Waiting for Tom Hanks Read online

  I guess Drew’s always good at hiding his real intentions.

  Drew catches my eye and smiles, that ridiculous, lopsided smirk, and I look away before it can affect me.

  I mean, it still affects me a little, but I tell myself I’m immune to it now. Getting so close to him in my bedroom was like getting exposed to chicken pox when you’re young, and now I can’t get it again.

  Except that I just wrote an article about chicken pox, and I know that sometimes it comes back as shingles when you’re much older, but that’s not the point here.

  When Tommy asks me for another coffee, I’m glad to go get it.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Hey,” Drew says, sidling up to me as I attempt to open another phone charger for Tommy—the third one I’ve bought him, since he’s always losing his.

  “Oh, hello,” I say, pretending that I’m running into a political canvasser whose opinion differs from mine, but I still have to be polite because we’re both human beings. See? Drew Danforth isn’t the only one who can act.

  “This weather, huh?” He bumps his shoulder into mine.

  “Please don’t use your impressive bulk to knock me over.” I try to focus on the phone charger, but it was pretty easy to open and doesn’t really require any more concentration. I wind the cord around my hand a few times, pretending that this is an important task.

  “Whoa.” He reaches out and puts a hand on my arm so that I’m forced to stop wrapping the phone cord around my hand. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s . . . going on?”

  I turn to face him and raise my eyebrows. “What’s going on? Are you serious?”

  His eyes search my face. “Annie, I—”

  I hold up my hands. “Don’t say my name like that, okay? I just . . . obviously, this meant nothing to you. That . . . moment, or whatever, in my bedroom. Carrying me home. Being so nice to my uncle. It was all a game for you.”

  Drew shakes his head slowly. His hand is still on my arm, so I pull away. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Have you checked Hollywood Gossip today?”

  He snort-laughs. “I never check Hollywood Gossip for the same reason I don’t repeatedly hit my head against a brick wall.”

  “Well then,” I say, vindicated, “I guess you missed the article about how you and Tarah are hooking up.”

  His mouth drops open.

  “And you thought I wouldn’t notice,” I continue. “You thought, ‘Oh, this little rube from Ohio won’t even know that I’m just flirting with her for fun.’”

  “Annie.” Drew grabs both my arms now and leans down so he’s right in front of my face. “That’s not true. That’s . . . that’s all made up.”

  “I broke up with Carter for you, you turd!” I whisper-shout, not wanting everyone nearby to hear us but also kind of wanting everyone nearby to hear us, so they’ll all know exactly what type of person Drew is.

  “You—what? You broke up with Sexy Gaffer?” Drew’s mouth drops open and I hate to admit, even an expression of dopey surprise looks good on him.

  “Like you even care, you asshole,” I hiss, and oh, this is satisfying. Really letting it rip, letting out all my frustration, using a few choice but still tame curse words because the movie of my life is destined to be PG-13, I guess.

  “I care, Annie.” Drew leans toward me, his voice low.

  I roll my eyes and step back, willing myself not to be moved by the way Drew sounds exactly like a rom-com male lead apologizing and trying to win back the heroine’s heart. He’s not Mr. Darcy over here, I remind myself. He’s the before. The Bill Pullman, but a jerk. The montage.

  “You have to know most of the stuff on those sites is fake. That’s why Jennifer Aniston is perpetually pregnant with twins. Tarah and I are friends and maybe someone saw us talking and—”

  “Oh, no thank you,” I say, taking a step back. “I’m so not here for whatever excuses you’re going to give me. With your big speech in the Book Loft about Frasier or whatever and trying to help my uncle with his table and pretending to be all nice. I don’t trust you, Drew Danforth, and you’re just part of a montage.”

  He blinks. “Why do I get the distinct feeling that I should be insulted by that?”

  “Because you should.” I turn away and start walking. “Goodbye, Drew.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The thing about telling someone off in real life versus in a movie is that I didn’t really have any great lines. If I were to script this, I would’ve added something a lot more poetic and dramatic, and I definitely would’ve explained the whole montage thing to him first so that it would’ve been properly insulting in the moment.

