Playing Hurt

Clint

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The Twilight Drive-In has been in business since the 1950s, and everything about it is original. Everything—including the concession stand selling popcorn with real butter, not that oily junk they squirt over the kernels at the city cineplexes.

“When’s this thing start?” Chelsea asks, eyeing the glistening tub of popcorn I’ve just bought.

“When it gets dark,” I tell her, pointing at the sunset hues that have only just started to spill across the sky. “Haven’t you ever been to a drive-in before?”

“Too high-tech for me,” she teases.

“‘Bout as high-tech as I ever want to get,” I say, hoping she can’t hear the clicking sound of my tongue against my dry mouth. I’d buy an extra-large Coke to get me through the night, except then I’d have to go to the bathroom fifteen times before the stupid movie was over … and … am I really worried about how many bathroom breaks I might take? You’ve lost it, Morgan, I scold myself.

We make our way back toward the truck, parked in the back row even though there were plenty of spaces closer to the screen when we arrived. But I have a whole laundry list of reasons why I don’t want the two of us to be seen together, reasons that involve word getting back to Earl about me having a fling with one of the girls at his resort, after he trusted me enough to tell her dad about my boot camp idea. And reasons that involve the hurt that found me two years ago. Hurt that would split me in two if I had to live through it again.

Am I really doing this?

We settle into the cab. Chelsea crunches away on the popcorn while I stare through the windshield, watch the sun use the distant mountains as a staircase down to the bottom of the nearby lake.

This entire night is balanced on a stack of lies. Her folks, who are taking it easy at the resort, think she’s at Pike’s. Brandon, who’s playing yet another gig for Pop’s summer crowd, thinks she’s on a moonlight bicycle ride with fifteen other vacationers. My folks think I’m at the resort, helping the kitchen with inventory (of all the lame excuses). Kenzie thinks I’m on a stargazing hike. If something is right, should it really involve this much sneaking around?

“I don’t even know what’s playing tonight,” I mumble, just to have something to say. “Bound to be something as vintage as the theater, though.”

“Ah,” Chelsea says. “The black-and-white days when men lit the ladies’ cigarettes and the women wore high heels to bed.” I guess I toss her a stunned look, because she teases me with a shocked expression of her own and shoots a popcorn kernel at my head.

We laugh—in that moment, it’s easy. And maybe, I think, it’s supposed to be. Still, something in me keeps pressing closer to the door, like any minute I might just jump from the cab and bolt.

Chelsea crosses her legs, making the hem of her sundress fall back an inch. Licks the tips of her butter-greased fingers.

Ouch.

You want me to beat the bullshit out of you? I can still hear Greg yelling at me, telling me it’s time to move on, as he kicked me in the middle of that dirt road. And as I listen to those words circle through my head, I think of the compass—and remember that when Chelsea pulled it from my shorts, its arrow pointed straight from her to me.

I’m still nervous, but as I stare at her profile, desire starts to bubble inside me. Starts to eclipse the fears I’ve been carrying around for two years.

This is what I want.

The blond, beautiful, peach-scented creature sits next to me, waiting for me to touch her.