He let the call go to voicemail.
“You love him, don’t you,” Abby said, nothing but sympathy in her voice.
“Yeah,” Drew said on a long exhale. “I think I do. And I have no idea what to do about it. How am I supposed to maintain a healthy relationship when he’s in London and I’m running all over the place filming?”
“If you’re lucky, with deliberateness and planning,” Abby said with just a hint of teasing.
The comment made Drew smile faintly. “I don’t know how to be in love with a man,” he confessed quietly.
“Is there a different way of being in love?” Abby asked. “I thought it was just a matter of opening your heart and doing the hard work to be together.”
“Sure, simple,” Drew huffed, his smile growing. It dropped again when he said, “What if I can’t get over the whole book deal thing?”
“Do you know for sure that he’s writing a book about you? That doesn’t sound like Lee at all.”
“I don’t think it does either, but how well do I really know Lee anyhow?”
“You tell me,” Abby said. “Or maybe tell him. And while you’re at it, tell him you love him and see how your feelings go.”
“Way easier said than done.”
“You won’t know that until you try,”
Drew sighed. Abby was probably right.
His phone beeped again, indicating Lee had left him a voice message. Drew’s gut clenched again. It was a long message.
“I’ve got to go, Abs,” he said. “But I love you and appreciate you more than you can ever know.”
“Right back atcha. And I’ll keep working over here to make things better.”
“No,” Drew told her. “Go to bed. Work on it in the morning.”
They said their goodbyes, but after hanging up, Drew waited to listen to Lee’s voicemail. He didn’t want to fall apart in the back of a car if whatever Lee had taken so long to say was bad, and he didn’t want to have a whole other kind of emotional meltdown if the things he said were good.
In the end, he waited not only until he was home, but until he’d showered and changed into something more comfortable,then made himself lunch. Not that he felt much like eating, but he’d picked up the cliché British tea-drinking habit in the last several weeks, and he had to admit a good cuppa made him feel better.
Only then did he listen to Lee’s message, and he was glad he was sitting down with tea when he did.
“I miss you. I just want to be with you. I worry about you all the time.”
Drew’s throat closed up at those words, at the heavy emotion in Lee’s voice as he spoke.
He nearly choked when Lee said he’d cut ties with his agent and that he wasn’t going to write the book after all. Drew knew enough about the way the creative world worked to know that could be huge, and not in the good way. Lee had made a sacrifice for him without knowing if things were okay between them or if they ever would be again.
As soon as the message ended, he called Lee. He couldn’t stop himself. He had so many things he wanted to say.
“Hey!”
As soon as Lee answered, he forgot how to speak. Words weren’t wording. His heart beat so hard against his ribs that it made him regret eating lunch.
“Drew? Are you there?” The worry Lee mentioned was sharp in his voice.
“Yeah,” Drew said, forcing himself to breathe. “I’m just really glad to hear your voice.”
“That’s good,” Lee said breathlessly. The tension of the moment they balanced in was clear through the phone. Drew felt it all around him. “So you got my message?”
“I did,” Drew said, scrambling for how to be cool when he felt anything but.