Drew hands me the granola bar, and I put my head on his shoulder, which is easy to do because I’m still sitting on the counter. “Sleepy,” I say.
“Go to bed.” Drew kisses me on the forehead, and I think about how nice this could be, forehead kisses and granola bars and a human being looking out for me.
I follow him into the living room, where he pulls the blanket off the back of the couch. “I’m perfectly comfortable down here, so don’t worry about me,” he says. “But come get me the second you wake up, okay?”
“It’s late,” I say. “Don’t you have someplace to be?”
He shakes his head and walks over to me. “My flight doesn’t leave until Sunday night. I have nothing to do this weekend except focus on you.”
He leans in to kiss me softly, and that full-body tingle is back. I want him to keep going but he stops, pulls back, and gestures toward the stairs with his head. “Sleep. Go.”
I brush my teeth and put on pajamas (I do not own sexy pajamas, but I do manage to find some pug-printed pajama shorts that are at least cute, although pairing them with my Pizza Slut shirt is maybe not the most inspired fashion choice). Just before I slide into bed, I glance out the window at the snow blanketing our tiny backyard, covering the bird feeder and the garden gnomes and the steps up to Chloe’s apartment. Nothing has ever been so cozy as being snowed in at my house with Drew Danforth downstairs (well, maybe if we were in the same bed . . . a minor detail). Nothing has ever felt so safe and warm. I want to keep thinking about Drew, letting all the things he said wash over me, but I’m so tired that I fall asleep the second my head hits the pillow.
* * *
• • •
I jolt awake, one thought in my mind: Drew Danforth. Here. In my house.
I look at my bedside clock—it’s 5 A.M. Still dark, but the sky outside my window is turning from black to blue. My mouth is dry and tart, so I get up and brush my teeth.
Part of me doesn’t believe Drew could be here—that must be a dream I had, one where an impossibly good-looking man wants to feed me granola bars (listen, there have been weirder fantasies). Before I can question this any more or talk myself out of it, I tiptoe down my stairs.
He’s on the couch, but he’s not asleep. He’s scrolling through his phone, and he looks up at me, the screen glowing blue on his face in the dark. The way his eyes change when he sees me—that has to mean something, right? That what he said last night was true? That this isn’t just a one-time thing for him?
“Are you feeling better?” he asks.
I nod, then realize he probably can’t see me in the dark. “Yes.”
“Good.” He throws his phone on the floor, crosses the room in a few steps, and picks me up.
Chapter Nineteen
There’s plenty of sex in current romantic comedies, but I wouldn’t call Nora Ephron’s films particularly racy. Yes, in When Harry Met Sally . . . you see Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan when he’s in a post-sex panic, but you’re left to imagine the actual act. In Sleepless in Seattle, they’re all the way across the country for most of the film, so there isn’t even physical contact, let alone sex. And in You’ve Got Mail, the chemistry between Tom and Meg is so intense, so crackling, that we can only assume they’re having intense, crackling sex in her cozy apartment right after the credits roll. But we don’t need to see it to know it’s real.
Which is why, about my night with Drew, I will just say this: we totally had amazing sex.
I stand at the foot of my bed, marveling at how cute Drew is when he sleeps. At some point he put his gray thermal back on, which is somehow even sexier than him with his shirt off (although that’s plenty sexy too, as I now know). His face is smashed into my pillow on my twin bed and his feet dangle off the edge, just as I imagined they would. This is real.
I snap a photo on my phone to send to Chloe, because if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a picture of Drew Danforth in my