I want to crawl back into bed and curl up next to Drew’s warmth. Instead I walk into the bathroom to take a shower, because I would like to not be totally gross when Drew wakes up and sees me in the full light of day, and also because I’m hoping I can sort of wash away my white wine hangover. I think about what we’ll do today, places I can take Drew. Maybe he wants burgers and we could go to Thurman’s, or maybe he’s feeling pizza and I could take him to Harvest. Is this what it’s like to have a person, someone to do things with, someone who isn’t my uncle?
I may no longer be drunk on white wine, but my head is spinning with this feeling.
Drew said a lot of things last night. That he wanted me to come visit him when he’s back in LA, that he wants me to come with him to New York on Sunday, that he wants me to meet his family in Shreveport. And each one of those things made it clear: this is my movie. Chloe was right; everything before this was a misunderstanding or a miscommunication and now it’s all worked out. He’s my Bill Pullman with the large, lovely family in While You Were Sleeping and my Julia Roberts in Notting Hill (but, again, much less of a jerk). He’s my Tom Hanks. I found him.
I get dressed in something that I think says “casual yet cute,” which is just leggings and yet another large sweater, because apparently all my style icons are from ’90s movies. I don’t put on makeup, and I walk into my bedroom with my hair still wet.
The bed is empty, the sheets and quilts rumpled, and the indentation from a head visible on the pillow.
My heart surges. Maybe Drew went downstairs to make me breakfast. I mean, we haven’t talked at all about whether or not he can cook, but wouldn’t that be a perfect detail in a romantic comedy as a way to show that he’s the ideal man? There he is at a skillet, effortlessly flipping pancakes while the coffee brews!
I walk downstairs, sniffing the air for the telltale scent of breakfast, but stop at the foot of the stairs when I see Drew pulling on his boots.
Maybe he’s going out for coffee, I think, but some of my optimism drains out of me.
“What are you doing?” I ask, and he stands up.
“Are you kidding me right now?” he asks, his voice measured and bland in a way that I haven’t heard before. He walks to the door and pulls his coat off the hook.
I follow him, telling myself not to look too much like an eager puppy. “What do you mean? Are we talking in questions now?” I smile, hoping it comes off as cute but afraid it comes off as frantic.
He raises his eyebrows as he puts his coat on, and then thrusts his phone into my face. “I woke up to a lot of texts and notifications.”
I lean in to look at his phone. Hollywood Gossip is on the screen, and it’s a photo of Drew in my bed. It takes a moment for things to click into place, for me to figure out what’s going on here. How is there a picture of Drew in my bed? The picture I just took? That I sent to Chloe? Did Chloe send it to Hollywood Gossip? But why would she do that?
Oh no. Oh, no. I pull my phone out of my pocket and go to my texts.
There it is. The picture I just took of Drew, the one I thought I was sending to Chloe? I sent it to Hollywood Gossip in my sleepy post-sex haze. Chloe is almost always my most recent text, so I must’ve responded to the first one without thinking about it.
“Oh, my God, Drew, this was an accident,” I say. “I took . . . okay, so this sounds weird, but I took a picture of you to send to Chloe because she’s been wanting us to get together and I knew she would be so excited and you just looked so good, but then I had a text from Hollywood Gossip, and I guess I accidentally replied to that one.” I take a breath.
Drew shakes his head, not looking at me. “How much did you get?”
I stare back at him.
“For the picture, I mean. Was it worth it?”
“I didn’t get anything!” I shout.
“You knew,” he says, holding out his phone. “You knew how much this stuff bothered me, and you did this. Was this all some ridiculous long con for you, some way to get yourself on this website?”
“No! I don’t care about Hollywood Gossip!” I shout, tears springing to my eyes. “You’re my Tom Hanks.”
He holds up a hand. “Okay, spare me the Tom Hanks bullshit, please. I don’t particularly care what Tom Hanks would do in this situation, because he’s an actor who plays fictional characters, and I’m a real person. And now everyone’s going to see a picture of me sleeping next to details about my dick.”
