Waiting for Tom Hanks Read online

  Even Hollywood stars need fast food once in a while! Drew Danforth relaxes with local girl Annie Cassidy in Columbus on the set of the new Tommy Crisante film. Is he finally moving on from Gillian? Let’s hope so!

  How do they know my name? Possibilities spin through my mind. Did Drew tell them? Does he have some sort of Kardashian-like setup where he leaks stuff to the tabloids? What’s going on?

  I don’t know, but I intend to find out. Before closing the site, I take one more look at the pictures. There’s a reason people don’t do professional photo shoots in McDonald’s—that overhead lighting is far from flattering—but I zoom in on Drew’s face. He’s grinning at me, looking genuinely happy, his eyes on my face. I think of those old pictures of my mom and dad, the ones where he’s looking at her like she’s the most wonderful woman on the planet. In fact, if you didn’t know Drew was an actor who gets paid to look at women like this, you might even think there was something between us.

  * * *

  • • •

  It’s impossible to talk to Drew on set that morning, which isn’t surprising since he spends all his time either acting or hiding, and anyway Tommy sends me on about fifteen coffee runs.

  “Our little internet star!” Chloe says as she hands me yet another black coffee.

  “How has this guy not combusted yet?” Nick asks. “Is it possible to OD on caffeine?”

  “Once I drank five espressos in a row,” Tobin says. “All that happened was I finished a paper and then barfed.”

  “Good to know, Tobin,” Chloe says with a grimace. “Have you asked Drew about the picture yet?”

  I shake my head. “I haven’t been able to talk to him. I don’t know what the deal is or how that picture got on Hollywood Gossip.”

  Chloe shrugs.

  “Wait a second,” Tobin asks. “Are you guys talking about Steve from Hollywood Gossip?”

  Chloe and I both whip around to stare at him. Nick ignores us all.

  “Yes,” I say slowly. There’s absolutely no way Tobin reads Hollywood Gossip because the only famous people he ever talks about are professional skateboarders. “How do you know about this?”

  “Okay, so some guy called here?” Tobin says, his eyes darting between us like he’s not sure what’s happening. “And I guess he knew Drew Danforth came here sometimes? And he asked if I knew who he went to McDonald’s with?”

  “You didn’t,” I whisper.

  “So I was like, sure, her name’s Annie Cassidy and then he asked what your job was, but . . . I couldn’t remember.” Tobin shrugs.

  “Tobin,” Nick says. “If you’re responsible for some gross dudes with cameras coming in here and harassing Annie and also peeing on the toilet seats—”

  “Did I do something wrong? You guys talk about Annie’s life all the time, and you’re really loud,” Tobin says. “I didn’t know it was, like, confidential or whatever.”

  I’m annoyed, but being mean to Tobin is like rubbing a puppy’s nose in the carpet it peed on.

  I sigh. “It’s okay, Tobin. Just . . . don’t give random callers information about me anymore, okay?”

  Chloe wipes off the counter. “That really shouldn’t have to be said.”

  Tobin still looks troubled, and I’m worried the stress might cause him to drop even more cups than usual, so I say, “Really, Tobin, it’s fine. But if that guy calls again, hang up.”

  Tobin nods, then drops the latte he’s holding, and then I head back to set.

  Chapter Twelve

  I hand Tommy his coffee and I’m about to go grab a prop he asked for when I hear someone yell, “Hey!”

  I turn around to see a woman I’ve noticed on set before but haven’t met. “Me?” I ask, pointing to myself.

  She nods. “Do you wear a size eight shoe?”

  I look down at my feet and back at her. “How did you know that?”

  She keeps her eyes on my feet, like she’s studying them. “I’ve been working in wardrobe for fifteen years. I can guess all your measurements just by looking at you. You’re a thirty-six B.”

  I cross my arms over my chest and my puffy coat. She is good.

  She waves me over, finally meeting my eyes. “I’m Angela, by the way. I’m trying to see if these heels will work for Tarah’s scenes tomorrow, but she’s busy rehearsing. Can you try them on for me?”

