“Wait, what?” she screeches, and I put a hand over her mouth. Maybe this was a bad idea.
“It’s just . . . you guys have perfect romantic comedy chemistry. You’re the quirky girl who doesn’t believe in love, and he’s the gruff dude who’s clearly obsessed with her.”
“Nick isn’t obsessed with me,” Chloe says, giving me a steely glare.
“Agree to disagree.”
Chloe smacks me on the arm. “This entire time, you’ve been writing about me? You showed Tommy Crisante a screenplay about me?”
I shrug. “I mean . . . yeah, sort of. Although in my screenplay you and Nick make out, which hasn’t happened in real life, as far as I know.”
“It certainly has not!” Chloe snaps, then hides her face in her hands.
“This isn’t that weird!” I say. “Look at The Big Sick. Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon wrote that about their real-life love story.”
“Yeah.” Chloe scowls. “But that was about their own love story. You’re basically writing fan fiction about my life. What, did you call us Rick and Zoe?”
I don’t say anything.
“Annie!” she shouts. “Change the damn names!”
I put a hand on her arm. “Hey. Are you really not okay with this?”
She eyes me warily. “You wrote a movie that’s a fictionalized version of my life where I end up making out with my boss. You get that that’s weird, right?”
For the first time, it hits me that . . . well, it is more than a little weird for her. To me, it was just writing, but she never signed up for Tommy Crisante to read a highly fictionalized version of her life story.
“Do you want me to scrap it?” I ask. “Because I can. Our friendship means a lot more to me than a movie.”
Chloe’s shoulders slump. “No, I don’t want you to scrap it. I mean, Tommy Crisante is already showing interest in it, and that’s a big deal for you.”
“He said it has potential,” I hedge. “A pound of raw hamburger has the potential to make a great burger, but that doesn’t mean I can eat it without cooking it.”
Chloe stares at me.
“Not without getting E. coli poisoning, anyway,” I say.
“Stop trying to change the subject to tainted beef.” She turns to face me fully. “This is the only thing you’ve been really passionate about the past few years, and I don’t want to stand in the way of that.”
“Chloe,” I say, my eyes welling with tears. “You’re the best.”
I pull her into a hug, and she says into my shoulder, “But try to make sure someone really hot plays me, okay?”
“I’ll do what I can,” I say, releasing her. As the preflight video plays and the flight attendant makes sure we’re all buckled in, it starts to sink in that I’m on a flight to New York. To find a man and . . . do what, exactly? Maybe I didn’t really think this plan through.
“What am I doing, Chloe?” I ask in a tiny voice, and she turns to face me again.
“Remember in The Wedding Singer? Remember how Adam Sandler needed to stop Drew Barrymore from getting married to that total jerk, so he got on a plane?”
I nod.
“In that scenario, Billy Idol was there, and also Adam Sandler had written a really lovely song about Drew . . . you haven’t prepared any music, have you?”
“I have not.”
“Okay, so we don’t have that, but everything else checks out. This is your big The Wedding Singer grand gesture, and air travel is the most romantic form of travel. Well, except for train, but that’s not exactly an option right now. Anyone can send a text; you’re going to show up in person.”
I nod again. Chloe’s right; this is a pretty grand gesture, and it worked in The Wedding Singer . . . Of course, as she mentioned, Billy Idol was there and Adam Sandler wrote a song. I look around the plane and I don’t see even one celebrity, major or minor. I’d settle for a YouTuber right now.
“I’m nervous,” I say.
Chloe pats my arm. “Of course, you are, but it’s Drew. Just go over your big, dramatic speech in your head.”
The plane takes off, and I immediately fall asleep. For some reason, this has always been my reaction to stress—if I’m facing too much or getting too nervous, my body’s like, “You know what? Let’s sleep this one off.”