Oh, God. I forgot I included that thing about him being circumcised.
“I’m sorry,” I say, trying hard not to cry. “It was an accident. Please believe me.”
Drew won’t look at me, and I just want him to look into my eyes and know that I’m telling the truth. Just look at me, I will him with my mind.
He does, but then he shakes his head. “I need some time, Annie.”
The way he says my name normally makes my entire body feel like a lit-up string of Christmas lights, but right now, with his voice so disappointed and defeated, it just hurts.
He turns and walks out the door, closing it behind him. I think about running after him, but I don’t want to look desperate and anyway, I’m pretty sure no one’s shoveled the sidewalks.
Instead, I start to cry.
Chapter Twenty
It’s not like I would’ve cried onto Uncle Don’s shoulder if he were here, but at least then I wouldn’t be all by myself. Even though I know Chloe’s studying, I text her and she comes over immediately, wearing leggings and her own Pizza Slut T-shirt.
“I’m sorry for interrupting you,” I say through sobs. “But I messed everything up.”
“Babe!” Chloe says, pulling me into a hug. “Don’t apologize. Remember that time I needed to pass a test and you helped me make flash cards about the core functions of marketing until two A.M.?”
She pulls back and appraises my face, squinting. “You are actually covered in snot, you know.”
“Ugh.” I lift my sleeve and wipe my nose.
“Wow.” She winces. “We’ve reached a new low. Sit down and I’ll find you a box of tissues while you tell me everything.”
I run through the story for her—the kiss, the wine, the sex, the fight. I show her the picture, and she gasps.
“God, he looks amazing,” she says. “Even asleep and with his mouth open. What’s his chest hair situation like?”
“What?”
“I’m trying to get a good mental picture of what he looks like naked.”
“Chloe! This is quite possibly my soul mate who now hates me, and all you care about is what he looks like naked?”
She rolls her eyes. “Annie. He doesn’t hate you. You pulled a reverse ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ and he loved it. If he’s anywhere near as nice as you’ve made him sound, he’ll come to his senses and march right back here and apologize to you.”
I sniffle. “You think?”
“Yes!” Chloe smiles. “Now this. This is the Big Misunderstanding, after which he’ll make some sort of Grand Gesture to apologize, and then you guys will have your Climactic Kiss as the cover of a ’90s song plays and the camera pans out.”
“Whoa.” I blow my nose. “You really have watched a lot of rom-coms with me.”
She shrugs. “You never want to watch my preferred genre, TV shows about murder. Speaking of which, do you want to watch a rom-com right now?”
I think about it for a second. On one hand, I’ve just been brutally abandoned by a kind and funny man. On the other hand, Sleepless in Seattle always makes things better.
“Yes,” I say. “But I want to watch it on VHS.”
Chloe narrows her eyes. “Um, okay?”
Typically I stream rom-coms, or rely on DVDs for those rare movies I can’t find on any streaming service. But when I was little, Mom and I used to watch them on VHS, and she kept all her favorites on the shelf by the TV. They’ve long since been put away in the attic to make room for Uncle Don’s Lord of the Rings collector’s edition DVDs (which, unsu
rprisingly, take up a lot of room), and I haven’t seen them in ages.
“I just think it might make me feel better to see the tapes,” I say, and Chloe nods encouragingly, even though I can tell she doesn’t get it.
If my mom were here, she could talk me through this. I could tell her all about what happened and she’d comfort me, like she did in second grade when Taylor McNaughton made fun of my multiple speech impediments (I ended up correcting them in speech therapy, and Taylor McNaughton got kicked off the volleyball team our senior year for drinking, so, you know . . . boom).
But she’s not here, so she doesn’t know about Drew. She’ll never meet him or hear about our meet-cute or our many awkward almost-kisses or our very non-awkward real kisses (although, let’s be real, I would edit that part when talking to my mom). In fact, she’ll never even see me as an adult woman, one who grew up and fell in love, and that stings way more than Drew storming out of here this morning.
