I stubbed my toe on my bed in my haste to get dressed, but managed to throw on a khaki miniskort and black tanktop through the pain. I toweled off my hair and finger-combed it, hoping I didn’t look like a drowned rat on my way down the stairs to see Trip.
He was sitting at the kitchen table, making smalltalk with Dad when I walked in casually, as if I hadn’t just been caught half-naked only five minutes before. “Hey, Trip. ‘Morning, Dad.”
I gave my father a kiss on the cheek and poured myself a cup of coffee as Dad excused himself to the garage.
Before I could even take a seat, Trip asked, “How’s the hangover?”
I just about dropped the sugar onto the floor. “Oh, God, Trip. Was I a completely wasted mess last night?”
He sat back and smirked at me, this gorgeous boy sitting in my kitchen. “Nah. But you were definitely in rare form.”
I brought my mug over to the table and sat down. But before the coffee had even hit my lips, he said, “Hey. Slam that thing down, we’ve got somewhere to be at twelve.”
I lowered my mug just enough to give him a perplexed look over the top of it. “Where’re we going?”
He grinned and said, “Just shut up and finish getting yourself ready. I’ll meet you out front when you’re done.”
*
I sank back into my chair and crossed my feet at the ankles, fitting them between two of the seats in front of me. The Loews Theatre had just undergone a major renovation, turning its three screen, rinkydink movie house into a massive, sprawling ten-plex. Trip and I were in one of the newer theatres on the second floor, and I was enjoying the new, reclining seats they’d upgraded with plush leatherette and cupholders.
I grabbed the Diet Coke from mine and took a big sip from the straw. I was still feeling a tad dehydrated, and the soda was ice-cold and hitting just the right spot.
Trip had dragged me there to catch a matinee. Loews always reserved one theatre to show classic movies on Saturday and Sunday afternoons; I’d seen Sound of Music on this same screen over the holidays, trying to get my mind off Trip at the time by losing myself in one of my all-time, favorite flicks. I thought it was fate or irony or whatever that I was sitting there at that moment not only with him, but while watching Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet.
Mrs. Mason had originally intended to show it to us during class, but the nuns in the library had “lost” the video. Rumor had it that some scenes were pretty racy, and we figured the sisters had tossed it on a bonfire during a book-burning ceremony or something.
The movie turned out to be really interesting. I’d never seen it before. It was probably the first film that I didn’t get to say smugly, “The book was better”, as I’d started to share Trip’s opinion of Shakespeare and realized that a lot of his writing was tedious, boring and hard to understand in its outdated speech.
But seeing his words play out onscreen was an entirely different animal. The visuals were beautiful, the costumes were gorgeous. The guy who played Romeo was pretty cute, too, so that was simply a bonus.
When it got to our scene, Trip gave me a nudge, saying, “Here we go,” and I laughed while trying to concentrate on the screen.
Watching a movie with Trip wasn’t like watching it with a normal person. He kept talking through the whole scene, pointing out how we should have done ours differently, gone with our original costume idea, changed the dialogue, filmed it in another location, etc. I was trying to tune him out. Up until that point, I’d just been content to watch a professional director’s version of the film, without even thinking to compare it to ours. There was Trip, criticizing almost every decision we’d made. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Trip, I happen to like our film. I thought it was great and everyone else did, too.” I lowered my voice and added, “Obviously, it’s not as good as this, but can you please just shut up and let me watch the movie?”
I gave a huff, crossed my arms and turned my attention back to the screen.
And that’s when a handful of popcorn bounced off my face and scattered across my lap.
Chapter 25
CLASS ACTION
Trip and I didn’t have much time to spend together over the following couple of weeks. After the prom-which Trip refused to attend for reasons unbeknownst to me-the partying had been put on hold as everyone readied for final exams. Everyone was hit with a case of senioritis, just riding out the minutes until graduation. The days seemed to be flying by so fast at a time I would have rather had everything come to a standstill.