  I look over my shoulder to see Tommy talking to Brody and Drew about something. Brody is eating, again, and Drew is nodding intently, his eyes completely focused on Tommy—

  “Well?” Angela asks. “Can you?”

  I snap to attention. “Yeah, sure.”

  I pull off my boots and the thick socks I typically wear from November through March and slide my feet into a pair of red heels that have to be at least five inches tall. Even when it’s not winter, I’m more of a flats girl, so wearing these makes me feel a bit like I’m swaying in the breeze.

  “Hmmm,” says Angela, still staring at my feet. “Could you take a few steps?”

  “Uh . . .” I say, starting to walk, but it’s difficult since I’m basically on stilts. I balance on my tiptoes as I walk across the bricks and—

  “Crap!” I shout as my heel gets stuck between bricks and I topple to the side, my ankle twisting violently.

  “Are you okay?” Angela shrieks, leaping to my side.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” I mutter. I try to stand up, but a sharp pain shoots through my calf and I buckle back down. “Maybe I’m not fine.”

  I look up and see that everyone is now crowded around me—Tommy, Drew, and Brody have abandoned their conversation to stand over me. Brody, however, has not abandoned his burrito, and a black bean falls on my head.

  “Sorry,” he says as Drew shoots him a dirty look.

  “Annie!” Tommy shouts, as if I’ve injured my eardrum instead of my foot. “Are you all right?”

  Carter appears (seriously, it’s like I’m in a dream but also a hospital bed, all these good-looking men and Tommy floating above me) and kneels down. “Are you okay?”

  “People keep asking that. I just twisted my ankle,” I say, sliding my feet out of the heels before attempting to stand up again. This time I make it up, but I wince a little too obviously the second I put weight on my left foot.

  “I’m taking you home,” Carter says, placing a guiding hand on my back.

  “I can’t go home,” I say, despite the fact that a man saying, “I’m taking you home” makes tingles run through my body, even though in a fantasy situation he’d be saying it for much sexier reasons and not because I injured myself in a particularly treacherous pair of shoes.

  “We’re almost done for the day anyway,” Tommy says, waving a hand at me. “You go on home, put your feet up, see how you feel tomorrow.”

  Heat flows to my cheeks as I realize that everyone’s staring at me, the little injured girl. This is my job—the one shot I have to work on a movie—and I’m not throwing it away because I fell down.

  “I can stay,” I say quickly. “It’s not even that bad. I—”

  “Annie,” Tommy says, leaning forward to look me in the eyes. “I don’t run the kind of sets where people have to walk around injured, okay? Go home, tell Donny to make you some soup, come back tomorrow.”

  His kindness almost brings a tear to my eye. “Okay,” I say, then sit down in a chair Drew dragged over so I can put my socks and boots back on.

  “You sure bit it, huh?” Brody asks, his mouth full.

  “I sure did,” I say as I slide on my boots, trying to avoid touching my ankle as much as possible. “If you’re sure it’s okay, Tommy, I’ll head home.”

  “I can take her,” Drew says, looking at Tommy and then me. “I’ve got her.”

  I stare at him slack-jawed, then close my mouth. Carter’s hands are on my body (again, in a completely helpful and nonsexual way, but still), so you’d think Drew could see I don’t need his help whatsoever.

  “I’ve got it, man,” Carter says with a tight smile.
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  “I’m not even in this scene,” Drew says, taking another step toward me. “Whereas every scene of this movie needs proper lighting. Seriously. It’s fine.”

  “Seriously, I’ve got it—” Carter starts, and then someone calls his name. He looks over his shoulder and groans.

  “I’m fine, everyone,” I say, addressing the small crowd that’s rapidly dispersing. “I just have to . . . walk it off. It’s only a couple of blocks.” I attempt to take a step on my own and almost fall down.

  “I’m not letting my assistant fall into some shrubbery because she’s injured,” Tommy says. “Carter, I need you here on set. Drew, make sure Annie gets home.”

  “You want me to order a Lyft?” Brody asks, but before he even has the question out, Drew’s lifted me up.