Maybe holding those VHS tapes won’t bring her back, but this morning, I need something that will help me feel a tiny bit closer to her.
I leave Chloe on the couch with a mug of coffee and one of her Spicy Cinnamon Brownies and go up to the attic. It’s one of those perfect movie attics, with the ladder that pulls down. Of course, the attic itself isn’t filled with anything magical like any good ’90s children’s movie would be; instead, it’s mostly filled with Uncle Don’s action-figure collection (all still in their original packaging, obviously). But, as I climb up, I can’t help feeling like something magical could happen up here, like I could find these VHS tapes and suddenly, miraculously, things would get better.
It turns out Uncle Don has been storing way more stuff up here than I thought (like, does he need these Star Trek commemorative dinner plates that I can guarantee we’re never going to eat off of?), and it’s hard to know where the tapes are. In the faint light coming through the tiny, fogged-up window, I brush dust off boxes and try to read what they say.
My mom was never one for organization or tidiness, so many of the boxes are labeled “stuff” or “various knickknacks.” Uncle Don’s, in contrast, have labels like “Star Wars magazines 2000–2016.” I paw through a few boxes, coming across things I’ll want to properly pore over later, but right now I’m on a mission.
I open a box labeled “things from bedroom” (helpful!) and am greeted with a tiny lamb-printed onesie that must’ve belonged to baby me. There’s a pair of baby shoes, a hairbrush, and then a stack of letters.
These must be love letters between my mom and dad; I just know it. The way mom talked about their relationship, it was epic and poetic and although I never knew my dad, I somehow know he was the type of guy to write a love letter. This is the framing device of a great romantic drama—a girl finds her parents’ old love letters, then we flash back to their relationship. Sort of like The Notebook, but not as cheesy.
I’m running through plot points in my head as I unfold the first letter on the stack and start reading. These letters are addressed to my mom, but as I glance at the name on the return address, they aren’t from my dad. They’re from someone named Edwin Smith.
These must’ve been from before she met my dad. I pick up the first letter off the pile and start reading.
This will be the last contact I have with you. I say this knowing full well that it will break your heart, but I have decided not to leave Marie. She found out about us, and she was upset, but we’ve decided to work on our marriage—or at least attempt to. This means that I have to stop meeting with you, calling you, everything. As much as that hurts, it’s the only way.
Please don’t call me, at work or at home, as I won’t be able to answer. You know I’ll always love you. I’ve mailed you all of our correspondence, because I can’t have it in my home but I can’t bear to throw it away.
Edwin
And then, I see the date written at the top of the letter.
These are from the year before she died.
Chapter Twenty-one
I read through the rest of the letters on the stack, even though I’m nauseated and almost unable to breathe. I never knew my mom was dating someone before she died—let alone a married man.
“Knock, knock,” Chloe says, poking her head into the attic. “I’ve watched an entire episode of Dr. Oz since you went up here, and now I know way more than I wanted to about superfoods and— oh, my God, are you crying?”
She pulls herself into the attic and runs over to me, floorboards creaking under her feet.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, kneeling beside me. “Are you thinking about Drew again? Because I promise he’s going to come back here any minute, sad and sorry and ready to bang the living daylights out of you.”
I shake my head and wave the letter I’m holding. “My mom was having an affair with a married guy. Right before she died.”
Chloe shakes her head. “That . . . doesn’t sound like your mom.”
“It’s right here, Chlo, in these letters. It was some guy named Edwin, and he didn’t leave his wife, and . . .” I trail off, not even sure what else there is to say. I look at Chloe. “I thought she believed in true love, like her perfect relationship with my dad. And now I know that not only had she totally moved on from him, but she was having an affair!”
I watch Chloe read the last letter, her lips moving slightly and her eyes widening in shock. She looks up at me and exhales. “This is . . . a lot.”
“I know.”
She reaches out and strokes my arm. “I’m sorry, hon.”
