg.”

The first time I’d ever gone there, Charlie had said, “That place is crawling with industry people,” and every time I’d gone since, I’d expected to see somebody, anybody.

It had become a little joke. “Who’d you see?” Charlie would say whenever I came home.

“Alfred Hitchcock,” I’d say. Or Robert Altman. Or Fellini.

And we were so deadpan, we didn’t even laugh.

In truth, I’d never seen even one industry person there—and I’d wondered if Charlie had made it all up.

But it turned out, Charlie was right.

That day, while Charlie was hobnobbing with Mistress Jablowmie—and possibly even Teej himself—and I was at the café, working on my laptop and quietly demolishing a banana muffin, who should walk in but the reigning queen of all industry people… the one and only Donna Cole.

I’m not kidding. Donna Cole!

Donna Cole. Director of Time of My Life. And The Lovers. And Can’t Win for Losing.

Donna Cole, whose most famous wise quote—“The most vital thing you can learn to do is tell your own story”—was the centerpiece of my vision board back home. Right next to the iconic red carpet photo of her in a white Wayman + Micah gown with her natural Afro high and bold and stunning like she was the patron saint of fashion and wisdom and rom-coms all rolled into one.

I’d loved her so long—and so madly—from afar.

And now here she was. Up close.

Very up close.

So up close that I stopped breathing when I saw her and didn’t remember to start up again until I began to feel woozy.

To be honest, my number one fantasy about coming to LA was that I might run into her by pure, nonstalkery accident, get to pleasantly chatting, give her the elevator pitch for The Accidental Mermaid, and then, when she looked intrigued, just happen to have a copy of it in my bag.

This is a common fantasy for aspiring screenwriters on the outside of the industry: running into their own personal Spielberg by accident. Common, but also impossible. A moment like that would absolutely never happen.

But… what if it did?

It wouldn’t. It couldn’t.

But that didn’t mean I hadn’t carried a copy of that ninety-three-page script in my backpack with me everywhere I went ever since the day I’d finished it—just in case it happened anyway. Like impossible things were more than welcome to do.

The worst-case scenario, I’d decided early on, wouldn’t be me carrying the script everywhere like a deranged hope junkie for years without ever getting the chance to hand it over. The worst-case scenario would be me actually running into Donna Cole but not having my screenplay with me because I’d given up too soon…

And then missing my chance.

Holding out hope for too long was one thing.

Giving up too soon was quite another.

You know what an elevator pitch is, right? It’s the one-line description of your screenplay that you prepare in case you ever run into your dream director in an elevator.

I wasn’t sure how many elevator pitches actually happened—in elevators, or anywhere else—but I did know they were crucial to write. And memorize. There were whole chapters devoted to them in screenwriting books.

I mean, if you couldn’t sum up your screenplay, who the heck could?

Here was my elevator pitch for The Accidental Mermaid: A woman doesn’t know she’s a mermaid until she falls off her mean new boss’s boat and sprouts a tail; now she must navigate her new identity, keep her dream job, and get her boss to fall in love with her before time runs out and her legs disappear forever.

You’d watch that, wouldn’t you? As long as I could guarantee that no Meryl Streeps would be harmed?

And Donna Cole could make that movie in her sleep. Pop Jack Stapleton into a slim-fit business suit and slap a tail on Katie Palmer—and Wah-lah! Your next summer blockbuster.

Actually, it’s mostly only Marvel movies that are blockbusters these days.

Maybe better to say: Wah-lah! Your next low-budget, moderately successful, character-driven comedy beloved by a not-small half of the population.

That wasn’t dreaming too big, was it?

Maybe it was.

Because even after all that vigilant, relentless, almost masochistically deranged hope I’d refused to let go of for so long… on the day I actually got my impossible chance?

I’d left my backpack at Charlie’s.

I forced myself to take a five-point-five-second breath.

Donna Cole.

She was here. I guess the impossible made its own rules.

I’d cried my face off watching My Beloved Stranger. And I’d practically memorized Good as Gone. And I adored her sexy remake of The Best of Things—damn all those snooty critics.

