bed is worth, like, a billion. She’s going to lose her shit. I include the caption “Drew Danforth is currently asleep in my bed,” in case she isn’t clear on what’s happening. And then I add, “He’s circumcised btw,” because I know it will make her laugh and also because he is.
I want to crawl back into bed and curl up next to Drew’s warmth. Instead I walk into the bathroom to take a shower, because I would like to not be totally gross when Drew wakes up and sees me in the full light of day, and also because I’m hoping I can sort of wash away my white wine hangover. I think about what we’ll do today, places I can take Drew. Maybe he wants burgers and we could go to Thurman’s, or maybe he’s feeling pizza and I could take him to Harvest. Is this what it’s like to have a person, someone to do things with, someone who isn’t my uncle?
I may no longer be drunk on white wine, but my head is spinning with this feeling.
Drew said a lot of things last night. That he wanted me to come visit him when he’s back in LA, that he wants me to come with him to New York on Sunday, that he wants me to meet his family in Shreveport. And each one of those things made it clear: this is my movie. Chloe was right; everything before this was a misunderstanding or a miscommunication and now it’s all worked out. He’s my Bill Pullman with the large, lovely family in While You Were Sleeping and my Julia Roberts in Notting Hill (but, again, much less of a jerk). He’s my Tom Hanks. I found him.
I get dressed in something that I think says “casual yet cute,” which is just leggings and yet another large sweater, because apparently all my style icons are from ’90s movies. I don’t put on makeup, and I walk into my bedroom with my hair still wet.
The bed is empty, the sheets and quilts rumpled, and the indentation from a head visible on the pillow.
My heart surges. Maybe Drew went downstairs to make me breakfast. I mean, we haven’t talked at all about whether or not he can cook, but wouldn’t that be a perfect detail in a romantic comedy as a way to show that he’s the ideal man? There he is at a skillet, effortlessly flipping pancakes while the coffee brews!
I walk downstairs, sniffing the air for the telltale scent of breakfast, but stop at the foot of the stairs when I see Drew pulling on his boots.
Maybe he’s going out for coffee, I think, but some of my optimism drains out of me.
“What are you doing?” I ask, and he stands up.
“Are you kidding me right now?” he asks, his voice measured and bland in a way that I haven’t heard before. He walks to the door and pulls his coat off the hook.
I follow him, telling myself not to look too much like an eager puppy. “What do you mean? Are we talking in questions now?” I smile, hoping it comes off as cute but afraid it comes off as frantic.
He raises his eyebrows as he puts his coat on, and then thrusts his phone into my face. “I woke up to a lot of texts and notifications.”
I lean in to look at his phone. Hollywood Gossip is on the screen, and it’s a photo of Drew in my bed. It takes a moment for things to click into place, for me to figure out what’s going on here. How is there a picture of Drew in my bed? The picture I just took? That I sent to Chloe? Did Chloe send it to Hollywood Gossip? But why would she do that?
Oh no. Oh, no. I pull my phone out of my pocket and go to my texts.
There it is. The picture I just took of Drew, the one I thought I was sending to Chloe? I sent it to Hollywood Gossip in my sleepy post-sex haze. Chloe is almost always my most recent text, so I must’ve responded to the first one without thinking about it.
“Oh, my God, Drew, this was an accident,” I say. “I took . . . okay, so this sounds weird, but I took a picture of you to send to Chloe because she’s been wanting us to get together and I knew she would be so excited and you just looked