When he sees my blank expression, he slowly says, “Wait. Do you not like Chopped?”
I shrug. “I’ve never seen it. I don’t really watch cooking shows.”
“Oh, no no no,” Drew says. “Annie. Chopped isn’t a cooking show. It’s an immersive experience. It’s a lens through which we view American culture. It’s a lifestyle.”
I eye him skeptically, then sit down on the other side of the couch, leaving one cushion between us. “Um, okay?”
Several episodes later, we’re opening our second bottle of wine, and I’m shouting, “No! Don’t try to use the ice-cream machine! You just said you’ve never used one!” at a contestant who is most certainly about to get chopped for abusing mascarpone.
“This is what always happens in the dessert round!” Drew says, sloshing a bit of wine out of his glass. “They either make a boring-ass bread pudding or they go buckwild with that damn ice-cream machine.”
I snort-laugh and send wine flying out of my mouth. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk about something so passionately.”
“Oh,” Drew says, “I’m plenty passionate. About lots of things.”
I steal a glance at him out of the corner of my eye as the chef on TV complains about his ice cream not freezing properly, which, duh, of course it didn’t. Drew’s cheeks are flushed from the wine, and he looks like a little kid who just came in from playing in the snow. It’s unexpectedly endearing.
The episode ends, and our wine-drunk Chopped spell breaks.
“It’s late.” He takes a look at his phone. “I should . . . I should probably go.”
“It is late,” I say, drawing out the words. “And you should probably go.”
Because he probably should. But the real question is, do I want him to?
No, I answer my silent question in my head. I want him here, with me, because this house is so not empty when he’s here. I don’t want to be alone and I want to be with Drew and my thoughts are running around each other in tipsy circles, but he’s already standing up and walking toward the door.
I don’t know how long we’ve been here—that’s the wonder of Chopped, I’m realizing, that it renders time meaningless—but when he opens the door, we both gasp.
There’s easily a foot of unshoveled, unplowed snow on the steps, the sidewalks, the street. A black lab and his owner walk down the center of the street, past buried cars, but other than that no one’s out. A blanket of silence hangs heavy over everything.
“It . . . snowed,” I say, watching the flakes fall in the light from the streetlamps.
“It sure did,” Drew says, holding his coat but making no move to put it on.
I don’t know what it is—if it’s the confidence I got from Tommy’s pep talk, or the way-too-much wine I had, or the fact that Drew and I kissed tonight and I would really, really like a repeat performance, but I’m feeling bold.
“Well, um.” I clear my throat. “That’s a lot of snow, and you might get stuck in it.”
“Get stuck?” Drew asks with a smile, turning to me.
I nod vigorously. “Frankly, this looks pretty dangerous. I think you need to stay here tonight. For, you know, purely safety-related reasons.”
Drew nods, shuts the door. “Are you sure?”
“Do you want more wine?” I ask. “And we can watch more Chopped.”
Because that’s the thing about Chopped. It’s always on.
* * *
• • •
I’m honestly not sure how many episodes of Chopped we’ve watched by the time we finish the second bottle of wine. It all runs together in a stream of chefs who are trying to prove something to their parents, judges who don’t think dishes are well-executed or creative, and contestants forgetting to put all their basket ingredients on their plates.
At some point we ate an entire frozen pizza and a bag of microwave popcorn, but the abundance of wine is making my tongue pretty loose.
“Where’s Don, anyway?” Drew asks.
“Oh!” I say. “A convention in Chicago. He’s a Wookiee.”
“Of course he is,” Drew says. “He’s got the build for it.”
I nod once, but my head keeps nodding of its own accord. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it. That’s what I always say.”
Drew laughs and I put my feet in his lap. “Why do you have to go to New York?” I ask.
“Because.” Drew puts his hands on my feet and rubs them. “God, your feet are cold. I have to be on Good Morning USA to talk about the zombie movie I have coming out this week. We actually made it two years ago, but it took forever to find distribution and . . . this is boring. You don’t care.”
“What’s it called?” I squint, trying to remember. “A Zombie for Christmas?”
He snorts. “No. That sounds like a weird Hallmark movie. It’s called Winter of the Undead. It’s . . . I’m gonna be honest with you, it’s not a very good movie.”
I dissolve into laughter, then slap his shoulder for emphasis. “See? This is why you should only make rom-coms.”
“Well,” Drew says, looking right into my eyes. “This one certainly turned out pretty well for me.”
“You are very good-looking, you know,” I say, wiggling my toes.
Drew smiles at me. “You’re a little drunk, you know.”
“How are you not drunk? How much wine did you have?”
“Well, for starters, I’m six foot two, not five foot five.”
“I’m five foot five and three quarters,” I protest, because the distinction seems important to me at the moment.
“Do you want some water?” Drew asks. “I’m kind of worried about your hydration.”
I nod slowly. This, oh, this is nice, someone here to look out for me. Not that Uncle Don doesn’t care about me, and not that I need someone to look out for me, but all of a sudden I’m struck with the desire to always have Drew here to make sure I don’t drink too much and tuck me in at night and take care of me when I’m sick.
“Water,” I say. “Good idea.”
In the kitchen, I grab a glass out of the cabinet. I turn to go to the sink but before I can, Drew is there, and he easily picks me up and places me on the counter.
He kisses me, his hands on my face and in my hair, and I pull him to me. I wrap my legs around his waist and run my hands up under his shirt. “God, you have, like, no body fat,” I say into his mouth.
“It’s not always like this,” he says, his words vibrating into my mouth. “A few more weeks of McDonald’s and wine and you’ll be disappointed.”
“I don’t think I could ever be disappointed in you,” I say, and I’m too far gone to even be embarrassed.
Drew pulls back, and for a second I think that must’ve been too far, that I’ve said too much, but he puts his hands on my face and looks into my eyes.
“You’re pretty drunk,” he says, both a statement and a question.
I think about arguing, but it’s pretty clear, so I nod.
“I don’t want to do this right now,” Drew says. “I mean, I do want to do this. I really, really do. I think I’ve made that pretty clear. But I would like both of us to not hate ourselves or each other in the morning.”