“The chances of him being shirtless in this weather are slim, you know.”
She looks wistfully out into the street. “A girl can dream, Annie.”
Staring at my future place of employment is making me feel kind of shaky, so I link my arm in hers. “Come on. Let’s go make fun of Nick for the next fifteen minutes.”
I spin us around and immediately collide with a wool-coat-clad chest. My coffee flies out of my hand and drenches the person in front of us.
“Whoa!” he shouts, and when I look up I topple backward.
It’s Drew Danforth.
Chapter Five
“Are you okay?” he asks, grabbing my arm and pulling me off the ground.
I wouldn’t describe myself as someone who is normally at a loss for words. I mean, I write for a living and as a passion. I have no problem making small talk with strangers, and I can handle myself at parties. But right now, the only words running through my mind on a loop are Holy shit.
I blink a few times, staring straight into Drew Danforth’s face. It’s like when you’re a kid and there’s a solar eclipse, and all the teachers are like, “Don’t look directly into the sun! You’ll destroy your retinas!” but there’s always that one kid (Johnny Berger, in our class) who can’t stop staring.
In this situation, I’m Johnny Berger. And I guess Drew Danforth is the sun.
“Are you okay?” he asks again, enunciating his words even more, as if my understanding him is the problem. His brown eyes, I notice, are flecked with tiny bits of gold, which is something you can’t see when you watch him on TV. His hair is just as voluminous as it seems in pictures, but in person, I have the almost overwhelming urge to touch it, to reach out and pull on that one lock of hair that hangs over his forehead.
“She’s not responding.” He turns to Chloe. “Is something wrong?”
“She’s French,” Chloe says without missing a beat. “She only speaks French.”
“I’m not French,” I say, breaking my silence. Chloe’s and Drew’s heads swivel to look at me.
“I’m sorry about your coat,” I whisper, then I run toward Nick’s.
Chloe bursts in the door behind me, the bell jingling in her wake. “I’m not French?” she screeches. “Those are the first words you spoke to Drew Danforth? Really?”
“Well then, why did you tell him I was French?” I shout, ignoring the curious stares of everyone working on their laptops and the calming melody of whatever Nick put on to replace the Doobies.
“I don’t know!” She throws her hands in the air. “You weren’t talking, so I thought I’d give you an interesting backstory!”
I put my hands over my face. “This is ridiculous.”
“No,” Chloe says, grabbing me by the shoulders. “This is your meet-cute, and now you need to go back out there and find him and say something that isn’t a negation of your Frenchness or an apology for destroying his probably very expensive coat.”
“Meet what?”
Nick stares at us from behind the counter, a dish towel in his hand.
“A meet-cute”—Chloe stands up straight, shoulders back, as if she’s delivering a Romantic Comedy 101 lecture to Nick and his patrons—“is the quirky, adorable, cute way the hero and heroine of a romantic comedy meet.”
Everyone stares at her blankly.
“Or hero and hero. Or heroine and heroine. Not to be heteronormative,” she clarifies.
“Like how me and Martha met at her wedding,” Gary says.
Chloe thinks about it. “I don’t know that I would necessarily call that one a meet-cute, but sure, Gary.”
“Did you just make that up?” Nick asks, arms crossed.
I shake my head. “No. It’s a thing.”
“Watch a romantic comedy, dude,” Tobin says.
Nick rolls his eyes.
“Anyway,” Chloe continues, “Annie straight up ran into Drew Danforth and spilled a cup of coffee all over his coat, which is, like, the cutest of meets.”
“That doesn’t sound very cute,” Nick says skeptically, rubbing the scruff on his chin. “Was it still hot?”
“Scalding,” I say, sinking into my chair and resting my head on the table.
“Sounds like a meet-painful,” says Gary, and a few people laugh.
“Thanks,” I mutter. “I’m so glad you all find my embarrassment entertaining.”
“Annie!” Chloe sits down across from me as a customer walks in and the rest of the shop stops paying attention to us. “This isn’t embarrassing. This is merely a story I’ll tell in my toast at your wedding to Drew.”
I lift my head to look at her. “I hate to break this to you, but I don’t think he’s my Tom Hanks. I think he’s just a famous guy with a possible third-degree burn on his chest. And now my first day on set is going to be super awkward because I accidentally assaulted the lead actor with a beverage.”
Chloe’s about to say something, but then a song starts and she closes her mouth, looking up toward the speakers. “I swear to God, I told Nick not to play any more Bon Iver. It makes people look up their exes on Instagram, not buy coffee. I’m gonna go put on some Hall and Oates.”
As she walks away, I rest my head on the table again. As if it wasn’t embarrassing enough to have my uncle get me a job on set, now I have to deal with this.
But maybe the most embarrassing thing—more embarrassing than having an uncle who pulled strings to get me a job and more embarrassing than spilling coffee on a famous person—is how I felt when I looked into Drew Danforth’s eyes. Frozen. Tongue-tied. Starstruck. Like the world slowed down and all of a sudden it was just the two of us there on that sidewalk, like nothing and no one else mattered.
Snap out of it, Annie, I think. He’s a movie star . . . a dude who gets paid to make millions of women feel like that all the time. Just because he’s very good at his job, at making you think he’s the (extremely hot) guy next door and he would totally love you if only he knew you, doesn’t mean that he’s your Tom Hanks. I mean, I’ve also thought on numerous occasions that Drake and I would be great friends if we hung out because we like the same things (cozy sweaters, hometown pride, Rihanna), but that doesn’t mean I actually think we’re going to become BFFs. Also, Drew is known for pranks, and while some people may find that kind of stuff funny, I definitely don’t.
Drew Danforth isn’t a sad widower or a seemingly callous chain bookstore owner, I remind myself. He’s a literal movie star, and Tom Hanks didn’t play a movie star in any of his rom-coms. That would be more like Notting Hill, and honestly, Julia Roberts was kind of a jerk in Notting Hill. A beautiful jerk, but still a jerk.
Maybe Drew will forget all about me by the time we start filming. He probably meets a lot of people every day, and although most of them don’t spill coffee on him, I’m not under the assumption that I’m all that memorable. Maybe frizzy-haired, klutzy women who barely speak are normal for him. Maybe this sort of thing happens all the time.
Chapter Six