I nodded, looking back to my family’s blanket. “I am. You?”
She shook her head and yawned. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’ll give it a miss this time.”
“Me too,” Elliot interjected, stepping in between us. “So are you heading home, Luce? Want a ride?”
“No, thanks,” Lucy said. “I biked here.”
“Great,” Elliot enthused. “Want some company biking home?”
“But didn’t you drive?” I asked, feeling that Elliot’s crush was wreaking havoc on his logic.
Elliot’s face fell as he seemed to realize this as well. “Technically, yes,” he murmured. “But… um…”
“You’re a nut,” Lucy said, shoving his arm good-naturedly. “See you tomorrow!” she called as she headed to the parking lot. I watched Elliot literally slump when she passed out of view.
“I think you’re going to have to tell her how you feel,” I told him. “I don’t think she’s getting your signs.”
Elliot blushed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He also turned to leave, which seemed like a good idea. From what I’d been able to grasp about the movie so far, it seemed to be about a guy pining for a girl, so it was maybe not the best thing for him to see in his current state.
I picked up the Diet Coke I’d poured for myself before we turned off the soda machine and tiptoed across the sand, ducking until I reached our blanket.
“Nicely done,” my father stage-whispered to me. I looked across the blanket and saw that he was giving me small, silent claps.
“Thanks,” I whispered back. “I was just quoting the experts.” I looked for my brother and saw that, a few rows back, he’d set up his own blanket and was sitting next to Wendy. I noticed that every few seconds he would look away from the screen and glance at her, and I couldn’t help but be glad that I’d chosen a first date for them that would make it impossible for Warren to inundate her with facts if he got really nervous.
I settled in and tried to pay attention to what was happening. I was shocked by how many lines I recognized even though I’d never seen the movie before. They were either things I’d heard my father quote, or lines that seemed to be part of the zeitgeist, references I’d known without even realizing it. I was getting caught up in the movie, the thwarted love story, when I became aware of something to my right. I turned away from Rick and Ilsa and saw Henry sitting next to me.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Hi,” I whispered back, surprised, and feeling myself start to smile. “What are you doing here?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, a smile playing around the corners of his mouth, which I made myself look away from. “Seeing a movie,” he said, as though this should have been obvious.
I could feel my cheeks get hot, and was glad for the cover of relative darkness. “I got that,” I whispered back to him. “I just thought, when I didn’t see you earlier…”
“Oh, so you were looking for me?” Henry asked, settling himself in next to me and leaning back on his hands. I shook my head, looking back at the screen for a second, where Humphrey Bogart was lighting what had to be his fortieth cigarette of the movie so far. “I had to help my dad with some of the prep for tomorrow,” he explained after a minute.
I turned my head slightly to look at him, the shadows from the screen flickering across his face. I realized, now that he’d said it, that he smelled sweet—a mixture of cake flour and something like cinnamon. When I realized that I was staring, I looked away fast, back to the screen and the world of Rick’s Café that I had, until just a few moments ago, been utterly absorbed in. I could feel my heart beat fast and was thinking that it would just take a few inches for me to extend my hand and have it touch his. Which was why I made myself keep looking at the screen as I asked, trying to keep my voice light, “So where’s your girlfriend?”
“Girlfriend?” Henry sounded so genuinely confused that I turned to look at him again.
“Yeah,” I said. “The girl who was with you at Jane’s? And I’ve seen her at your house….” My voice trailed off, as Henry shook his head.
“That’s Davy’s babysitter,” he said. “He really doesn’t need one, but my dad gets worried.”
“So you’re not… dating her?” I asked, thinking of the way she’d looked at him at the ice-cream parlor, at how their fingers had brushed.
“No,” Henry said quietly. “There was a moment when maybe that was going to happen, but…” He trailed off, running his hand across the sand for a second, as though smoothing it out, and I held my breath, waiting for whatever would come next. “But I changed my mind,” he finally said, looking back at me.