NONEXCLUSIVE EXCERPT (Chapter 4)

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.