And here she was in the real world. Shorter and yet somehow so much taller than I’d ever thought possible, otherworldly and yet totally normal, divine and yet so human—and wearing a casual-yet-classy Dior wrap dress and surrounded, of course, by a gaggle of important-looking people.

What was my elevator pitch again? I’d practiced it so much, it was practically tattooed on my brain.

I rummaged through my memory. But the pitch was just… gone.

Time to think fast.

I pulled out my phone, nice and slow, keeping an eye on Donna Cole at all times like a wildlife photographer might track a rare bird that could flap away at any minute.

HEY, I texted Charlie. You busy?

His reply came right away.

What’s up?

Emergency

What’s wrong???

Need my backpack—Can you bring? URGENT

Where are you?

Coffee shop

And then… nothing.

Had he gotten another phone call? Lost interest? Fallen victim to Mrs. Jablowmie’s predatory behaviors?

Was his meeting over—and now he was coming? Or was the meeting still going—so I should try to sprint to his place and back here before Donna Cole escaped?

I closed my laptop and capped my pen. And then I hesitated—not sure what to do.

Minutes went by. Donna Cole ordered at the counter, then took a seat at a banquette around the corner.

More minutes went by.

Then more.

Maybe Charlie wasn’t coming. Who knew what the mistress might be doing to him by now.

I stood up. I couldn’t stand it. I had to do something.

But that’s when the coffee shop door swung open—and it was Charlie. Hair wild, shirt untucked, my backpack over his shoulder, out of breath like he’d been running. He scanned the room until he saw me, and then ran—ran!—over. “Here,” he said, shoving it at me. “Does it have”—he shook his head—“an inhaler or something? What’s going on? What do you need? Are you hurt?”

Ah. He’d thought I was having a medical emergency.

Oops.

“Nothing like that,” I said, waving my hands to help him regroup. “It’s just got my screenplay in it.”

Charlie coughed at that. “Your what?”

“My mermaid screenplay.”

He shook his head. “That’s your emergency?”

“Yeah.” I pulled the zipper and yanked it out.

“I thought you were…” Charlie said, still breathing hard. “Hurt or sick or something.”

At the thought of that, Charlie coughed some more.

“Shh,” I said, glancing Donna Cole’s way. “What is it with you and the coughing?”

“I’m not doing it on purpose,” Charlie said.

“It feels performative.”

“This from the woman who just made me abandon my meeting to sprint over here.”

That felt oddly touching. “You abandoned your meeting?”

“I thought you were dying. I was picturing you like a fish flopping around on dry land.”

I tilted my head, like Odd visual. Then I said, “I’m fine.”

“Clearly.”

I glanced Donna Cole’s way again. I could explain all this later. Then, real quick: “How do I look?”

Charlie shifted from puzzled to baffled. “How do you look?”

I patted around on my head. “Is everything—battened down? Pom-pom all in order?”

“You look,” Charlie started, and then he reached out to tuck a little curlicue behind my ear before finishing with “lovely, actually.”

“I will settle for not crazy. But ‘lovely, actually’ works, too.”

I targeted the banquette like an action hero. Time to do this.

“Thanks again so much, Charlie,” I said, and then, in my excitement, I accidentally bounced up on my toes and kissed him on the cheek—only realizing halfway across the café that it might not’ve been appropriate. “Sorry,” I called back then, giving him a scratch that wave as he stood blinking after me. “That was an accident.”

And then I rounded the corner and landed smack in the legendary presence of Donna Cole—and a table of industry people. When had all these other folks showed up? The memory’s a bit of a blur, but Katie Palmer was there. And that girl who starred in that thing about the trapeze artist. And that actress who always played the wisecracking best friend in everything. Dammit—what was her name? I loved her!

That’s when I noticed, nestled in among them, of all people: T.J. Heywood. Backward baseball cap and all.

How dare he sit at a table with my favorite director?

Something about the sight of him with his big dude-bro energy smacked me with reality like a board.

Oh, shit.

This was not some fantasy version of my life. T.J. Heywood could never even get a bit part in that. This had to be reality—where T.J. got to go wherever he wanted.

What could this group possibly be meeting about? Making an all-female, beach-bikini Beer Tower III?

No. Donna Cole would never let that happen.

