The Pretty One(40)

“Man, I hate these things.” I hear a familiar deep voice say.

I yank my thumb away from my mouth and spin around. Drew is standing in the entranceway to the kitchen.

Just the sight of him makes me go weak in the knees. “What things?”

“Parties,” he says, as he walks over toward me.

“Really?” My heart is clanging in my chest and the room is starting to spin. “I never heard of anyone who didn’t like parties.”

“Do you like them?” he asks, obviously surprised that some people might disagree.

I swallow back the lump in my throat as I try to think of a response that will totally wow him with my wit and intelligence. “I don’t know…this one seems a little, well, maybe not so good. But I haven’t been to many, to tell you the truth.” That’s the best I could do? That’s the response that was going to wow him?

He crosses his arms and leans up against the counter, about an arm’s length away from me. “You’re lucky. They’re all pretty much like this.”

I’m breathing again, but after my last lackluster response, I don’t trust myself to speak.

“I have a strategy. I try to find one person I can stand and talk to them until I’m bored. Then I wait a reasonable amount of time and I make my getaway.”

“How long have I got?” I say, thinking out loud.

A smile forms in the corners of his mouth. “How much time do you want?”

Even though Drew is staring right into my eyes—something he rarely does—I don’t look away. “I don’t know. I can be pretty long-winded sometimes.”

Holy crap. Am I actually flirting? How can I be flirting when I don’t know how?

Over the pounding of my heart I hear the music change gears as George starts to sing, “Theeeeeeeere’s a plaaaace for us, Soooomewherrrrrrrrrre a place for ussssss…”

“You’re funny,” Drew says, smiling. He sounds a little surprised.

Funny. I’m funny. I try to think of something to say that would prove his compliment is merited, but my mind is a blank. Where’s that hilarious retort when you need it? I’m so nervous the glass of water in my hand is actually shaking.

“Maybe we should find a quieter place. How about outside?” Drew nods toward the glass doors on the opposite side of the kitchen.

“Okay,” I say breathlessly.

Still holding on to my glass of water, I wrap my arms across my chest in an attempt to hide my shaking hands and deafen the sound of my heart thwacking against my chest wall. He pulls open the French doors and motions for me to go first. I step outside. It’s a warm fall night, nearly sixty degrees, but I wouldn’t have cared if it were freezing. Drew shuts the door and looks at me. After all the noise inside it seems extremely quiet. Almost too quiet. And dark.

Drew gives me a little grin. It seems like he’s still waiting for me to say something, something funny, something that reeks with hilarity, but what? My cheeks grow warm as I pretend to admire the little tiny landscaping lights twinkling in the yard. Funny, funny, funny. The only thing I can think of are the horrible jokes my uncle Stanley likes to tell at Thanksgiving.

“I thought you were long-winded,” he says, resting his arms on the balcony railing and surveying the view right along with me. “You seem pretty quiet to me.”

I drop my arms and lean over the balcony, balancing my water on the railing. “I’m trying to think of something funny to say,” I reply honestly.

“You don’t have to be funny on my account.”

“That’s good because all I can think of are ‘your momma’ jokes.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Your momma?”


“You know, your momma is so fat people jog around her for exercise. Your momma’s so old she ran track with the dinosaurs.”

“Huh,” he says, and goes back to staring into the yard.

Did I just tell Drew some “your momma” jokes from my uncle Stanley’s Thanksgiving table repertoire? “I’ve got some other things, but they’re not that funny.”

“‘Your momma’ jokes are hard to beat.” Drew sounds serious, but his smirk is giving him away. “But give it a try.”

He’s so close I can feel his breath on my cheek. I don’t look at him for fear that one more close encounter and I might fall over the balcony in ecstasy, dropping the two stories down and splattering across the stone patio.

“One is your combat boots.”

“Go on,” Drew replies.

“I noticed they’re the same ones you wore last year. Does that mean your feet stopped growing?”

“Seriously, this is your subject?” he asks playfully. “Maybe we better go back to ‘your momma’ jokes.”

It’s all the encouragement I need. I look him directly in the eyes and smile. “The second one has to do with plays, since I know you like them. I was trying to think of an intelligent question so I looked through Lucy’s playbooks, but I didn’t come up with anything.”

“You did this before you came tonight?”

I nod.

“You were trying to think of something to say to me?”

Uh-oh. I hadn’t intended on admitting that to anyone, especially to him. “I just meant, well, we’re going to be spending some time together because of the play and all and, well, I just wanted to make sure we had some things to talk about.”