Waiting for Tom Hanks

by Kerry Winfrey

  “Is . . . that a personal example?”

  “Maybe.”

  We exit the park, and I don’t even have to tell him which way to turn to get to my house, since he’s been there twice already. “You’re pretty close to your family, huh?”

  He nods. “Very close. Perhaps too close. My grandparents on my mom’s side are still around and on that side alone I have six aunts and uncles and I don’t even know how many cousins, and it all makes for very loud, chaotic Christmas dinners where my aunt Robin ends up getting drunk and attempting to start a sing-a-long of Christmas carols she swears are real but we’re pretty sure she just made up.”

  I smile, but on the inside my heart is breaking because I want that. I want that so bad. This past Christmas, Uncle Don and I ate a wonderful beef brisket that he made, along with a bunch of sides and pumpkin, pecan, and chocolate silk pies. We opened presents by the tree and then ended the night by watching Love Actually by the fire (which was a little awkward because of that porn scene, but it was fine). And it’s not like we didn’t have a good time, but I can’t pretend there wasn’t a part of me that didn’t want, say, five to twenty more people there. I wanted a bunch of stockings and kids yelling and so many dishes to wash that I sighed while looking at them and thinking about all the work it would be.

  “Do you want to have a big family of your own some day?” I ask, even though this is a very personal question that isn’t any of my business. “With a lot of kids and a golden retriever?”

  “Yep,” he says, no hesitation. “I want to have a million kids, give or take a few, and have my own huge holiday dinner. But no to the golden retriever. I want a rescue greyhound named Charlie.”

  “That’s very specific,” I say with a smile.

  We’re at my door now. Drew stays on the sidewalk as I walk up the steps, and I know he’s not going to ask to come in. I look down at him standing there, looking up at me, his hands in the pockets of his coat and the snow turning his hair white, and I don’t want this to be goodbye. I don’t want this to be how it ends. I don’t know if this is the love story or the montage, but I don’t care right now, because all I can think about is families and Christmas and a rescue greyhound named Charlie.

  “Drew,” I ask. “Do you want to come inside?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Yeah, so . . . I actually don’t know how to do this.”

  Drew volunteered to build a fire as soon as we took off our coats, but after staring at the fireplace he stands up.

  “I thought if I just, like, looked at it for a while the secrets of the fireplace would reveal themselves to me.”

  “Turns out that’s not how fire works,” I say, brushing past him. “And there aren’t really any secrets. I mean, cavemen figured this stuff out.”

  “Sheesh. What a burn,” Drew says.

  “Hmmm.” I look over my shoulder at him. “Not sure if you can use the term ‘burn’ since you can’t start a fire.”

  Drew clutches at his heart. “Damn. You’re ruthless.”

  As I get the fire going, Drew asks, “Where did you learn to do this?”

  “In Ohio, where it gets cold, because I’m one of two people in a very old, very drafty house.” After a couple of minutes, the fire crackles away and I turn around to face Drew, who’s sitting on the couch.

  “Do you . . . want to watch a movie?” Drew asks, then grimaces. “Wow. I swear I wasn’t asking you to Netflix and chill. I just . . .”

  I laugh. “That’s okay. I mean . . . yeah, I would love to. Do you want some wine?”

  He practically slumps over in relief. “That would be great.”

  In the pantry, I pull out my phone and text Chloe. “Emergency. Drew Danforth is currently in my home.”

  She texts back immediately. “OMG. WHAT. HOW. Please tell me you’re naked right now.”

  “It’s not like that,” I respond. “Drew walked me home and now we’re going to watch a movie. Also, I have never and will never text you while I’m naked.”

  “Netflix and chill. I see,” she responds, and wow, I wish that phrase had never become part of the cultural lexicon.

  I grab a bottle of wine and two glasses and head back into the living room, where Drew is scrolling through channels. He looks so at home on the old couch with the remote in his hand that my chest expands with a yearning I can’t even define.

  “So listen,” he says. “I know I said I wanted to watch a movie, but there’s a Chopped marathon on. Which isn’t that surprising, since Chopped is always on, but still.”

