is, a full head above me. I look up at him and start to shake, so I pinch myself again.
“Annie,” Drew says, and he puts his hand over mine. “What does Sexy Gaffer think of your screenplay?”
I shake my head.
“Does he not know you’re a writer?” Drew asks, his low voice incredulous.
“We haven’t talked about it,” I whisper. “Yet.”
Drew shakes his head, the disbelief written across his face, which I can see quite clearly because it’s mere centimeters from mine. We’re so close that I’ve started converting things to metric. “That’s bananas, because I could tell you were a writer from the moment I met you. Well, not the moment when you didn’t speak and I temporarily thought you were French. But after that, I could tell. You have the vocabulary of a writer, and you just . . . seem like you have something to say.”
I get that these words in this configuration wouldn’t mean much to most women. Maybe other women would like to hear that they’re beautiful or irresistible or flawless, but for me, for someone who’s spent years feeling like she had nothing to say, this might be the kindest thing anyone’s ever said to me. That Drew saw that in me before he really even knew me . . . it means more to me than anything.
He leans even closer. Another beat and closer still. How is there even still space between us? How much longer can this keep going on? How long do I have to wait before his lips touch my lips and—
“Hey, sweetie?”
The door creaks open and Uncle Don pokes his head into the room. I yelp, jump back, land on my injured foot, and crash into my desk before bouncing off and landing on the floor.
Uncle Don, oblivious as always, doesn’t notice that he interrupted a tension-filled moment in which I think a kiss might have actually been about to happen. Or at least it was a moment in which I wanted a kiss to happen, a thought that fills me with an exciting feelings-cocktail made up of excitement, despair, dread, and just a dash of nausea.
“Annie, honey!” He crosses the room and kneels beside me.
Drew does the same. “Are you okay?”
Drew reaches out, and I pull away. “I’m good. I—actually, can you guys go downstairs? I want to get changed. I’ll be down in a second.”
Uncle Don nods. “I came up to ask Drew if he could help me put a leaf in the dining-room table. The guys are about to come over, and Dungeon Master Rick always complains that the table’s not big enough.”
Drew shoots me that look again, reminding me that I never explained the whole D&D thing to him; he probably thinks he’s helping Uncle Don set up for some weird sex party. I just shake my head and give him a look that I hope communicates I’ll explain later.
“Sure,” Drew says. “I couldn’t live with myself if Dungeon Master Rick was disappointed.”
“He’s a difficult man to please,” Uncle Don says with a sigh, which really doesn’t help the whole “this looks like a sex party” situation.
I listen as Don and Drew walk downstairs, and as soon as I’m in the clear I pull my phone out of my pocket and call Chloe.
“What’s wrong?” she answers.
“Nothing!” I say. “I mean, I’m a little injured, but that’s not the issue. I think . . .”
I trail off, unable to even put what just happened into words.
“What??” Chloe practically shouts.
I look at my photo of Nora and gulp. “I think Drew and I almost kissed.”
Chloe screams for a full ten seconds, which doesn’t sound like that long but is actually a very long time to scream.
“Are you done?” I ask.
“Yeah. Wait . . . no, yeah, I’m done. What the hell, Annie? How did this happen? How did things go from you being all, ‘Nooooo, Roman Holiday is a bummer’ to ‘Sure, let’s bone a movie star’?”
“We haven’t boned, Chloe. We didn’t even kiss. Uncle Don walked in and I fell over and now they’re downstairs getting ready for D&D.”
“Back up. Why is he at your house? What’s going on?”
I tell Chloe the whole story, and she’s silent for so long that I start to think the call dropped. But then she says, “So how many times, total, have you fallen over today?”
“Twice.”
“Okay. And you’ve also run into Drew and spilled coffee on him.”
“Yes.”
“And didn’t you run into Carter when you met him, while carrying a comically large stack