I groan but offer up a weak wave.
I tell Drew to keep walking down the street to get to my house, and I wonder if the German Village residents are going to be confused that a guy is carrying a woman down the sidewalk. But then the Coatless Wonder walks by, and I remember that we see weirder stuff than this most days.
Drew turns his head to watch the Coatless Wonder walk away. “Is that guy not cold? It’s, like, twenty-five degrees out here.”
“Hey,” I say, changing the subject, because Drew’s carrying me like a particularly large baby and/or sack of potatoes and it’s making me feel a little awkward to have his hand so close to my butt. “Did you know there’s a picture of us on a gossip website?”
Drew frowns, and since he’s holding me inches from his face, I see every single line that frown creates around his mouth. The way his eyelashes curl a little more than you’d expect. The way his cheeks flush pink from the cold. The way his bottom lip sticks out when he’s thinking . . .
“I don’t ever look at them. What was it?”
He looks at me, our faces so close that the eye contact is uncomfortably intimate. I look at his coat as I answer. “It was some pictures of us at McDonald’s. They knew my name—I guess they called Nick’s and one of his employees, Tobin, didn’t know he shouldn’t tell them who I was.”
Drew grimaces. “That happens a lot. They’ll have a ‘source’ who claims to be very close to you, and then it turns out the ‘source’ is someone you went to high school with who you maybe sat beside in English once.”
“It’s weird knowing my picture and my name are out there for anyone to look at,” I say. Swaying in Drew’s strong and secure grip, I could probably go to sleep right this moment. “Do you get used to it?”
“Never,” he says, so serious that I wonder how those pictures of him and his grandpa ended up online.
“I saw a picture of you and your grandpa,” I say before I can think about how weird it sounds to admit that. But then again, he did see me googling him, so he already knows I’m a big creep.
I wince. “I mean, I know it was crappy of me to look you up, but I did, and I saw the picture and—”
Drew’s chest vibrates as he groans. “Yeah. That picture. I can’t even tell you how much I wish that wasn’t out there.”
“Then why is it?” I ask. “Turn left here.”
Drew sighs, and the air from his mouth hits me right in the face. “Kind of a long story, but I was dating someone a while ago, and we had . . . I guess you could say different priorities. I liked my privacy, and she was always thinking about how she could spin stories from our personal lives into an interesting angle for People magazine.”
I don’t know for sure, but he must be talking about Gillian Roberts.
“She’d never met my grandpa, since he died before we got together, so I told her about him and showed her that picture. For her eyes, not everyone’s. But she thought it would show people . . . I don’t know, that I’m not some ridiculous asshole who doesn’t take anything seriously, I guess? She hated the shit I did on red carpets and in interviews. So she sent it out to magazines, and long story short, that was the final straw for us.”
“Oh,” I say. “Go through the park here, okay?”
As we walk though the park, underneath the trees with bare branches and the piles of gray snow, Drew says, “I just hate this part of the job. It’s so boring. Like, those articles with random facts about celebrities . . . do I actually need to know George Clooney’s favorite color? I don’t even think George Clooney cares about George Clooney’s favorite color.”
I try to shrug, but it’s kind of hard to do when someone’s carrying you.
“Anyway, I know it makes me look like an asshole sometimes or like I don’t take anything seriously, but that’s why I do all that stuff in interviews.”
“Like wearing a fake mustache,” I say softly.
“Wow,” he mutters. “You really did google me, didn’t you?”
“Sorry.”
“Or, like, whenever I see someone following me with a camera, I just fall down. I learned how to do pratfalls in high school, and I’m legitimately good at falling down without injuring myself—a weird skill, I know. I wish I remembered something more useful from school—but then they stop taking pictures and they rush over to see me and we usually end up having a conversation, instead of them taking a picture of me so internet commenters can talk about what kind of sunglasses I’m wearing.”
He sighs. “I know this probably doesn’t make a ton of sense to you, and I sound like some spoiled rich dude whining about how hard his life is—”
“No,” I say with such force that he glances at me, surprised. “I think you know how hard life is.” After all, like he told me in the Book Loft, it’s why he makes things—to make people forget about their miserable moments.
“Okay, this is my street,” I say. “Just a couple of blocks. You didn’t have to carry me to my house, you know. I could’ve managed it.”
“Yeah,” Drew says, shifting my weight a little bit, “but then I’d be kind of a dick, wouldn’t I?”
I meet his eyes again and see that he’s smiling at me, looking for all the world like . . .
Well, like someone who’s probably played a scene like this in a movie. A damsel in distress, a strong man who’s able to carry her, a moment where their faces are so close that they just . . . might . . . kiss. Because that’s his job, I remind myself. Being charming. Acting.
And then his grip feels less solid, and I realize I’m falling. I shriek, and his grip tightens again as his smile gets wider.
“Just kidding,” he says. “I’m not gonna drop you.”
“What the hell?” I ask, smacking his arm. My hand lingers there for a moment, and I’m basically clutching him as he carries me. I pull my hand back and cross my arms in front of my body. “That wasn’t funny,” I mutter.
“It was a little funny,” he says.
“You’re kind of an asshole, you know that?” I say.
Drew laughs. “I can tell you think that, but in my family, being an asshole is how you show you like someone. I’ve never hugged my brother, but I put him in a headlock every time I visit home, and I love him more than anybody. And every time my mom sees me, she doesn’t bother to tell me that I’m doing a good job, but she does make fun of how ridiculous I looked when I had to do a sex scene.”
“Your mom watched your sex scene?” I ask, appalled.
He raises his eyebrows. “What, you’re disturbed? Trust me, I’m more horrified by it than you could ever be.”
“Your family sounds weird,” I say, but the truth is, his family sounds nice. The idea of coming home to two parents, to a little brother, to a group of people who know you well enough to make fun of you. It sounds wonderful.
But I don’t have a chance to think about it anymore, because we’re in front of my house.
“This is it,” I say. “You can let me off here.”
“And what?” Drew says. “Make you hobble up the stairs? My Southern mother would never stand for that.”