  When he sees my blank expression, he slowly says, “Wait. Do you not like Chopped?”

  I shrug. “I’ve never seen it. I don’t really watch cooking shows.”

  “Oh, no no no,” Drew says. “Annie. Chopped isn’t a cooking show. It’s an immersive experience. It’s a lens through which we view American culture. It’s a lifestyle.”

  I eye him skeptically, then sit down on the other side of the couch, leaving one cushion between us. “Um, okay?”

  Several episodes later, we’re opening our second bottle of wine, and I’m shouting, “No! Don’t try to use the ice-cream machine! You just said you’ve never used one!” at a contestant who is most certainly about to get chopped for abusing mascarpone.

  “This is what always happens in the dessert round!” Drew says, sloshing a bit of wine out of his glass. “They either make a boring-ass bread pudding or they go buckwild with that damn ice-cream machine.”

  I snort-laugh and send wine flying out of my mouth. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk about something so passionately.”

  “Oh,” Drew says, “I’m plenty passionate. About lots of things.”

  I steal a glance at him out of the corner of my eye as the chef on TV complains about his ice cream not freezing properly, which, duh, of course it didn’t. Drew’s cheeks are flushed from the wine, and he looks like a little kid who just came in from playing in the snow. It’s unexpectedly endearing.

  The episode ends, and our wine-drunk Chopped spell breaks.

  “It’s late.” He takes a look at his phone. “I should . . . I should probably go.”

  “It is late,” I say, drawing out the words. “And you should probably go.”

  Because he probably should. But the real question is, do I want him to?

  No, I answer my silent question in my head. I want him here, with me, because this house is so not empty when he’s here. I don’t want to be alone and I want to be with Drew and my thoughts are running around each other in tipsy circles, but he’s already standing up and walking toward the door.

  I don’t know how long we’ve been here—that’s the wonder of Chopped, I’m realizing, that it renders time meaningless—but when he opens the door, we both gasp.

  There’s easily a foot of unshoveled, unplowed snow on the steps, the sidewalks, the street. A black lab and his owner walk down the center of the street, past buried cars, but other than that no one’s out. A blanket of silence hangs heavy over everything.

  “It . . . snowed,” I say, watching the flakes fall in the light from the streetlamps.

  “It sure did,” Drew says, holding his coat but making no move to put it on.

  I don’t know what it is—if it’s the confidence I got from Tommy’s pep talk, or the way-too-much wine I had, or the fact that Drew and I kissed tonight and I would really, really like a repeat performance, but I’m feeling bold.

  “Well, um.” I clear my throat. “That’s a lot of snow, and you might get stuck in it.”

  “Get stuck?” Drew asks with a smile, turning to me.

  I nod vigorously. “Frankly, this looks pretty dangerous. I think you need to stay here tonight. For, you know, purely safety-related reasons.”

  Drew nods, shuts the door. “Are you sure?”

  “Do you want more wine?” I ask. “And we can watch more Chopped.”

  Because that’s the thing about Chopped. It’s always on.

  * * *

&nbs
p; • • •

  I’m honestly not sure how many episodes of Chopped we’ve watched by the time we finish the second bottle of wine. It all runs together in a stream of chefs who are trying to prove something to their parents, judges who don’t think dishes are well-executed or creative, and contestants forgetting to put all their basket ingredients on their plates.

  At some point we ate an entire frozen pizza and a bag of microwave popcorn, but the abundance of wine is making my tongue pretty loose.

  “Where’s Don, anyway?” Drew asks.

  “Oh!” I say. “A convention in Chicago. He’s a Wookiee.”

  “Of course he is,” Drew says. “He’s got the build for it.”

  I nod once, but my head keeps nodding of its own accord. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it. That’s what I always say.”

  Drew laughs and I put my feet in his lap. “Why do you have to go to New York?” I ask.

  “Because.” Drew puts his hands on my feet and rubs them. “God, your feet are cold. I have to be on Good Morning USA to talk about the zombie movie I have coming out this week. We actually made it two years ago, but it took forever to find distribution and . . . this is boring. You don’t care.”