  I text Chloe that I won’t be at Nick’s tonight. What I want to do is curl up in bed and watch whatever rom-com I can Netflix on my laptop . . . but, seeing as internet content never sleeps, I’ll have to settle for curling up in bed and writing SEO-optimized articles.

  The creak of the front door and the rumbles of male voices alert me that the D&D guys are here. I smell Uncle Don’s famous spinach-artichoke dip, and my stomach growls in response. Still, I’m in no hurry to go downstairs. The guys were so smitten with Drew (well, not so much Dungeon Master Rick) last time, and I don’t want to deal with all their questions about him. When your potential flirtation with a celebrity fizzles out, the last thing you want to do is talk about it with a group of middle-aged gamers.

  Still . . . that spinach-artichoke dip is so good, and I know for a fact that Uncle Don made his special paprika chips out of baked pitas. I roll my eyes and squeeze myself out of my blanket cocoon. A quick glance in the mirror reveals that I look objectively awful. I’m wearing yoga pants (sidenote: I have literally never done yoga) with a hole on the thigh and a T-shirt that reads PIZZA SLUT. Chloe bought us matching ones as a joke because we order a lot of pizza for our movie nights, but it’s one of the most comfortable shirts I own so I tend to sleep in it.

  Whatever. It’s not like the guys will even notice what I’m wearing, and maybe if I creep downstairs quietly I can slip into the kitchen unnoticed.

  I tiptoe down the stairs, which, since this house is over a hundred years old, creak pretty much all the time. Still, the guys are deep in a D&D discussion, so they don’t hear me. As I step into the kitchen, I hear the sound of the dice and Dungeon Master Rick saying something, then a comment from Uncle Don, and Paul and Earl laugh and—

  Wait a second. Is there a fifth voice? They would never let someone else join in on D&D. Unless . . .

  I push the swinging door between the kitchen and dining room open just a little. Dungeon Master Rick scowls as Don leans over and explains something to . . .

  Drew Danforth.

  “What the hell?” I whisper before I can stop myself, and all five heads swivel toward me. I step back and let the door swing closed.

  I run toward the fridge, open the door, and stand there as casually as possible, like, “Oh, me? Yeah, I came downstairs to get a snack. I definitely wasn’t spying on you from behind a door like we’re in a sitcom or anything.”

  The door swings open and I hear a quick snatch of conversation from the dining room, a snippet of Dungeon Master Rick complaining about too many breaks in the game, but I barely notice because Drew Danforth is in front of me. Here. In my kitchen.

  I stand up straight and shut the fridge. “What are you doing here?” I ask with as much dignity as I can muster.

  Drew gestures toward the dining room. “Well, the guys invited me over to game with them, and I was kind of curious, so . . .”

  I deflate a little. I mean, it’s not like I thought Drew Danforth came here for me—not that I even want him to!—but there’s something slightly pathetic about taking second place after D&D.

  I nod. “Right.”

  “But . . . okay, I’ll be honest.” Drew runs his hands through that outrageously fluffy hair, and it falls back into place as soon as his hands leave it. I can’t help myself from imagining
the softness of that hair between my fingers, and . . .

  I shake my head.

  “I didn’t just come here to learn about tabletop gaming,” Drew says, looking down at the island.

  I try to say “Oh, yeah?” but it comes out as a strangled groan.

  “I came here because I wanted to explain to you, and you wouldn’t listen to me today,” he says, meeting my eyes and taking a step toward me.

  I take a step back, reminded of my earlier anger. “You don’t have to explain anything. I get it, okay?”

  He shakes his head. Another small step forward. “I don’t think you do.”

  I step back again. “It was nothing. You’re a grown man; you’re allowed to flirt with or do whatever with whoever you want. And I’m a grown woman. I can handle it. Forget about it . . . it didn’t even mean anything.”

  Drew shakes his head again and takes yet another step toward me. Now there’s nowhere else for me to go; I can’t back up any more unless I want to knock over the recycling can, which is full of empty Mountain Dew cans because that’s what the guys drink on D&D nights.

  “It wasn’t nothing, and I don’t want to forget about it. Tarah and I don’t have anything going on. She’s married.”