  “Excuse me!” I shriek. “What are you doing?”

  “Walking you home,” he says with more of a grunt than I think is absolutely necessary. “What’s the point of having all these muscles if I never get to use them?”

  “Oh, my God,” I mutter as we walk past everyone on set, all of them staring at us. I look over Drew’s shoulder at Carter and mouth, “Sorry!” as I wave. He gives me that raised-hand dude wave, a look on his face that I can’t entirely decipher.

  But I find it very hard to worry about Carter when I think about where I am: in Drew’s capable arms.

  “Wave to the people, Annie,” Drew says. “Your loyal subjects await your greetings.”

  I groan but offer up a weak wave.

  I tell Drew to keep walking down the street to get to my house, and I wonder if the German Village residents are going to be confused that a guy is carrying a woman down the sidewalk. But then the Coatless Wonder walks by, and I remember that we see weirder stuff than this most days.

  Drew turns his head to watch the Coatless Wonder walk away. “Is that guy not cold? It’s, like, twenty-five degrees out here.”

  “Hey,” I say, changing the subject, because Drew’s carrying me like a particularly large baby and/or sack of potatoes and it’s making me feel a little awkward to have his hand so close to my butt. “Did you know there’s a picture of us on a gossip website?”

  Drew frowns, and since he’s holding me inches from his face, I see every single line that frown creates around his mouth. The way his eyelashes curl a little more than you’d expect. The way his cheeks flush pink from the cold. The way his bottom lip sticks out when he’s thinking . . .

  “I don’t ever look at them. What was it?”

  He looks at me, our faces so close that the eye contact is uncomfortably intimate. I look at his coat as I answer. “It was some pictures of us at McDonald’s. They knew my name—I guess they called Nick’s and one of his employees, Tobin, didn’t know he shouldn’t tell them who I was.”

  Drew grimaces. “That happens a lot. They’ll have a ‘source’ who claims to be very close to you, and then it turns out the ‘source’ is someone you went to high school with who you maybe sat beside in English once.”

  “It’s weird knowing my picture and my name are out there for anyone to look at,” I say. Swaying in Drew’s strong and secure grip, I could probably go to sleep right this moment. “Do you get used to it?”

  “Never,” he says, so serious that I wonder how those pictures of him and his grandpa ended up online.

  “I saw a picture of you and your grandpa,” I say before I can think about how weird it sounds to admit that. But then again, he did see me googling him, so he already knows I’m a big creep.

  I wince. “I mean, I know it was crappy of me to look you up, but I did, and I saw the picture and—”

  Drew’s chest vibrates as he groans. “Yeah. That picture. I can’t even tell you how much I wish that wasn’t out there.”

  “Then why is it?” I ask. “Turn left here.”

  Drew sighs, and the air from his mouth hits me right in the face. “Kind of a long story, but I was dating someone a while ago, and we had . . . I guess you could say different priorities. I liked my privacy, and she was always thinking about how she could spin stories from our personal lives into an interesting angle for People magazine.”

  I don’t know for sure, but he must be talking about Gillian Roberts.

  “She’d never met my grandpa, since he died before we got together, so I told her about him and showed her that picture. For her eyes, not everyone’s. But she thought it would show people . . . I don’t know, that I’m not some ridiculous asshole who doesn’t take anything seriously, I guess? She hated the shit I did on red carpets and in interviews. So she sent it out to magazines, and long story short, that was the final straw for us.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Go through the park here, okay?”

  As we walk though the park, underneath the trees with bare branches and the piles of gray snow, Drew says, “I just hate this part of the job. It’s so boring. Like, those articles with random facts about celebrities . . . do I actually need to know George Clooney’s favorite color? I don’t even think George Clooney cares about George Clooney’s favorite color.”

  I try to shrug, but it’s kind of hard to do when someone’s carrying you.

  “Anyway, I know it makes me look like an asshole sometimes or like I don’t take anything seriously, but that’s why I do all that stuff in interviews.”

  “Like wearing a fake mustache,” I say softly.