  “What’s it called?” I squint, trying to remember. “A Zombie for Christmas?”

  He snorts. “No. That sounds like a weird Hallmark movie. It’s called Winter of the Undead. It’s . . . I’m gonna be honest with you, it’s not a very good movie.”

  I dissolve into laughter, then slap his shoulder for emphasis. “See? This is why you should only make rom-coms.”

  “Well,” Drew says, looking right into my eyes. “This one certainly turned out pretty well for me.”

  “You are very good-looking, you know,” I say, wiggling my toes.

  Drew smiles at me. “You’re a little drunk, you know.”

  “How are you not drunk? How much wine did you have?”

  “Well, for starters, I’m six foot two, not five foot five.”

  “I’m five foot five and three quarters,” I protest, because the distinction seems important to me at the moment.

  “Do you want some water?” Drew asks. “I’m kind of worried about your hydration.”

  I nod slowly. This, oh, this is nice, someone here to look out for me. Not that Uncle Don doesn’t care about me, and not that I need someone to look out for me, but all of a sudden I’m struck with the desire to always have Drew here to make sure I don’t drink too much and tuck me in at night and take care of me when I’m sick.

  “Water,” I say. “Good idea.”

  In the kitchen, I grab a glass out of the cabinet. I turn to go to the sink but before I can, Drew is there, and he easily picks me up and places me on the counter.

  He kisses me, his hands on my face and in my hair, and I pull him to me. I wrap my legs around his waist and run my hands up under his shirt. “God, you have, like, no body fat,” I say into his mouth.

  “It’s not always like this,” he says, his words vibrating into my mouth. “A few more weeks of McDonald’s and wine and you’ll be disappointed.”

  “I don’t think I could ever be disappointed in you,” I say, and I’m too far gone to even be embarrassed.

  Drew pulls back, and for a second I think that must’ve been too far, that I’ve said too much, but he puts his hands on my face and looks into my eyes.

  “You’re pretty drunk,” he says, both a statement and a question.

  I think about arguing, but it’s pretty clear, so I nod.

  “I don’t want to do this right now,” Drew says. “I mean, I do want to do this. I really, really do. I think I’ve made that pretty clear. But I would like both of us to not hate ourselves or each other in the morning.”

  I look at him and blink a few times. He rubs his thumb over my cheek.

  “I like you, Annie,” he says, and the thrill of hearing that statement tingles through my entire body, starting at my head and going all the way to my toes. “And I’ve been wanting to kiss you ever since you ran into me on the sidewalk.”

  “Wait,” I say, pulling my head back and looking up at him. “What? Are you joking?”

  He shakes his head, still not taking his eyes off mine. “Not about this. I know I made fun of your romantic comedy obsession before you explained it to me, but something happened the second I saw you. It was like I knew you were—”

  I kiss him again before he can say anything else because this, this is too good to be true. There’s a charming, funny, goofy man in my kitchen telling me that he’s had a thing for me ever since we had a meet-cute, and he’s so kind and respectful that he doesn’t want to hook up with me because I’ve had a little too much wine. This can’t be real, but it is real. The movies never lied to me; Nora Ephron, my mom, and Hollywood were telling the truth. I found my Tom Hanks.

  “What?” Drew asks, pulling back, and I realize I’ve said this last part out loud. “Tom Hanks is an American treasure, sure, but why are you talking about him right now?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say, kissing him harder, and he pulls away with a groan that is quite possibly the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.

  “I’m gonna sleep on the couch,” he says, stepping back and leaning against the island. “You go get some sleep, too.”

  “Sleep is for losers,” I mutter, crossing my arms.

  “Water,” Drew says, taking my glass and filling it at the sink. He goes into the pantry, then tosses me a granola bar. “Eat.”

  “Boo,” I say.

  “Very mature.” Drew unwraps the granola bar. Part of me wants to be upset that we’re not making out right now, but another part of me is tired and hungry and ready to crawl into bed.

  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 l
ooks 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 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.