Page 49 of June

“Want to go to the campus theater?” she asked. “They have cheap movies. It’s an awful action thing this week, but it’s only three bucks, and we get free popcorn.”

“You had me at a three-dollar movie,” Enid replied.

An hour later, they had paid for their tickets and had small bags of popcorn in their hands as they sat in the tiny theater that only fit about fifty people. They were relatively alone, save the group of four about five rows in front of them and the couple a few rows ahead of them and off to the right. Caroline wasn’t hungry since she’d just eaten, so she stuffed the stale popcorn into the cup holder next to her and looked over at Enid, who was doing the same.

“It’s not great, is it?” she asked.

“No, it’s at least a day old,” Enid replied. “But the upside of not eating it is that I don’t have butter all over my hands.”

She held her hand out for Caroline to take, which she did, and Enid moved their joined hands into her lap just as the movie started to play.

Within minutes, Caroline had her head on Enid’s shoulder, and it felt so good. She tried not to wonder if Enid had done this with Jill on their date last night, but it was difficult to focus on the terrible movie in front of her, so the thoughts kept coming back into her mind the moment they left. When Enid pulled her hand away, Caroline worried for a moment, but Enid’s arm just went around her shoulders, and Caroline was snuggled into her side, with her hand resting on Enid’s stomach over her T-shirt. Caroline thought she felt something, though, so she moved her hand and placed it between Enid’s breasts, covering her heart.

“What’s going on in here?”

“You can feel that?” Enid asked.

“Why is your heart going crazy?”

“I’m sure you can guess,” Enid replied.

Caroline lifted her head and looked at her.

“Really?”

When Enid nodded, Caroline’s eyes flitted down to her lips. Enid licked them. Caroline licked her own. They were going to kiss. No, it felt likethey werefinallygoing to kiss. Then, the whole room, including the screen, went dark.

“What the–” Enid said, pulling away.

“Put the movie back on!” someone yelled.

The door beside them opened, and a student employee walked in.

“Sorry, the thing broke,” he said as he flipped on the lights.

“What broke?” someone else asked.

“The player.”

“There’s a player?” another person asked.

“It’s just a Blu-ray player back there. What did you think was running this place?” the employee said. “I’ll give you all refunds, but I tried to fix it, and it’s not working.”

“How hard did he try?” Enid asked. “It took him, like, six seconds to get out here to tell us that it’s broken.”

“He probably has a hot date he wants to get to, like I did tonight,” Caroline replied.

Enid smiled at her and asked, “Want to take our three dollars that we’re about to get back and buy a cup of crappy coffee on the quad?”

“And sit at our table?”

“It’sourtable now, huh?”

“Yes,” Caroline stated. “So if anyone else is sitting there, we’ll kick them out.”

“I’d kind of like to watch you kick someone out ofourtable,” Enid said.

At first, Caroline hadn’t been happy that the guy clearly wanted to go home early, so he had obviously pretended like the player had been broken, costing her a first kiss with Enid, but when Enid was saying goodnight to her at her door after that coffee, Caroline actually felt grateful for the interruption because as she thought about it more, she realized that while she had really wanted to kiss Enid, part of the reason why had been that she wanted to catch up with Jill, who had undoubtedly had Enid’s lips pressed to her own already. That wasn’t the right reason to kiss someone, though, and when Caroline kissed her for the first time, she wouldn’t be thinking about anyone other than Enid, so instead, she kissed Enid on the cheek. Enid’s head had been tilted a little as if she had been hoping for more, but she left without saying anything.

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