I blink a few times, staring straight into Drew Danforth’s
face. It’s like when you’re a kid and there’s a solar eclipse, and all the
teachers are like, “Don’t look directly into the sun! You’ll destroy your retinas!”
but there’s always that one kid (Johnny Berger, in our class) who can’t stop
staring.
In this situation, I’m Johnny Berger. And I guess Drew
Danforth is the sun.
“Are you okay?” he asks again, enunciating his words even
more as if me understanding him is the problem. His brown eyes, I notice, are
flecked with tiny bits of gold, which is something you can’t see when you watch
him on TV. His hair is just as voluminous as it seems in pictures, but in
person, I have the almost overwhelming urge to touch it, to reach out and pull
on that one lock of hair that hangs over his forehead.
“She’s not responding.” He turns to Chloe. “Is something
wrong?”
“She’s French,” Chloe says without missing a beat. “She
only speaks French.”
“I’m not French,” I say, breaking my silence. Chloe and
Drew’s heads swivel to look at me.
“I’m sorry about your coat,” I whisper, then I run toward
Nick’s.
Chloe bursts in the door behind me, the bell jingling in
her wake. “I’m not French?” she screeches. “Those are
the first words you spoke to Drew Danforth? Really?”
“Well then, why did you tell him I was French?” I shout,
ignoring the curious stares of everyone working on their laptops and the
calming melody of whatever Nick put on to replace the Doobies.
“I don’t know!” She throws her hands in the air. “You
weren’t talking, so I thought I’d give you an interesting backstory!”
I put my hands over my face. “This is ridiculous.”
“No,” Chloe says, grabbing me by the shoulders. “This is
your meet-cute, and now you need to go back out there and find him and say
something that isn’t a negation of your Frenchness or an apology for destroying
his probably very expensive coat.”
“Meet what?”
Nick stares at us from behind the counter, a dishtowel in
his hand.
“A meet-cute,” Chloe stands up straight, shoulders back, as
if she’s delivering a Romantic Comedy 101 lecture to Nick and his patrons, “is
the quirky, adorable, cute way the hero and heroine of
a romantic comedy meet.”
Everyone stares at her blankly.
“Or hero and hero. Or heroine and heroine. Not to be
heteronormative,” she clarifies.
“Like how me and Martha met at her wedding,” Gary says.
Chloe thinks about it. “I don’t know that I would
necessarily call that one a meet-cute, but sure, Gary.”
“Did you just make that up?” Nick asks, arms crossed.
I shake my head. “No. It’s a thing.”
“Watch a romantic comedy, dude,” Tobin says.
Nick rolls his eyes.
“Anyway,” Chloe continues, “Annie straight up ran into Drew
Danforth and spilled a cup of coffee all over his coat, which is, like, the
cutest of meets.”
“That doesn’t sound very cute,” Nick says skeptically,
rubbing the scruff on his chin. “Was it still hot?”
“Scalding,” I say, sinking into my chair and resting my
head on the table.
“Sounds like a meet painful,” says Gary, and a few people laugh.
“Thanks,” I mutter. “I’m so glad you all find my
embarrassment entertaining.”
“Annie!” Chloe sits down across from me as a customer walks
in and the rest of the shop stops paying attention to us. “This isn’t
embarrassing. This is merely a story I’ll tell in my toast at your wedding to
Drew.”
I lift my head to look at her. “I hate to break this to
you, but I don’t think he’s my Tom Hanks. I think he’s just a famous guy with a
possible third-degree burn on his chest. And now my first day on set is going
to be super awkward because I accidentally assaulted the lead actor with a
beverage.”
Chloe’s about to say something, but then a song starts and
she closes her mouth, looking up toward the speakers. “I swear to God, I told
Nick not to play any more Bon Iver. It makes people look up their exes on
Instagram, not buy coffee. I’m gonna go put on some Hall and Oates.”
As she walks away, I rest my head on the table again. As if
it wasn’t embarrassing enough to have my uncle get me a job on set, now I have
to deal with this.
