going to curtsy.
“Have a good night,” Drew says to Nick and Chloe as he heads toward the door. Right before he opens it, he meets my eyes and says, “Good luck with your work. I think it’s gonna help a lot of people.”
I don’t say anything as the door jingles shut. For a moment, the coffee shop is mostly silent, save the murmurs of the Monopoly players.
“What. The hell. Was that?” Chloe asks, ripping off her apron and walking out from behind the counter.
“I don’t know!” I say. “He came in here, made fun of my work—”
“No,” she says, sitting down across from me. “I mean what the hell did you just do?”
I raise my eyebrows.
“You have a chance to star in your very own rom-com,” she says, pointing at me like she’s a mother lecturing a child, “and instead you decide to be combative?”
“Chloe!” I say. “This isn’t a rom-com. He was being a jerk. He was mocking me. Like, sorry, I don’t make a million billion dollars, and instead I have to write ridiculous internet content and bring coffee to directors.”
She waves a hand. “It was playful banter.”
I shake my head. “I don’t like that guy. Tom Hanks would never do this.”
“Wasn’t he kind of a jerk to Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail?” Chloe asks.
“Outwardly. But he had a heart of gold and he cared about his family and—”
“Did he have a dog?” Chloe asks flatly. “A big, fluffy dog to show that he truly cared about someone other than himself?”
“Yes,” I say icily. “He had a lovely golden retriever.”
“Well, maybe Drew Danforth also has a heart of gold,” Chloe says. “You don’t know.”
I think about what I read about him online, all that stuff I already know about him making everything a joke. And about him making out with a literal model. But then there was that picture of him and his sick grandfather, so out of place among everything else.
“I kind of doubt it. Anyway, he saw me writing about at-home hemorrhoid relief, and I’m pretty sure no romantic comedy has ever mentioned hemorrhoids.”
“I don’t know.” Chloe tilts her head, walking slowly back to the counter. “Maybe something by Judd Apatow.”
“Hemorrhoids aren’t anything to be embarrassed about,” Gary says from the Monopoly table. “Half of people over the age of fifty have them.”
“Thanks, Gary,” I mutter, and I’m kind of being sarcastic but not really because I can use that in my article.
“Listen, I’m happy that you had your sweet meet or whatever,” Nick says.
“Meet-cute,” Chloe corrects him.
“Sure. But I’m not jazzed that Drew Danforth is waltzing in here. Remember when Bradley Cooper was here? We had people walking in for weeks, camping out at the tables and waiting for him to show up. They didn’t order anything.”
Chloe waves a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. It’s like that time Taylor Swift and Jake Gyllenhaal visited a coffee shop and people were really into maple lattes for a while, but everyone soon forgot about it. Except for Taylor. She wrote, like, an entire album about it.”
Nick stares at her. “Sometimes it’s like you’re speaking a foreign language.”
I zone out as Nick and Chloe keep talking. On paper, maybe Chloe’s right; maybe this would be a great romantic comedy. But Drew Danforth is a movie star, and I’m very much not, and he’s determined to repeatedly put me in my place. What kind of guy does that? Makes fun of a woman who makes possibly millions of dollars less than he does? Thinking about him makes me queasy and mad and nervous, and I don’t want to feel that way.
“Chloe,” I say suddenly and with force. She stops arguing with Nick long enough to look at me. “Set me up again, okay? Didn’t you say there’s a guy in your class I would love?”
She gasps, then claps. “His name’s Barry.”
“Great,” I say, getting back to work on my article. “Give me his number.”
I’ll text this Barry guy and talk to him about . . . whatever. It’s not romantic and it sure doesn’t feel like fate, but look at me! I can get dates, too. I might not be making bajillions of dollars on movies or dating models, but I can do this. Drew Danforth can suck it.
Chapter Eight
The only wrench in my “trying to forget about Drew Danforth and how much I hate him” plan is that I’m on the set of a movie he’s starring in, meaning I have to hear about him, oh,