mentioned the strength of his thighs. It’s not like I want to think about his thighs. It’s not like heat slowly flooded my body as a mental image of his thighs filled my brain.
Focus, Annie.
“And anyway,” he says, “I can’t find that Orb of Time book.”
“Wheel of Time,” I say, barely holding in my laughter. “Although Orb of Time sounds fascinating. Wait. Are you telling me you’re actually going to read it?”
“I don’t know,” he says, looking at the shelves. “Don really hyped it up. I mean, a hero’s journey, and the belief that time itself is a wheel? Who wouldn’t want to read that?”
“How long were you talking to Uncle Don before I showed up?” I ask in a low voice.
He turns his head slightly to face me. “A very, very long time.”
I swallow, then compose myself. “Cool. Well, you’re not going to find it here in the new releases, on account of it’s not even remotely new.”
“That’s fine. I’ll grab it later. Is this what you’re looking for?” he asks, holding up a green book with a bear on the cover.
“Blue. Wolf,” I remind him.
“Right.” He slides it back on the shelf and stands up. “I think we’re gonna have to move on to the next room.”
“Agreed,” I say.
“We can safely assume it’s not a travel guide,” Drew says as we walk past the tiny room that houses them.
“I don’t know if we can,” I say, quickly scanning the shelves for anything blue. “Tommy doesn’t even know what this book is about. Why he wants it so much is beyond me.”
Drew chuckles, pushing in behind me. I instinctively take a step forward and run into the shelf. This room is more like a nook, and it’s definitely not large enough for two people.
“Not here!” I say, ducking under his arm to get out.
We look through sports, business, and military history. Nothing. Drew keeps getting distracted and paging through books on personal finance and the Civil War, and I have to keep reminding him why we’re here. It’s a little bit funny, how he turns into an overgrown child in the presence of books.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you for a big reader,” I say as we walk into a small room that seems to be mostly psychology books. “Especially of epic fantasy series.”
He shrugs, scanning the shelves. “I like to read all kinds of things—it’s sort of like acting, you know? A way to escape into someone else’s life for a moment. I always like to find a bookstore in whatever city I’m in because they’re a good place to hide. Usually everyone’s so interested in whatever they’re buying that they don’t really look at you.”
I snort-laugh, and he turns to look at me. “What?”
“The attention thing again. Come on. Don’t act like you don’t like it.”
He raises his eyebrows. “I don’t.”
I gesture vaguely toward him. “Look at you.”
“Again,” he says, mimicking my gesture in a mocking way, “these rock-solid, impressive, very attractive abs are temporary.”
It would be obnoxious if he wasn’t smiling as he said it.
“And anyway,” he says, “I’m not an actor because I want attention.”
“Then why?” I ask, sliding a blue book with no wolf on the cover back onto the shelf.
“Because I like making people happy,” he says, tilting his head to look at the spines of books.
“Wow,” I say. “Conceited much?”
He looks up quickly and gives me a wry smile. “I don’t mean that I think my mere presence on screen causes joy.”
I look away, focus on the books, and wait for him to elaborate.
“When I first started acting, I was getting some roles, but mostly small ones. Like, a background character in a sitcom, or a jock in a teen movie. Stuff like that. But then my grandpa got sick, and I went home to Shreveport.”
I look at him, but Drew is still looking at the books.
“I wasn’t making serious money yet, and my parents both still had to work, so I quit acting for a little bit to do all the day-to-day stuff for my grandpa. It’s not like anyone in Hollywood missed Asshole Jock #2. My grandpa had bone cancer, which is pretty shitty, and it was my job to make sure he was taking his meds and eating what he could. But mostly I just hung out with him. I was used to seeing him so strong—I mean, he was a veteran, and he’d worked at a steel mill—but now he was so weak. He couldn’t really do anything but