Page 67 of Fade into You
“But I said I would,” she argues, resisting the pull of my hand.
I take both of her hands now.
“Please?” I try, glancing back across the vast parking lot. “Don’t make me sit in that theater all alone.”
She stands up now but lets go, placing her hands deep inside her back pockets. So, clearly, she’s not okay with public displays of… affection, friendship, anything.
I step closer to her and say, quietly, so the gamers can’t hear, “It could be like a date, sort of?”
“Bird,” she says, even quieter. “You know I don’tneedthat.”
“Need what?” I ask, though I can feel tears trying to work their way up the back of my throat.
She looks around us. “Dates and… and all that.”
“Fine. I’ll go alone, then.” I turn around before I give away how much she’s hurting my stupid sensitive feelings.
I make it past two lanes of parked cars when I hear her footsteps running. “Hey, wait! Bird, hold on.” She grabs my arm and lets her hand stay there at the crook of my elbow for one, two, three seconds, and pathetically, that’s enough to make whatever hurt or anger that’s been building up in me all week just melt away.
“What?” I ask, forcing myself to look away from her eyes.
“I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry. I don’t think I said that right. What I meant was I don’texpectthat. I’m not expecting dates or… or anything from you.”
God, the worddatereally freaked her out.
“All right, maybe I didn’t say that right either. I didn’t mean it would be a real date, just date-like, date… adjacent. I’m not trying to pressure—I just wanted you to come with me to the stupid movie. That’s all.”
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s go.”
“Really?”
“Really.” She starts walking toward the theater.
“Don’t you need to get your chair?”
She looks back at me still standing there, at the chair beyond me, and shakes her head. “Nah, not mine. Come on.”
As we walk across the parking lot, I so badly want to reach for her hand, but she’s not close enough. I veer a little in her direction and she moves that exact distance away from me. She looks up to see me already staring at her, and I try to smile before looking back down.
“Of course I would much rather go to a movie with you than sit outside a store for hours for a game. I should’ve told Dade no. I don’t know why I didn’t.” I’m so thankful she’s talking. I can’t think of anything to say in return. “I’m sorry,” she adds. “I feel like I upset you or…”
“No,” I lie. “No, it’s okay. I’m not upset, really.”
She buys two tickets at the box office outside, and then she holds the door open for me. But it’s not a date. I’ll try to remember that.
The dollar-fifty theater is one of those places that confuses time and reality in a fever dreamscape. Blinding neon tubes scattered throughout, eighties carpeting with bright geometric shapes, and framed black-and-white photographs of old-timey movie stars.
“This is another good liminal space,” I tell her, as we walk down the haunted corridor that leads to the concession stand. “We definitely need pictures of this place for our zine.”
“Hell yeah, that’d be cool,” she agrees, looking around. “It’s as liminal as it gets.”
I assume we’re going straight in, since we’re already so late, but Jessa wanders into the winding concession line with no one there. I follow, and stand next to her as she orders a jumbo-sized popcorn and soda. When the girl behind the counter asks what kind of drink, she turns to me. “You pick.”
I get root beer because they have Barq’s.
We creep into the movie twenty minutes in—thankfully with previews, we didn’t miss too much after all. The giant popcorn and extra-large root beer serve double duty as a shield anddisguise as we slide into seats in the back and prepare to watch the show—in more ways than one. That is, assuming Dade is equally as offended by his second viewing ofTitanicas he was the first time around. One negative comment about this movie will have Dade excommunicated from the church of their relationship so fast.Titanicis Kayla’s romance bible. It’s more crowded than a usual Saturday night at the dollar-fifty, but I still spot Kayla and Dade directly in the center.
As we settle in, we manage to catch the last part of the introduction: old Rose about to begin her story. The footage of the underwater graveyard of the shipwreck fades into the grandeur of her memories, accompanied by eerie moments of classical music cutting in and out abruptly.
