* * *
• • •
On my way back from the morning’s first coffee run, I slow down on my walk back to the closed-off block that constitutes our set. Sure, all the lighting and equipment and people milling around in their puffy black coats may take away a little of the glamour, but not much. This is still a movie, aka my dream. Even though Tommy’s coffee is rapidly cooling in this freezing air, I stop for a moment to take it all in. There’s Tarah, a real-life famous actress, talking to someone and gesturing to something in a binder. There are the crewmembers, spilling out of the previously empty storefront that the movie took over. Before my eyes find him, I hear Tommy’s voice booming, and then I see him, his arms waving and eyebrows raised, talking to Drew and a man who has a ponytail and—
Wait, what is Uncle Don doing on set?
I run-walk toward them, muttering curse words under my breath as the coffee sloshes out through the hole in the lid.
“Uncle Don! Hey! Why are you here?” I attempt to say casually, but it comes out as more of a breathless yelp. Three heads swivel toward me.
“Hey, Annie!” Uncle Don looks so happy to see me that I feel guilty for questioning his presence, but as usual, he doesn’t seem offended. “Tommy invited me to check out the set! And meet the cast!”
Drew gives me a wide-eyed grin and wiggles his eyebrows a couple of times, like he’s Groucho Marx or something. Even this bizarre gesture somehow looks good on him.
“How nice for you,” I say, turning away from Drew and focusing on Uncle Don.
“Let me tell you something about your Uncle Donny,” Tommy says, grabbing Don’s arm and launching into a story I can barely pay attention to because of my growing discomfort that Drew Danforth is standing so close to my only living family member. Like, it isn’t enough that he makes fun of me every day on set, in the coffee shop, and occasionally in a fast-food dining environment. Now he also has to learn personal details about my uncle’s past that he can presumably use to mock me at a later date? No, thank you. It’s all just too much.
“And anyway,” Tommy says finishing his story, “in the end the chinchilla was a little startled but no worse for the wear.”
“I wish I could say the same for myself,” Don says with a laugh, and I’ll admit, I’m at least a little curious about this story. But there’s no time for that now.
I laugh as if I’ve been paying attention. “Okay, well, Uncle Don, you probably have to get going now, right?”
Don checks the Luke Skywalker watch I bought him for Christmas (the hands are tiny lightsabers) and shakes his head. “My shift at the Guardtower doesn’t start for two hours.”
“Great!” Tommy claps him on the back. “Then let me show you around!”
Before they walk away, Drew reaches out for a handshake, and Uncle Don turns to me. “Annie, can you believe that Drew has never read The Wheel of Time? Unbelievable, right?”
Truthfully, it’s not unbelievable that Drew hasn’t read a fourteen-volume high fantasy series, but I don’t say that. “Shocking,” I agree.
Once Don and Tommy are out of earshot, I point at Drew. “Stop talking to my uncle.”
Drew shoves his hand into the pockets of that stupid flattering pea coat that looks like something Colin Firth would wear while playing an uptight barrister who’s secretly a big softie. “I was being friendly. Maybe you should try it sometime.”
I snort, resolutely promising to ignore that attractive pea coat and focus on the very annoying person inside it. “Oh, please. You’re gathering intel so you can come up with more stuff to make fun of me for.”
“Make fun of you?” Drew shakes his head. “Yeah, I’m assembling my Annie Cassidy dossier and that tidbit about the time your uncle inadvertently stole a sorority’s pet chinchilla is the perfect addition. What won’t I do with that information?”
“Don’t act like you were so interested in what Don was saying.”
Drew throws his hands in the air in an exaggerated shrug. “Like, yes? I was? I apologize that I enjoy talking about books with well-read people.”
“Oh, are you going to start reading The Wheel of Time series now? Well, I’ve got news for you, buddy: each volume is like a thousand pages, so good luck.”
Drew squints, his cheeks pink from the cold air. “I do know how to read, you know. You may remember that I was perfectly capable of reading that McDonald’s menu.”
I blush at the mention of our fast-food quasi-date. “The McDonald’s menu is less challenging.”
Drew shrugs again. “It’s definitely shorter.”
“And less gory,” I say, subdued now that Drew doesn’t seem interested in arguing with me. I mean, not that I enjoy arguing with him.
“I have to get back to work,” Drew says. “I suggest you do the same, Coffee Girl.”
Righteous indignation flows through my veins once more as Drew salutes me in a manner that can only be described as sarcastic, which wasn’t even something I was aware salutes could be until this moment.
As he walks away, I say, “Don’t give me that sarcastic salute,” in a voice that is perhaps too loud, and one crewmember stops what he’s doing to stare at me.
“Sorry,” I mumble, then head off to find Tommy and Don.
* * *
• • •
Several hours later, long after Don has gone to work, Tommy hands me a big stack of papers and asks me to go put them in a binder in his trailer. Truthfully, I kind of love stuff like this—moments when all I have to do is competently use a hole-punch and feel great at my job. It’s while I’m contemplating how capable I am that my foot catches on something, and then I’m falling, the papers in my arms flying skyward.
“Shit!” I say as my knees hit the ground, all delusions of competence gone. “Shit shit shit shit shit shit.”
“Are you okay?” asks a deep voice.
All of Tommy’s pages are now scattered on the pavement. I keep muttering to myself, grabbing a sheet that fell into a puddle of brown Ohio winter slush. “Shit shit shit shit,” I keep muttering, but this time much more quietly.
The deep voice laughs, and I finally look up. “Oh,” I say, startled, as I look into the eyes of a surprisingly attractive man. I mean, it’s not surprising that he’s attractive, since I don’t know him at all, but dropping a bunch of things and then being assisted by a handsome stranger is . . .
Well, it’s something that happens in a rom-com.
The man keeps picking up papers, assembling them into a neat stack.
“Thanks for the help,” I say, grabbing another one. “And, uh. Sorry for the shit tirade.”
He laughs, a deep, throaty thing, and meets my eyes. His are blue and clear and, all of a sudden, I’m watching this interaction take place on a screen, while sitting in a plush movie theater seat and digging my hands into a large popcorn with extra butter and salt.
And then I do what I always do when I’m flustered. I keep talking.
“I’m not usually this clumsy. Really. But I was taking these papers to Tommy’s trailer and I tripped over this wire and . . . seriously. What is this wire doing here? It’s a hazard. There are, dare I say it, too many wires in the world generally, but specifically right here, in front of me. Who put this here, right in the path of everyone walking?”