The Rom-Commers

Chapter Twenty-Four

CHARLIE WAS RIGHT.

By the end of the next day, I really would hate him.

But I didn’t believe that at the start.

At the start, I couldn’t even imagine not liking him. In forty-eight hours he’d kissed me madly like I’d never been kissed before, and bought me peonies, and then gazed at me longingly in a drunken state. Other than the whole mystery phone call—followed by the storming out and the bar fight—all signs were good.

All signs about me, anyway.

So when Charlie finally emerged from his room the next day around noon, I had already resolved to talk to him.

I’d expected to find him looking rough. There was no way he wouldn’t have a brutal hangover. But he showed up at the dining table shaved, showered, and as neat and tidy as writers ever get. Looking quite dashing, in fact—aside from that shiner on his right eye and the little Band-Aid trying to cover the cut. Even his split lip managed to look rosy. How could he look so good today—after yesterday?

I walked closer and intercepted him at his chair before he could sit down.

“Can I talk to you?” I asked.

Maybe the slight wince that crossed his face should have been a red flag. And maybe it’s never a great idea to proposition a hungover man. But I’d been up since six, and I’d changed outfits three times, and put on mascara, and I was nervous and ready to get it over with.

Timing was never my thing, anyway.

“What is it?” Charlie asked, not meeting my eyes.

“I woke up thinking about how you told me last night that I was your favorite person—” I began.

“Did I?” Charlie interrupted.

That threw me a little. Did he not… remember? “Yeah,” I said, peering closer for a sign of recognition. “You told me I was your favorite person. In the entire world.”

“That doesn’t sound like me,” Charlie said.

“Well…” I said. “You said it.”

“If you say so.”

This conversation was already off the rails, but I was so focused on the plan I’d been formulating all morning that I couldn’t seem to shift. I just kept churning forward on the thing I’d decided to do. Which was to confess to Charlie that I liked him.

“Anyway,” I said, “I keep thinking about how much I’ve loved getting to be here with you, and work with you. But it’s not even just the working. It’s everything—you know? The grocery shopping, the morning swims, the…” I was starting to lose my nerve. “The shenanigans.”

Charlie frowned like he didn’t love my word choice. “The shenanigans?”

I nodded. “And the thing is, when you kissed me the other day—I was just flooded—just overtaken, really—with this feeling of infatuation. At first I thought it might just be hormones or, you know, just a chemical reaction to being kissed after”—I hesitated, and then finished with—“kind of an epic dry spell in the love department.”

The love department? Oh, god. This was not the elegant soliloquy I’d written in my head.

“But the thing is,” I went on, taking a breath. “The thing is… it didn’t go away.”

Charlie shook his head. “What didn’t?”

I took a deep breath for courage, and I held his gaze. “The infatuation.”

Charlie’s shoulders dropped.

Which didn’t seem like a good sign.

But I’d started this, and apparently I was going to finish it.

I went on. “I seem to have—kind of—developed a thing for you. A strong thing. A distracting, preoccupied, swoony, crush-like thing.”

Charlie closed his eyes, like Fuck.

Up until I’d started confessing, I’d felt strangely sure that he had a thing of his own for me. But as I stood there, in real time, I could feel that hope blowing away like dandelion seeds on the wind.

But I kept going. “Over and over, since you showed up in my life, you’ve helped me and looked after me and been a genuine source of strength. And I don’t know what happened on the phone yesterday, but I do know one thing for sure. I want to be a person who does that for you, too.”

Charlie dropped his head and pressed it against his hand, like I’d just said the last thing he wanted to hear.

“Whatever’s going on,” I said, “I want to help.”

At that, Charlie lifted his head back up, and he had a new expression: a combination of determined and stoic and fully uninterested. “That’s not a good idea.”

“It’s not an idea,” I said, like maybe I could win with a rhetorical technique. “It’s a feeling.”

But Charlie just shook his head. “Emma, you can’t.”

I shook my head back. “I can’t?”

“We’re not going to have that kind of relationship.”

“But,” I said, “the”—I wasn’t sure how to describe it, but I finally went with—“kissing thing that happened?”

Charlie straightened his shoulders. “That was a bad call.”

A bad call? What was he—a referee?

I felt like I needed to stand up for that best-kiss-of-my-life kiss. “I thought it was a good call.”

His voice was a monotone. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

I really wasn’t following. “Why not?”

“Because we”—he gestured between us—“can’t start anything.”

“Too late!” I said. “It’s already started.”

“Then it needs to stop.”

“What if I don’t want to stop?”

“That’s not relevant.”

“It is to me!”

“I’m sorry,” Charlie said. But he didn’t sound sorry.

Was this a version of his tell? Was he pretending not to care because he cared so much? But why would he do that? There was no reason to.

“Charlie,” I said, meeting his eyes and taking a step closer. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Charlie said. “I just—don’t like you like that.”

I could feel my throat tightening with disappointment. “You don’t?”

“I don’t.”

“Not… at all? Nothing?”

Charlie just watched me.

“Okay,” I said. “But… so… why does it feel like you do like me like that?”

Charlie shook his head. “Maybe it’s because we’ve been living together. Maybe it’s because we found a great writing groove. Maybe you’ve been alone too long.”

“I’ve been… alone too long?” That was his autobiography—not mine.

“I don’t know, Emma!” Charlie said, like something had just snapped. “It was a mistake. It was a fucking mistake!”

At that—at Charlie Yates using the f-word against our beautiful, ethereal, life-changing kiss—I stepped back.

But Charlie was worked up now. “We don’t know what’s happening! We don’t know the future! All you want is answers—but I don’t have any! I could move to Alaska tomorrow! I could sail around the world!” Charlie threw his hands up, like Who knows? “I could get back together with my ex-wife.”

At that, I started coughing for no reason. As soon as I’d recovered enough to talk, I said, “Who did you just say you’re getting back together with?”

“Could,”he corrected, like that was an important point.

“Get back together with—?”

“My ex-wife,” Charlie said, without blinking.

“The mean one?” I said, like there might be other choices.

Charlie nodded, but he said, “She’s not actually mean.”

“The ex-wife who left you on the day you got cancer?”

He gave me a look. “Yes, but—”

“The ex-wife you don’t even like?”

Charlie made a weak protest: “It’s complicated.”

“You hid from her in a kitchen pantry like she was some kind of banshee!”

“That happens in a marriage sometimes,” Charlie said.

“You’re not even married!”

What was happening? What was going on? I was so confused. Ten minutes ago I’d been floating on an afterglow of a kiss for the history books from a guy I was 99 percent sure was exactly as into me as I was into him… and now he was thinking of getting remarried—to a person he couldn’t stand?

Unbelievable! But maybe I just didn’t want to believe it.

Maybe I really had been alone too long.

“Are you dating her?”

“Who?”

“The mean ex-wife.”

“Not yet,” Charlie said. “But we could start. Any day now.”

What?

“I’ve heard a lot of crazy things in my life,” I said then, “but this is the craziest.”

Charlie nodded like he agreed. Like we were both baffled.

But I guess the takeaway here was that Charlie had said no. Charlie had said he wasn’t interested. Charlie had said it was a bad call.

That wasn’t confusing. That was simple.

I felt things for Charlie, but Charlie—apparently—felt nothing for me.

So that just had to be the end of that.