  “Wait,” I say. “She is? But Hollywood Gossip didn’t—”

  “Please,” he groans. “Stop getting your news from Hollywood Gossip. No one knows she’s married because she’s pretty secretive about her private life, and they haven’t thought to look into it. Maybe someone saw us talking or filming a scene, but we weren’t canoodling. Canoodling is— God, why did they have to use the word canoodling? It sounds so terrible.”

  “Like you’re sharing a noodle, like in Lady and the Tramp,” I say quietly.

  “What? I mean . . .” Drew gives me a narrow-eyed, skeptical look. “I’m not trying to get into the origin of the word canoodle. That’s not what I came here to do.”

  “You came here to kill some dire wolves,” I say, trying and failing to pry my eyes off his brown eyes, which are somehow even more beautiful than they are on screen.

  “No, Annie,” he says, my name still sounding special and magical when he says it. “I came here to see you. Did you really end things with Sexy Gaffer?”

  “He has a name.”

  “Fine. Carter. Did you really end things with Carter? Because I know I was kind of a dick about him. I’m sorry. He’s an okay guy.”

  I shrug. “We weren’t right for each other anyway. You don’t have to be sorry about that.”

  “Well, good,” Drew says, taking another step toward me. “Because I’m actually not sorry at all that you broke up.”

  I take that extra step back and the trash can tilts over, Mountain Dew cans crashing onto the floor. I immediately crouch down and start picking them up, and Drew follows suit.

  “This,” I mutter. “This is a mistake.”

  “Tell me about it,” Drew says. “There’s no way this much Mountain Dew is good for those guys. Once I knew this dude in high school who drank so much Mountain Dew that his stomach lining literally corroded and—”

  “No.” I shake my head, meeting his eyes. “I know you came here to see me and that’s nice but—I can’t.”

  Drew drops a Mountain Dew can into the recycling bin and it lands with a satisfying thunk. “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean . . .” I sigh. “Obviously I think you’re attractive. Obviously.”

  “Obviously,” he repeats, giving me that smirk that makes me scowl.

  “But you’re done here tomorrow night, and then you’re off to God knows where—”

  “New York,” Drew supplies. “I’m taping a morning show appearance on Monday morning to promote my next movie, but I have my hotel here booked through the weekend. Let’s hang out. Let’s get dinner. Let’s—”

  I hold up my hand and almost fall out of my crouching position, but Drew’s hand shoots out to steady me. It’s infuriating that he’s always around to catch me when I fall.

  “But I don’t want to hang out for a couple of days with any guy. Do you get that?” I ask, searching his eyes. He looks back at me, waiting.

  What I want to say is that Tom Hanks doesn’t just hang out. My parents didn’t just hang out. I want the real thing—the rom-com love, the forever love, the “let’s start a family” love. But that’s a little too much to say right now, even for me, so I settle for, “We have really different lives. You make movies, and I write about hemorrhoid relief.”

  “So come out and visit me sometime,” Drew says, excited. “You’d like LA. There’s this thing called sunshine there; maybe you’ve heard of it? And people get hemorrhoids all over the world, you know. They’re the great equalizer.”

  I smile a little. “No. It’s just—I’m glad we met, okay?”

  Drew looks at me, his eyes poring over my face so slowly that it almost feels like he’s touching me, and I have to stop myself from either pulling away or throwing myself at him. He’s not even doing anything; he’s just looking at me. That’s the effect this guy has on me, and that’s why I know I made the right decision not to make out with him or go to dinner with him or whatever.

  Even though I really, really want to make out with him.

  Someone like him—famous, confident, perfect—can’t possibly understand what it’s like to be rejected and alone. The way I felt when I saw that article about him and Tarah? I don’t ever want to experience that again, and I know that if this weird, amorphous, flirtation-type thing with Drew progresses any further, I definitely would.

  I’m not putting myself in a situation where I could lose someone else. When I meet my Tom Hanks, and it’s real, then I’ll know: there won’t be any risk and I won’t ever have to be afraid of a broken heart.

  Drew looks like he wants to say something else, but finally he says, “If that’s what you want,” with no trace of frustration or malice in his voice.