One thing was clear, though. These people were all really here. At a table together. A table that T.J. Heywood had clearance to join. And I did not.

I froze.

Miscalculation.

I want to point out that, with the exception of T.J.’s hat, no one here was doing anything wrong. These people were just having coffee.

Iwas the one in the wrong.

In that moment, I switched sides.

All the glee I’d been feeling one second before just disappeared into the realization that, yes, Donna Cole was here in this café, and yes, I was also here in this café—but I had zero actual reason to talk to her. She had no idea who I was—nor would she care if she did—and, like everyone else at the table, had no interest in being accosted by a sad and desperate writer.

Ugh. Who did that pathetic writer think she was?

Wasn’t there a famous story of a nine-months-pregnant Amy Poehler falling asleep on the subway and waking up to an unsolicited screenplay teetering on her belly?

Oh, god. Was I that subway person?

I couldn’t be that subway person.

But I couldn’t let Donna Cole just walk out of my life, either.

There was an awkward grace period while the whole table ignored the figure standing cringily beside them with a screenplay in her hand. A moment when I should have spun a 180 on my heel and escaped.

But this is true: my feet couldn’t move. It was like they’d been soldered to the floor with a blowtorch.

Then, the grace period expired. The conversation stopped. And this veritable party bus of Hollywood royalty all just turned my way and waited, like a silent chorus of Who the hell are you?

A burning humiliation that started at my feet filled my body. My clothes felt hot. My collar got damp.

Time to say something—anything.

“I’m so sorry to interrupt,” I said.

Then I faltered as I caught a fleeting glimpse of Donna Cole’s expression, perhaps best described as: Seriously? What the hell? And I saw Katie Palmer with a similar one. And then I saw T.J. indulge in a little triumphant smile, anticipating how satisfyingly this moment was going to confirm every mean thought he had.

No way out but through. I pushed on. “I just wanted to…”

But what did I want to do? Foist my unwanted screenplay on Donna Cole? Beg her to love me? Burst into tears? Dissolve into fumes of shame? Perish?

“I just wanted to—” I tried again. Then, “I really don’t mean to—”

“Do you need something?” Donna Cole asked.

Oh, god. Oh, god. What had I been thinking, coming over here? Humiliation clutched at my neck. My lungs withered.

Eject! Eject!

I so badly wanted to turn and sprint out of there, leaving only cartoon streaks of shame behind. But my feet still wouldn’t move. And I was just wondering if my only option was to drop to the floor and crawl out on my hands and knees… when Donna Cole’s gaze shifted to the side and her face broke into a smile.

I turned, and there was Charlie. Hands in his pockets, hair pointing in ten different directions, demeanor all aw-shucks—but smiling big, like he knew exactly how cute he was.

“Charlie!” Donna Cole said, standing and reaching out for a hug.

“Donna,” Charlie said, leaning in to kiss both of her cheeks. “Radiant as ever.”

“Aren’t I?” she said, shrugging with pleasure. She took in the sight of him. “You look adorable.”

Charlie nodded. “I’ve taken up line dancing.”

“I love it,” she said. Then, leaning closer, she said, “What are you writing these days?”

“I’m writing a rom-com,” Charlie announced, loud and proud.

“What!” Donna Cole gasped—total surprise with a splash of delight.

Charlie nodded to confirm, like Yep. And then, god bless him, he yanked me sideways, put his solid, nothing-can-ever-hurt-you-again arm over my shoulders, and said, “Under the tutelage of this one.”

Charlie, I could kiss you.Wait—oops. I already did.

I felt all eyes shift to me, now under the loyal protection of Charlie Yates’s arm.

“But,” Charlie went on, “I guess you already know each other.”

Donna Cole looked me over with new eyes. “We were just… meeting.”

“Great!” Charlie said, making everything okay with his big we’re-all-impressive-people-here energy. “Emma Wheeler, meet the legendary Donna Cole. Donna Cole, meet my new favorite writer, Emma Wheeler.”

Donna Cole tilted her head. “Your new favorite writer, huh?”

I did not glance over at Jablowmie for his reaction to that pronouncement.

