“Holy moly,” Drew repeats with a smile. “You’re so Midwestern.”
“Don’t make fun of me,” I say as I start walking toward home.
“I’m not making fun of you.” Drew bumps his shoulder against mine. “It’s cute.”
I think about heading back toward Nick’s with Drew to blow Chloe’s mind, but she’d be able to tell we kissed just by looking at me (and she’d ask me too many questions about his penis that I don’t know how to answer). I’ll tell her tomorrow, but for now, I want to keep this one thing to myself, something private between me and Drew. One little moment that’s a bit like magic.
But this, right now, is a little magical, too. We walk down the sidewalk, the bricks covered in fresh snow, the kind that’s so fluffy it makes a satisfying crunch under our shoes. The snow tumbles down underneath the streetlights, getting caught in my eyelashes and my hair. As we turn to walk through the park, it all seems so cinematic. This is the scene in my rom-com when the characters realize they love each other.
“This is really pretty,” Drew says. “I kind of love snow.”
“Spoken like someone who grew up without it,” I say. “It’s beautiful right now, but tomorrow, when it’s all packed down and brown and covering your car, it kind of sucks.”
He brushes a snowflake off my face. “That’s fine. I’ll take it, if it means I get to walk through the park with you right now when it looks like this.”
I don’t know how to respond to his comment, so instead I try a classic Drew Danforth tactic and ask a question. “Hey, that thing you do when people are taking your photo, when you fall down?”
“Pratfalling.” He shoves his hands in his pockets.
“Yeah. When did you learn to do that?”
He laughs. “In junior high. Pretty impressive, right?”
“It’s actually a little—”
I scream as Drew drops to the ground, looking for all the world like his feet go over his head.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He pops back up and brushes the snow off of his coat. “I’m fine. Don’t worry—I’m a professional.”
“Oh, my God.” I smack him on the arm. “You scared me! Why do you even do that?”
He smiles as we start walking again. “Kind of a long story, but believe it or not, I wasn’t always this perfect specimen of manhood.”
He gestures to himself, and I can tell he’s kidding, but . . . well.
“In junior high, I was awkward in just about every way a kid can be awkward, and it wasn’t like kids bullied me, necessarily, but they definitely made fun of me on a regular basis and made me hate going to school.”
“I think that’s the definition of bullying.”
“Perhaps. Anyway, nothing I could do would make them stop laughing at me, so I thought, what if I was making them laugh? Like, what if I was so weird and so goofy that they thought I was hilarious and laughed with me?”
“And that worked?” I ask, incredulous.
“Were you or were you not amazed by my ability to pratfall back there?”
“Amazed. Terrified. Same difference.”
Drew shrugs. “Now that kids at school are bothering Ryan, I keep telling him to make it a joke. That all of this doesn’t matter in the long run. But the thing is, it’s kind of hard to tell a kid that what they’re experiencing won’t always be happening, because it’s all they know. But maybe when he grows up one of his bullies will send him a Twitter DM to try to get tickets to his movie premiere, and he’ll get to be like, ‘No way, loser.’”
“Is . . . that a personal example?”
“Maybe.”
We exit the park, and I don’t even have to tell him which way to turn to get to my house, since he’s been there twice already. “You’re pretty close to your family, huh?”
He nods. “Very close. Perhaps too close. My grandparents on my mom’s side are still around and on that side alone I have six aunts and uncles and I don’t even know how many cousins, and it all makes for very loud, chaotic Christmas dinners where my aunt Robin ends up getting drunk and attempting to start a sing-a-long of Christmas carols she swears are real but we’re pretty sure she just made up.”
I smile, but on the inside my heart is breaking because I want that. I want that so bad. This past Christmas, Uncle Don and I ate a wonderful