  I stand up, my knees cracking, and Drew follows.

  “We’re friends, okay?” Drew asks. “If you ever want to send me your screenplay, please do. I’d love to read it. Seriously.”

  I nod. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll see you on set tomorrow,” Drew says. “Oh. And at the wrap party.”

  “Oh yeah,” I say, remembering that Tommy promised to take us all out for drinks after we finish tomorrow.

  “I’m glad we met, too,” Drew says, his hand reaching out as if he’s about to touch me, but then his fingers hover before falling back to his side. “And Tarah and me—we’re really not—”

  I shake my head. “No. I believe you.”

  “Well, I better get back to the game,” Drew says, gesturing over his shoulder. “Dungeon Master Rick runs a pretty tight campaign.”

  “Tell me about it.” I smile. I wave as he walks toward the dining room door, but right as the door swings open, he says, “Nice outfit, by the way.”

  The door swings shut. I look down at my Pizza Slut shirt and groan.

  Chapter Fifteen

  One of the reasons I love While You Were Sleeping so much (besides Sandra Bullock being impossibly charming and Bill Pullman being unexpectedly sexy in that reversible jacket Chloe made fun of) is the family. At the beginning of the movie, Sandra Bullock works on holidays because she has no one. She’s as alone as a person can be, which in a rom-com means that she has a cat. But then, through a series of misunderstandings, she ends up pretending to be comatose Peter Gallagher’s girlfriend and goes to a Christmas celebration at his family’s house. It’s big and loud and everyone’s yelling and arguing and she loves it. No longer is she surrounded by only her apartment building’s weird tenants; now she’s part of a family that envelops her and makes her one of their own and gives her a stocking, and that’s why it’s so hard for her to tell them the truth . . . that she’s not really Peter Gallagher’s girlfriend.

  Of course, things work themselves out because his brother, Bill Pullman, proposes to her with the entire family in tow and it’s very
sweet and I always cry, but the point is, I get it.

  It’s not that I’m alone. I have Uncle Don, and he counts for a whole lot. I have the best friend ever in Chloe, and I have the warm, caffeinated comfort of hanging out at Nick’s and the way his wacky patrons make me feel like I’m part of a sitcom.

  But right now, when Uncle Don’s getting ready to leave for the convention and Chloe’s busy studying at her place and I know the house will be silent and lonely all weekend, I yearn for that big family in While You Were Sleeping.

  I wish I could meet my Tom Hanks now and we could have five kids, enough people that we would never be lonely. And maybe that’s pathetic. Maybe I should only care about my career—but the thing is, I want a family. I want love, and I don’t think it makes me a weak or bad person to not want to be alone. You know how, in wedding vows and engagement-party speeches, people say that their partner is their “other half,” and we all either swoon or roll our eyes? Yes, it’s so cliché that it borders on meaningless, but pieces of me went missing when my parents died. Those pieces will never be replaced, but what I want is someone who can help me patch up the broken places. Maybe my person and I won’t fit together like two halves of the same whole, but neither did Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail or Sleepless in Seattle. They didn’t erase each other’s pain; they just made it bearable.

  As I sit on the couch, Uncle Don walks past me, his Chewbacca costume in his hands. “I’m gonna go shake this thing out on the porch,” he says, holding it like it’s a rug.

  I know Chloe’s studying, but I need to tell someone about what just happened, so I pull out my phone and text her. One of the perks of living on the same property as your best friend is that she can get to your couch in about 2.5 seconds.

  After I explain everything that happened with Drew tonight, Chloe says, “I will never, as long as I live, understand anything you do.”

  “He isn’t my Tom Hanks, Chloe.”

  She throws her hands in the air in frustration. “Who cares about Tom Hanks right now? If I had the chance to bang a movie star who has a body like that . . . I mean, Annie, for God’s sake, this is like you have a chance to eat at Chez Panisse and you’re like, ‘Nah, I’ll wait’ or you have a chance to see a once-in-a-lifetime meteor shower and you’re all, ‘Eh, I’ll catch it next time.’ Can’t you take this chance for me?”