He handed me the remote, and I clicked into Netflix.
“Have you seen The Breakfast Club?”
He shook his head. “No. Does it involve bacon, because I could get behind that.”
I looked at him with wide eyes and a serious concern that he’d grown up in some cult in the middle of nowhere. “Jesus. You’re worse off than I thought. How have you not seen this? It’s a classic.” Even though I wasn’t even born when most of the classics came out, my mom and I watched them all the time when I was younger.
He shrugged. “Didn’t watch a lot of movies growing up.”
“What did you do?” Movies were a quintessential part of my childhood. Each movie marked a different stage in my life. My first date watching Fast and the Furious on my Mom’s couch. Watching The Notebook after every breakup. Or kicking it old school, binging on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and wishing I could be Sloane.
“I was busy with school and studying. My parents were…” He trailed off. I would have prompted him to explain further, but a stormy expression bloomed across his face, darkening his features. From the way he reacted during the phone call to his father, I knew their relationship must be less than amicable.
I clicked on the movie and cued it up. We both sat in the middle of the couch, nothing but a few inches between our hands as they rested at our sides. It occurred to me that I’d just invited myself over to watch movies with my boss. Who I’d just seen in a towel not thirty minutes prior. I so deserved to be canned.
I hadn’t been on a first date in a long time. Being in Brogan’s house—uninvited, no less—was a far cry from a first date, but the whole fizzling situation going on in my stomach didn’t care about this tiny detail.
We nestled in just as people in the movie started arriving for mandated detention, and I found it a little ironic that I was sitting next to someone who was a polar opposite to me—like Penny and Leonard from The Big Bang Theory. Wait, did that make me the science geek or the failed actress in that scenario? I guess if I lost my job, I was one step closer to working at the Cheesecake Factory. And I could probably pull off a dress better than Brogan.
I folded my hands together in my lap and forced myself to stare at the movie, fighting the urge to glance over at Brogan. Which went about as well as trying to rein in my one-click finger while perusing Amazon. Even I didn’t have that kind of self-control.
You ever get those déjà vu moments where you’re transported back to the horrible hellhole of seventh grade, and Lenny McCafferty, the star quarterback, is sitting on your couch in the basement, watching a movie with you? Except you’re not really watching the movie, more like not-so-discreetly checking this person out, and your eyes are burning because you’re overusing your peripheral vision? And instead of enjoying the movie, you wonder why you suddenly have turned into the world’s loudest breather, and you’re sweating in spots that you didn’t even know perspired? Yeah, that was me as I settled in on Brogan’s leather sofa.
Except this time, I didn’t have braces or a horrible case of bacne, but the sudden worry of that tacos for lunch mixed with coffee sounded very unappetizing in terms of the breath department.
Much like with my middle school crush, I’d been struck by a severe case of what I liked to call The Self-Awares. It was the perfect setup for a medical commercial.
Hey you! Yeah, you, the one sitting on the couch like an antisocial dimwit. Are you suffering from a bad case of the self-awares? Unsure? Symptoms include:
1. Awareness of how many freckles are on your skin. As a fair-skinned person spending a lot of time in the sun, this was inevitable, but since when did I have so many?
2. Reduced resistance to environmental smells. They were hard to ignore when Brogan was fresh from the shower. A mixture of cologne and body wash wafted my direction, and my body instinctively leaned toward the smell.
3. Poor body placement. I’d chosen the worst possible spot of the couch—the crack. Now my ass was sandwiched in between the cushions and vice grips might be required to excavate me. It was past the time of opportunity to move to either side of the crack because either Brogan would think I was trying to hit on him if I inched closer, or if I moved farther away, he might wonder my motivations.
4. Peripheral vision overuse. Because, is he watching the movie or me?