“Is this situation in your official Southern Manners Guide?” I ask. “What to Do When You Encounter a Poor, Pathetic Girl Who Tried to Walk in Heels?”
“Maybe not in those exact words,” Drew says as we climb the stairs. I shift my weight a little to find my keys in my coat pocket and slide them in the door.
Drew easily maneuvers me inside and suddenly, I’m seeing our house as a stranger—or a movie star—would.
“I know it’s nothing special,” I say in a rush. “It’s messy and cluttered and that couch is about a million years old, but—”
“Annie,” Drew says with a laugh, and I’m struck again by the way my name sounds coming out of his mouth, like no one’s ever said it before. “This is amazing. I’ve been living out of a hotel room; this looks like paradise to me.”
He walks around the living room, still carrying me, inspecting the artwork and the knickknacks, of which there are many. I notice everything now; the way our outdated wallpaper is slightly curling right there at the corner, the way that throw pillow is threadbare, the way the TV is covered in a thin layer of dust.
“Your parents?” he asks, gesturing with his head toward the framed wedding photo on the wall.
“Yep,” I say, and he gives me a smile, a tiny, sad one, one that says he understands.
“Your mom was really beautiful,” he says. “I mean, your dad was beautiful, too. Don’t wanna leave him out.”
I laugh a little. “You can put me down now. You’ve safely delivered this damsel to her house, and your Southern duty is over.”
“Annie?”
I hear Uncle Don’s voice before I see him. He walks down the stairs, then stops when he sees us. Maybe some other person would wonder why a popular actor was carrying his niece through the house like a giant baby, but Don acts like all of this is normal.
“Drew! Good to see you again!” he says, smiling as if Drew is here on a purely social call. “Did you find the book?”
I snort, about to explain that there’s no way Drew would have the chance or inclination to finish a book that’s almost a thousand pages long, but before I can say that, Drew answers, “I’m reading it now.”
“And?” Don asks, eyebrows raised.
“It’s great,” Drew says. “But I’ve gotta ask . . . does Rand ever—”
“Shhh!” Don waves his arms, then points at me. “No spoilers. She hasn’t read it yet. I’ll lend you my copy of the second book so you’re ready to go when you finish this one.”
I turn my head slowly to look at Drew, my mouth open, and he shrugs. And then I remember, once again, that he’s still holding me and I say, “Okay, I’m getting down now.”
As Drew gently places me on the floor, Uncle Don finally notices that something is amiss. “Oh, Annie. What did you do? Do you want Dungeon Master Rick to look at it when he gets here? You know he’s an EMT.”
“No!” I shout, then my eyes bolt to Drew’s face. He’s looking at me with wide eyes. “I just tripped and hurt my foot. It’s the very definition of ‘no big deal.’”
“Can you carry her upstairs?” Don asks, turning to Drew, who’s apparently his new book bestie and most trusted friend now.
“I’m here to serve,” Drew says jovially.
“Oh, I don’t require any further assistance,” I say. “I’m capable of walking up the stairs.” Because the thing is, I really, really don’t want Drew Danforth to see the state of my bedroom and my tiny bed, when he probably has, like, a California King that’s covered in a million-thread-count sheets. Did I even make my bed today? Is there underwear on the floor? I’m not in the habit of leaving any clothing on the floor, but I’m sure this is the one time that all my underwear flung itself out of the drawers and onto the floor for the express purpose of embarrassing me in front of Drew.
I take one step and almost fall into the sofa.
“I’m not sure you are, actually,” he says, picking me up again. I don’t bother resisting. He carries me up the flight of stairs, then nods toward the first door on the right. “This one?”
I sigh. “Yes.”
“Ah,” Drew says as he pushes open the half-closed door. “This is it, huh? Where the magic happens?”
“If by ‘magic,’ you mean articles about hemorrhoid relief, then yes.”
“You’re still insisting that was for work, then?”
“Put me down.” I already had to have one conversation about hemorrhoids with Drew; I’m not having another one in my bedroom, of all places.
He places me gently on the bed, like I’m a doll he’s sitting on a shelf, like I weigh nothing at all.
“Thank you,” I say primly, trying to regain a modicum of dignity, which is hard when a man you barely know has just deposited you on your unmade bed (but, like, not in a sexy way). But Drew isn’t paying attention to me; he’s looking over everything on my desk.
“Are you working on something?” he asks, riffling through a few printed-out pages of my screenplay, and I forget about my foot and leap across the room.
“No!” I shout, grabbing them out of his hands. The pain catches up with me, and I wobble before he catches me. “This is . . . nothing. It’s nothing.”
“Is it a screenplay?” Drew asks, squinting and trying to read the words on the pages in my hand, his hand still on my arm.
I narrow my eyes and take a painful step back. “You’re really annoying, you know that?”
“It’s been said before,” Drew says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Fine. Don’t talk about it.”
“Great.” I stack the papers and place them back on my desk.
“But what’s it about?”
“Oh, my God,” I mutter. “Do you really want to know?”
“More than anything in the world,” he says, the slightest bit of a smile playing across his lips. Maybe when I first met Drew I would’ve thought this was sarcastic or mean, but I’m starting to understand him.
I shuffle through the papers on my desk. “It’s a romantic comedy. Obviously. It’s kinda loosely based on Chloe and Nick at the coffee shop, one of those banter-y, love/hate relationships where one of them doesn’t believe in commitment but you just know they’re gonna end up together.”
“So you’re the next Nora Ephron?” Drew asks, pointing to my framed photo of her.
I snort, loudly. “No one is the next Nora Ephron. She was one of a kind.”
Drew leans closer to inspect the photo. “What is it about her that you connect with so much?”
I look at the picture instead of at him. “It’s a lot of things. She worked hard. She was smart and funny and tough, and even when life knocked her down she kept going.”
“Like you,” Drew says. Hardly, I think, but I keep talking.
“That’s not it, though. I think the main thing I love about her work is that it’s sad. Everyone thinks of romantic comedies as being these sappy, unrealistic stories where love conquers all and everyone ends up happy at the end. But that’s not what her movies were at all. Like, in Sleepless in Seattle, you can’t really get any sadder than Tom Hanks missing his dead wife. And in You’ve Got Mail, Meg Ryan misses her mom and she loses her store. None of that gets resolved by the end. It’s not like Tom’s wife comes back to life, and Meg Ryan still loses the business her mom built.”