Charlie gave Donna Cole a lifted-eyebrow nod, like You better believe it. Then he said, like this was not an opinion, but a fact: “She’s good.”

Donna Cole looked back and forth between us. “Is she?”

Another nod from Charlie. Then, “Like I haven’t seen in—” He stopped and thought a second. “Nope. That’s it. Like I haven’t seen.”

Donna Cole looked at me, like Interesting. Then she scooted over at the banquette and patted the seat next to her. “Join us.”

“Nope,” Charlie said, clamping me tighter. “She’s mine today. But Logan Scott can set you up.”

Donna Cole squinted in approval. “Good to know.”

“Anyway,” Charlie said, looking around the table. “Great to see all of you.”

And then a funny thing happened: T.J. stood up, clearly wanting to emphasize his only-other-bro-in-the-group status, and leaned across the table in a burst for a fist bump—but he lost his balance and it turned into something Charlie had to dodge.

As the fist flailed toward his face, Charlie jerked away to the side and wound up smacking his forehead into my cheekbone.

Not that hard. But, yes—it hurt.

I made some kind of oh noise and dropped my face to my hands as Charlie turned toward me.

“Whoa—whoa—whoa—are you okay?”

Charlie was peering in now, touching at my hands, nudging them to move so he could get a better look.

“I’m fine,” I said, head down. “It’s fine.”

“Show me,” Charlie said, his voice soft, like there was no one else there.

I let him move my hands away so he could get in close for an inspection as T.J., who had just jostled and spilled every coffee on the table, went around apologizing and mopping up the table with paper napkins.

When the crisis was over, Charlie made his next and final move. He took my screenplay out of my hand and tucked it under his arm possessively, like it was something precious and thrilling and intended for him only—and he’d been waiting in agonized anticipation all day to get his hands on it.

Next, he pointed at me with impatience: “Did you say that quick thing you wanted to say?”

The question was like telepathy. I got exactly what Charlie was telling me. It was, I suddenly knew, not okay to hand Donna Cole a script out of nowhere, but it was fully okay—extremely okay, in fact—to tell her that you loved her work. Later, I’d thank Charlie a hundred times for helping me find my voice in that moment.

Of course, of course: it made so much sense.

Your first meeting with someone should never be an ask. It should be a give.

There wasn’t much I could give Donna Cole but admiration. But I genuinely had that in spades. I met her eyes. “I just wanted to say that I’m a wild, adoring fan of your work.” Then I added, “The peanut butter sandwich scene in The Lovers is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

I was right. Donna smiled at that. Her first real, non-Charlie-related smile this whole time.

And then, as Charlie started to steer us away, Donna put her hand on my arm. “Stay behind for one quick second?”

I looked at Charlie, like Do you mind?

And he nodded, like Go ahead. Then he glanced over toward my table and said, “I’ll be waiting over there.”

Take that, Hollywood.I was someone Charlie Yates would wait for.

Donna Cole waited until Charlie was out of earshot. And then she said, “Quick question.”

I nodded. “Of course. Anything.”

Then she tilted her head and said, “Is Charlie Yates in love with you?”

“What?!”

Donna Cole just watched me, like We both just saw the way he touched your cheekbone, and waited.

“No!” I finally said. “We’re just—just—writing colleagues. Doing—writing stuff together.”

She nodded, like Got it. But then she said, “I’ve just never seen him touch a woman like that, or look at a woman like that, or rescue a woman like that.” Then she thought about it. “Actually, I’ve never seen him rescue anyone. In any way. For any reason.”

“We’re not—” I said. “We’re just—”

Donna looked around the table. “You heard her, folks. No rumors.”

But of course nothing creates rumors like saying “No rumors.”

Judging from the way the table was smiling at me now, being the rumored love interest of Charlie Yates might not be a bad thing—if you weren’t too fastidious about it not being true.

“Okay, then,” I said. “Well. It’s so great to meet you.”

She reached out and took one of my hands in both of hers. “It’s actually great to meet you, too,” she said. “Any friend of Charlie’s truly is a friend of mine.” And then, before she let go, she gave my hand a warm squeeze, pulled me close for a kiss on the cheek, and whispered, “Don’t break his heart, okay? He’s much sweeter than he seems.”