The Rom-Commers

by Katherine Center

I took that in. “You’ve read it?” I asked. “My eyes will never be the same, but yes—I read an entire draft.”

I just wanted to be happy—simply, uncomplicatedly happy—for like one evening. Was that too much to ask?

And Charlie Yates, my beloved Charlie Yates, my gold standard, my writer by which all other writers are judged, my absolute all-time screenwriting hero … He mutilated it. He besmirched it. He desecrated it.

It’s like hiring a crayon-toting kindergartner to repaint the Sistine Chapel! It’s like hiring a toddler with Play-Doh to rebuild the Eiffel Tower! It’s like hiring a teenager with a ukulele to rewrite Mozart!”

“So your self-esteem is”—I tilted my head to emphasize the sarcasm—“healthy.” “I don’t need self-esteem! I’ve got a whole drawer of Oscars!”

“Lean into the misery,” I told her, feeling wise and grown-up and cocky. “It’s good for you. It bolsters your emotional immune system.”

Nonchalance as a weapon. Disinterest as a weapon. Aerosol cheese as a weapon.

“He’s a Peruvian long-hair,” Charlie said. “His name is Cuthbert.”

“I’m pig-sitting.

“I don’t have anxiety. I just worry all the time.”

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.

Charlie Yates. Had dropped down on one knee. In front of me. On the floor of a honky-tonk. And was now tying my sneaker laces in double knots with gruff but unmistakable affection.

“There is absolutely no way to predict the infinite random forces in the world any of our choices will expose us to. How paralyzing would it be to even try?”

“I just got up every day, and went to bed every night, and tried to be a good person in between.”

My dad went on, “So if I say, ‘This terrible thing happened, and it ruined my life’—then that’s true. But if I say, ‘This terrible thing happened, but, as crazy as it sounds, it made me better,’ then that’s what’s true.”

“I’m more aware of how fragile and precious it all is. I’m more thankful, too—for every little blessing.

happiness is always better with a little bit of sadness.”

Charlie, you astonishing dummy. How could you ever think that pushing me away was a good idea?