As long as we were being real . . . “Why not?” He had signed up to write one, after all. And while the massive upfront fee and months of being relentlessly wined and dined (aka The Full Monty Special) had certainly helped, he’d known the brief from the start: The producers wanted a modern twist on the “meet-cute”—that moment in a romantic comedy when the two love interests meet for the first time. They used the term frequently, as if showing off their knowledge of the genre.
NOB sneered. “I write real life, not fantasy. Romantic comedies are meaningless make-believe for people too stupid to realize they’re being fed a pack of lies about love.” He looked at me distractedly. “Your hair is very big,” he said.
I touched it. The curls had separated in the heat and steam from the espresso machine. There was no saving it, so I shrugged, recognizing a distraction tactic. “Rom-coms give people hope when they need it most.” I flashed back to all the times I’d rage-watched You’ve Got Mail post-Breakup so I could throw things at Tom Hanks’s face. Not relevant. “They have heart, and meaning, and they help people.”
“You’re talking like you think they’re realistic.”
“I do, actually.” Or I had, once. Not that he needed to know that. I used to love how Ricky would say the way we’d met was a meet-cute. Not destiny, but something like it. I’d stumbled into an alley, during one particularly overwhelming assistant drinks, needing some air, only to meet a guy doing the same thing from the bar opposite. If it had been a few minutes earlier for either one of us, we’d never have met, never known that our person was, for a brief window of time, only a few meters away.
I exhaled slowly. The pain from the Breakup had dulled over the last twelve months, but occasionally it could still surprise me.
NOB snorted, clearly mistaking my expression for misty-eyed whimsy.
“That’s cute,” he said. “I don’t do cute, and that’s all those hack producers want. I write movies about the kind of love people recognize. Obsessive, needy, toxic, real love, not meet-cutes.”
Movie. One movie. Singular. But this wasn’t the moment to remind him of that.
“A Heart Lies Bleeding is beautiful, but it’s not the only kind of love story out there,” I insisted, aware of how painfully earnest I sounded.
“You watched my movie,” he said, leaning back against the unit. “And you liked it?”
It ended with both characters unable to admit that their relationship has disintegrated beyond repair and staying together anyway. It had made me sob so hard I had to follow it with a Disney marathon just to feel like there was light left in the world.
“Of course. But people need The Proposal just as much as they need A Heart Lies Bleeding. A good meet-cute shows us it’s possible for a single moment to change everything for the better.”
NOB shook his head. “Please. No one’s ever met anyone the way they do in those movies. The coincidences. The clichés. In real life if someone spilled a drink on you, you’d be pissed off, maybe sue them if it’s a hot one, not fall for them. Real love can’t be contrived.”
“Tell that to Tinder,” I said tiredly. Not for the first time, I marveled at the irony of a bunch of men appointing NOB the new Nora Ephron.
He slid the creased addendum pages back toward me. “Tell the producers I’m not signing. I’d rather return the money than risk my reputation on this trash.” NOB turned away from me, pouring himself another smoothie from the machine. “My life coach will be here at ten. You can let yourself out.” As quickly as that, I’d been dismissed. It was like a spotlight had been turned off.
I picked up the papers, knowing I had no choice but to tell Monty I’d failed to even get us three more months.
“I told Monty from day one I didn’t want to do this,” NOB said as I walked away. “He shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Then why agree to write it in the first place?” I snapped, turning. The words were out before I could stop them, and I found I didn’t care. If the agency was going under anyway, what did I have to lose?
NOB ignored me, leaving me to stand there, getting angrier and angrier. It was his stupid ego that had got us all into this mess, agreeing to write something when he couldn’t actually . . .
Wait. Was that it? Could it be that the great and powerful NOB had writer’s block after all?
It made a terrible sense. What if he’d had every intention of writing the rom-com . . . but couldn’t? NOB had been hailed as one of Hollywood’s hottest new talents, yet in the three years since he’d won his Oscar he hadn’t given Monty a single script to sell. Monty would excuse him, saying that greatness couldn’t be rushed. But then Sam-and-Max had come along offering him their next project. What if he’d signed on to show Hollywood he was still hot property . . . only to find rom-coms weren’t the easy ride he’d imagined?
Time to test this theory.
“I know how you can write this rom-com.”
NOB glanced around as if in surprise. “Oh, you’re still here?” he said.
“Just listen. In three months’ time, you could have a finished script, just like you originally agreed. You keep the money. Sam-and-Max sing your praises in Hollywood. We all walk away happy.” NOB rolled his eyes. “Or,” I said, going straight for his weak spot, “we cancel the contract and send out the release before the end of the week.”
“Release?”
“To get ahead of any announcement from Intrepid,” I said airily. “The producers will want to publicize that they’re looking for a new writer and that Ezra Chester is off the project.”
NOB wouldn’t just be the award-winning screenwriter with no follow-up. He’d be the man who couldn’t write a rom-com. It doesn’t seem like such a silly genre now, does it?
For a few seconds, he said nothing, his eyes going distant. Then his attention snapped back to me.
I held my breath.
“I know I’m going to regret saying this,” he said. My heart did a preemptive victory jig. “But I’m listening.”
Thank you, NOB’s ego.
The genre wasn’t the real problem, it was his excuse. I just needed to find a way to get him writing. I’d start with coaxing him to admit he was wrong about rom-coms. Given his scorn for meet-cutes, all I had to do was show him it was possible to meet someone exactly the way Harry met Sally . . .
How hard could that be?
“If I prove it’s possible for people to meet exactly like they do in rom-coms, you can sign the addendum and write the script secure in the knowledge that the genre is realistic and completely on brand for you.”