“There is no romantic comedy where this happens. Like, I can’t name a single rom-com that begins or ends with a person carrying on an affair with a married man, then getting her heart smashed to smithereens.”
“Maybe a Mike Nichols movie,” Chloe says, raising a shoulder, but when I glare at her she says, “Okay, okay, you’re right. This isn’t funny.”
“It’s really, really not.”
Chloe lowers herself from her crouching position until she’s sitting beside me on the dusty attic floor. “So this sucks. There’s no way around that.”
I nod and wipe my nose on my sleeve again. Chloe cringes.
“But all it really means is that you found out your mom was a human being. It’s shitty, but we all have to learn that at some point. For me, it was when my mom ran off to Ann Arbor to meet her online boyfriend when we were in elementary school. And then it happened again when I had to put my dad in a memory-care facility because he wandered out of the house and was missing for an entire hour.”
I nod, chastened, because I tend to forget how hard and lonely Chloe’s life has been.
“And listen,” she continues. “I’m not saying my problems are bigger than yours, because sure, my mom’s still alive out there somewhere. But at least your mom didn’t totally suck when she was alive. I get that you want to have this perfect image of your mom in your mind, to remember her as this angel who was pining away for your father and believing hopelessly in true love, but no one’s flawless. All this means is that your mom was like any of us—kind of a fucked-up person who made bad decisions sometimes. That doesn’t mean she loved you any less.”
I nod. “You’re right. You’re totally right.”
She leans into me and wraps me into a side hug, putting her head on my shoulder. “Listen, there are some brownies down there with your name on them, and I’m pretty sure there’s an entire hour of Family Feud coming up. Instead of a rom-com, do you wanna let Steve Harvey cure your ills?”
I nod again. “Yeah. Okay.”
Chloe smiles at me, concern still written on her face. “I’ll go slice you off a brownie and pour you a glass of milk while you clean up, okay?”
“Okay. Thanks, Pizza Slut.”
“Anytime, Pizza Slut.”
I watch Chloe’s head disappear as she crawls down the ladder. She is, really and truly, the best friend I could ask for. She’s been buoying me lately, and always, even though she has more than enough on her own plate to w
orry about—her dad, her classes, her job, the endless stream of apparently very sexually satisfying dates she goes on. And it’s not like what she said wasn’t true or helpful, so I didn’t want to make her feel bad by rejecting it.
But this is like when I was eight and I figured out that Santa Claus wasn’t real. The kids at school had been talking about it all winter, and in person I’d agreed with them. Like, yeah, of course—a bearded guy slides down your chimney and gives you presents? I’m not buying it! But in my own mind, I still believed in Santa fiercely and absolutely. I knew he was real, the same way I knew my favorite food was pepperoni pizza or my favorite movie was Beauty and the Beast. But then that Christmas, I noticed that Santa used the same red-and-white-striped wrapping paper that my mom did, and their handwriting looked eerily similar.
I asked my mom about the wrapping paper, and she told me that Santa must shop at the same store she did, but I knew that didn’t make sense. Santa had elves, and surely they were capable of making a simple paper product. I knew then that Santa wasn’t real, that there was no magic behind these presents. I finished opening them and acted happy, but inside I was hollow, because if there was no Santa, then everything I’d believed was wrong.
The same hollowness expands in my belly now, the knowledge that my entire belief system, everything I needed to get through the day, is a lie. I’ve believed in romantic comedies all this time, relying on their promise of hope and love, knowing that there was a happily-ever-after waiting for me.
But what if I was wrong? Maybe movies are just that—movies, nothing but fictional tales to delude people into spending a happy hour and a half before returning to the misery of their lonely lives.
Drew’s gone, and he’s not coming back. My mom died with a broken heart after having an affair with a married man. I had a perfect, houseboat-owning single dad right in front of me and I couldn’t even muster up enough feeling to make that work. There’s no reason why my life will ever be anything other than this—alone, in my childhood home, fooling myself by watching ridiculous movies over and over.
Waiting for Tom Hanks Page 19