  “Wow,” he mutters. “You really did google me, didn’t you?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Or, like, whenever I see someone following me with a camera, I just fall down. I learned how to do pratfalls in high school, and I’m legitimately good at falling down without injuring myself—a weird skill, I know. I wish I remembered something more useful from school—but then they stop taking pictures and they rush over to see me and we usually end up having a conversation, instead of them taking a picture of me so internet commenters can talk about what kind of sunglasses I’m wearing.”

  He sighs. “I know this probably doesn’t make a ton of sense to you, and I sound like some spoiled rich dude whining about how hard his life is—”

  “No,” I say with such force that he glances at me, surprised. “I think you know how hard life is.” After all, like he told me in the Book Loft, it’s why he makes things—to make people forget about their miserable moments.

  “Okay, this is my street,” I say. “Just a couple of blocks. You didn’t have to carry me to my house, you know. I could’ve managed it.”

  “Yeah,” Drew says, shifting my weight a little bit, “but then I’d be kind of a dick, wouldn’t I?”

  I meet his eyes again and see that he’s smiling at me, looking for all the world like . . .

  Well, like someone who’s probably played a scene like this in a movie. A damsel in distress, a strong man who’s able to carry her, a moment where their faces are so close that they just . . . might . . . kiss. Because that’s his job, I remind myself. Being charming. Acting.

  And then his grip feels less solid, and I realize I’m falling. I shriek, and his grip tightens again as his smile gets wider.

  “Just kidding,” he says. “I’m not gonna drop you.”

  “What the hell?” I ask, smacking his arm. My hand lingers there for a moment, and I’m basically clutching him as he carries me. I pull my hand back and cross my arms in front of my body. “That wasn’t funny,” I mutter.

  “It was a little funny,” he says.

  “You’re kind of an asshole, you know that?” I say.

  Drew laughs. “I can tell you think that, but in my family, being an asshole is how you show you like someone. I’ve never hugged my brother, but I put him in a headlock every time I visit home, and I love him more than anybody. And every time my mom sees me, she doesn’t bother to tell me that I’m doing a good job, but she does make fun of how ridiculous I looked when I had to do a sex scene.”

  “Your mom watched your sex scene?” I ask, appalled.

  He raises his eyebrows. “What, you’re disturbed? Trus
t me, I’m more horrified by it than you could ever be.”

  “Your family sounds weird,” I say, but the truth is, his family sounds nice. The idea of coming home to two parents, to a little brother, to a group of people who know you well enough to make fun of you. It sounds wonderful.

  But I don’t have a chance to think about it anymore, because we’re in front of my house.

  “This is it,” I say. “You can let me off here.”

  “And what?” Drew says. “Make you hobble up the stairs? My Southern mother would never stand for that.”

  “Is this situation in your official Southern Manners Guide?” I ask. “What to Do When You Encounter a Poor, Pathetic Girl Who Tried to Walk in Heels?”

  “Maybe not in those exact words,” Drew says as we climb the stairs. I shift my weight a little to find my keys in my coat pocket and slide them in the door.

  Drew easily maneuvers me inside and suddenly, I’m seeing our house as a stranger—or a movie star—would.

  “I know it’s nothing special,” I say in a rush. “It’s messy and cluttered and that couch is about a million years old, but—”

  “Annie,” Drew says with a laugh, and I’m struck again by the way my name sounds coming out of his mouth, like no one’s ever said it before. “This is amazing. I’ve been living out of a hotel room; this looks like paradise to me.”

  He walks around the living room, still carrying me, inspecting the artwork and the knickknacks, of which there are many. I notice everything now; the way our outdated wallpaper is slightly curling right there at the corner, the way that throw pillow is threadbare, the way the TV is covered in a thin layer of dust.

  “Your parents?” he asks, gesturing with his head toward the framed wedding photo on the wall.

  “Yep,” I say, and he gives me a smile, a tiny, sad one, one that says he understands.

  “Your mom was really beautiful,” he says. “I mean, your dad was beautiful, too. Don’t wanna leave him out.”